International Women’s Day

Baroness Twycross Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to speak as part of this International Women’s Day debate. I start by thanking women on all sides of the House for their welcome, advice and support since I joined your Lordships’ House in November. I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Lampard, on her excellent maiden speech. There have been many outstanding contributions to today’s debate, including the moving reminder by my noble friend Lady Anderson of the price some women pay. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in particular for speaking about Dame Cicely Saunders. She was an amazing woman who served as a mentor and inspiration to my father and so many others in the hospice movement. Through her work she changed the lives and deaths of so many people. Famously outspoken, she once told my mother that my mother had too many children.

I shall focus in my remarks today on childcare and early years provision, which are vital to ensure that all children get the best start in life and a good foundation to ensure that their attainment in school is maximised. It is also important because the failure of the Government to ensure that all families can access affordable childcare is having a negative impact on women’s ability to return to work after they have children. Two-thirds of UK women with childcare responsibilities say that it has harmed their career progression, as research by the British Chambers of Commerce shows.

It remains the case that women take on more caring responsibilities than men in relation to both children and elderly relatives. The Centre for Progressive Policy has found that nearly half of working-age women provide an average of 45 hours of unpaid care every week, while 25% of men provide 17 hours. This is the gulf in unpaid care work and the “it isn’t rocket science” answer to the question I put to the Minister on International Women’s Day about why we still have a significant gender pay gap.

This leads to far too many working-age women being, effectively, economically inactive or underactive, and significantly adversely affects the UK’s productivity. The TUC has calculated that almost 1.5 million women are kept out of the labour market because of their caring responsibilities compared to 230,000 men. Further research by the Centre for Progressive Policy estimates that the high cost of early years fees is costing the UK economy a staggering £27 billion, the equivalent of 1% of GDP, in lost earnings. The Government would do well to focus on what they can do to support women with young children or caring responsibilities into work rather than homing in on unretiring the over 50s.

This year, International Women’s Day comes a week ahead of the Budget, giving the Government an ideal opportunity to address that problem. We do not mind—in the context of the very positive cross-party consensus today—if they borrow some of Labour’s ideas. Everyone should be able to sign up to the aim of ensuring that all families are supported from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school, and Labour has committed to ending non-dom status to fund a breakfast club in every primary school.

Three aspects relating to childcare need to be addressed. First, there is an acute lack of childcare available. Fewer than half of local authorities say that they have sufficient childcare for parents working full-time, with just 15% saying they have sufficient childcare for parents working atypical hours. Secondly, what childcare there is tends to be too expensive, with the campaign organisation that has already been mentioned, Pregnant Then Screwed, revealing that three out of four mothers who pay for childcare say that it no longer makes financial sense for them to work. The cost of childcare has increased at a faster rate than pay.

Thirdly, just as parents are struggling with the cost of living crisis, the cost of doing business crisis is affecting the viability of childcare providers, and government funding is not keeping up with their rising costs. Local authorities that responded to the childcare survey I mentioned earlier say that the recruitment and retention of staff, the cost of staff, the cost of energy, the funding rate and the cost of food were key factors in decreasing the sustainability of childcare providers in their area. Indeed, one in five local authorities that provided data said that one-quarter or more childminders in their area are at risk of leaving the profession, while 18% said that one-quarter of private providers are at financial risk.

This is a crisis that tinkering around the edges of the current failed free-hours model, which relies on cross-subsidy and additional charges by providers will not solve. It is a crisis impacting our country’s productivity which the Government should tackle now, and a crisis that primarily affects women as the country’s main unpaid carers.