International Women’s Day

Baroness Penn Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to both Ministers on their new roles, and to the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, on his remarkable maiden speech.

I am conscious of how wide-ranging today’s debate has been, and that I am focusing on only one aspect of women’s equality and just one of the policy levers available to address it. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, I want to focus on equal pay, and add an extra item to the to-do list she has drawn up for the Government.

We have heard in the debate that the gender pay gap for women in the UK is closing, albeit too slowly. In fact, for women in their 20s and 30s, the gender pay gap for full-time work is almost non-existent. However, once women reach their 40s, the gap for full-time work has grown to 11% and reaches as high as 25% overall for women in their 50s. The decisive change in these figures is, for many women, triggered by the decision to have a family. Research by the IFS shows that when a couple have their first child, on average, the wage gap between the mother and father is 10%. However, by the time of the child’s 13th birthday, it has grown to 30%, often driven by the mother’s decision to move to part-time work.

There are many ways in which we can try to close this pay gap: making sure that part-time work is valued as much as full-time work and offers the same opportunities for progression; and improving the accessibility and affordability of childcare, so that mothers who want to be in full-time work can be. But these responses all bake-in the assumption that it is mums who become the primary carer when they have children and that we need to make it easier for them to balance caring responsibilities and their careers. Would it not be better if both parents needed to balance caring responsibilities and their careers? We need to make it easier for everyone to do that and value both these roles, for men and women, in their lives.

I was pleased that the Minister mentioned shared parental leave, which I will come on to shortly. As she said, parenting is an equal responsibility, but the reality is that our parental leave system remains highly gendered. From the start of a child’s life, government policy builds in the assumption that the mother will be the primary carer. In fact, at 52 weeks, the UK offers new mothers the longest period of dedicated maternity leave of all the OECD countries. In contrast, our dedicated offer for fathers, at just two weeks, is among the lowest and is six weeks shorter than the average. This is despite evidence showing a substantial pay-off if fathers take more parental leave.

Before couples have a child, they tend to share unpaid housework evenly. However, after having children, on average, it is women who take on more of the burden. When dads take more parental leave, the division of unpaid work tends to be more even. They are more likely to take an active role in childcare, both early on and when they return to work. Increased parental engagement leads to better health and development outcomes for the child, and has benefits for fathers themselves, who report greater satisfaction in parenting and increased well-being. All of this has knock-on benefits for women’s labour market outcomes. As well as encouraging a more equal division of unpaid work, it creates a culture where it is normal for men to take substantial leave when they have children. This can reduce gender discrimination at work and reduce the risk that it is only women who take care-related leave, with its knock-on effect on career development and earnings.

The introduction of paternity leave and additional paternity leave by the previous Labour Government was a welcome step, as was the coalition Government’s introduction of shared parental leave. Having spoken to those who have used it, I know that it has made a real difference, but it is far from perfect. On women in politics, the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, made the point that there is still no formal system of maternity or paternity leave for Ministers in the Government.

We knew when introducing shared parental leave that it was not perfect. Two key factors to improve the take-up of leave by men are the rate of pay and having a dedicated period of leave for fathers. But shared parental leave was introduced at a time when no funding was available to increase pay beyond the statutory amount, or to create additional leave for dads only. Instead, it relies on a system of transferring some of the mum’s maternity leave to dad.

I am pleased that the Government are evaluating how shared parental leave has worked so far and have consulted on next steps, including on how the policy can encourage more fathers to take parental leave. Will the Minister tell us whether that evaluation was completed by the end of last year, as the Government said it would be, and when they will share the results of that evaluation with the House? I understand that this a complex area and further reform will take time, but that is why we need to get going.

There are other important steps we can take along the way. This week, the Government announced that they will take forward one of the measures from their consultation by introducing additional parental leave for mums and dads of premature babies. That is a really welcome step.

I close by suggesting one more quick win for the Government from that same consultation: getting employers to publish their parental leave policies on their websites. It is already best practice among good employers, but if we get everyone to do it, it would help all parents and potential parents to make informed decisions about how to balance caring with their careers, and encourage employers to have the best family-friendly policies to attract top talent. That would be good for everyone.