Acquired Brain Injury

Debate between Caroline Dinenage and Neil Gray

Thursday 6th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Dinenage]

Thank you; that is a very generous offer. People can see what an inspiring group Headway is.

We have heard a lot about the excellent and wide-ranging APPG report from 2018. As the hon. Member for Rhondda said, the Department of Health and Social Care co-ordinated with officials from across Whitehall to deliver the response, which was a truly cross-Government response, but I certainly feel his frustration at how silo working across Whitehall can be an impediment to getting the change that he wants. A number of right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned that today, and I will certainly take forward the idea of a real, collaborative cross-Whitehall group to discuss this. Even from the issues raised today, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Transport, the Department for Education, the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office—I am sure there will be others—all need to be involved in the conversation.

[Neil Gray]

I thank the Minister for her contribution thus far. It was remiss of me, not just as someone who comes from an armed forces family but as a constituency MP with cases involving constituents who have been medically discharged from the armed forces, not to highlight and focus on the contribution from the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on the greater work that needs to be done within the MOD and across Government to ensure that we are treating our armed forces personnel, particularly when they leave service, with greater respect, and to ensure that we are providing for them, given the level of service that they have provided to all of us.

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise that issue. NHS England has a veterans trauma network, which delivers comprehensive medical care to veterans, including those suffering from brain trauma. It does excellent work, but there are also many individual charities up and down the country that work to support veterans who may not have been diagnosed; they may have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or something else, but never actually had the original head injury diagnosed.

Almost as if to highlight the fact that this is a hugely cross-Government issue and the inadequacy of Ministers working in their individual silos, I will today be able to focus massively only on the issues relevant to our health service, but I will try to come on to a lot of the questions that right hon. and hon. Members asked.

Visible Religious Symbols: European Court Ruling

Debate between Caroline Dinenage and Neil Gray

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right; the Government believe, and I believe, that people need to be able to feel strong in their religious identities, and we are ensuring that the voices of people of faith can be heard up and down this country. As now, any dress code or dress ban that an employer imposes must be for legitimate and proportionate reasons, and the employer must be prepared to defend it before a court or tribunal if necessary. Ultimately, those dress codes are for individual employers to decide on, but we are clear that any form of discrimination on the grounds of religion or faith will not be tolerated and is unlawful.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

This is an incredibly sensitive issue which will cause concern across these isles. It is clear that right-wing leaders across Europe have already attempted to misrepresent the ruling for their own ends, so I hope that we will see clear leadership from the UK Government to counter that rhetoric and ensure that it does not take hold here.

What the Minister has already said and what the Prime Minister said earlier is a good start. We should be absolutely clear that women and men should be free to choose what they wear, and we certainly should not be discriminatory on the basis of religion. The Court of Justice judgment ruled that uniformity is key in any workplace policy on religious or political neutrality, and that this cannot be applied on an ad hoc basis. However, there are concerns about the potential for this to be hijacked by some for the purpose of anti-Muslim or similarly intolerant sentiment. If Police Scotland can decide to include the hijab as part of its uniform, what action will the UK Government take to ensure that discrimination against individuals of any religion will not be tolerated in the workplace?

[Caroline Dinenage]

The Prime Minister was very clear that what a woman wears is her choice and no one else’s. Obviously, there is a clear difference in the following respect: it would be ridiculous to presume that, if someone wanted to wear loose clothing or dangling jewellery when working in or around machinery, it was sensible to allow them to do so in contravention of any health and safety considerations. But in normal day-to-day jobs it would seem to be very ill-advised to prevent people from wearing the items of clothing that reflect their religious faith or belief.

On what the hon. Gentleman says about the far-right response, let me say that we have one of the strongest legislative frameworks in the world to protect communities from hostility, violence and bigotry. We keep these policies under review all the time, as we want to ensure that they remain effective and appropriate in the face of any kind of new and emerging threats. He must be assured that those who perpetrate hate crimes of any kind will be punished with the full force of the law.

Fathers in the Family

Debate between Caroline Dinenage and Neil Gray

Wednesday 1st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Caroline Dinenage)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mrs Main. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) on securing this really important debate. I also congratulate both him and other hon. Members on doing such a great job of articulating clearly how involving dads in their children’s lives is good for the emotional health and wellbeing of both parents, great for childhood development and really good for society.

As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, this debate is timely, as the Women and Equalities Committee recently launched its important inquiry into fathers in the workplace. We welcome that inquiry and will look with great interest at what the Committee comes up with. The role that fathers play in family life is a subject of great importance for me in my role as Minister for Women and Equalities and for the Government more broadly, and it is intrinsically connected to the work that the Government Equalities Office is doing to close the gender pay gap.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for drawing the House’s attention to this year’s successful Year of the Dad campaign in Scotland. Highlighting fathers’ really important role in child development was key to that campaign, and I wholeheartedly support that sentiment. Nothing is more important than childhood development. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), among others, asked whether we could have a UK-wide Year of the Dad, and I will certainly consider that. It is vital that we support fathers and encourage businesses, employers and society more broadly to do the same.

We know that dads want to be more involved in their children’s lives, and we are committed to supporting them to do that. The role of dads in family life is already changing. Increasingly, men are choosing to work part time. Although mothers continue to do the majority of childcare, dads do ever more. Dads these days are much more actively involved in their children’s lives—they are not afraid to change a dirty nappy or spoon-feed some pureed carrot into an unwilling mouth—and that is great. The Year of the Dad campaign has rightly sought to advance father-friendly practices among employers and others.

Tackling the gender pay gap is a central part of what the Government are trying to do to ensure that there is a balance between work and family. The gap is now 18.1%, which is the lowest on record, but there is still more to do. Its causes are broad, but one is the time that women spend out of the labour market caring for children. Helping fathers and mums to share that responsibility will not only help us to reduce the gender pay gap but, crucially, allow fathers to better balance work and family. It will also build stronger relationships between fathers and their kids, and help us to build a stronger and more productive economy. That is why we will introduce legislation next month requiring large employers to publish their gender pay gap. That will shine a light on the inequality in business and encourage employers to do more to ensure that they have family-friendly policies and actively promote and encourage their staff to take advantage of those policies.

One such policy is shared parental leave, which this Government introduced in April 2015. It enables working parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay in the first year of a child’s life, if they so wish. That is designed to give parents more flexibility in who cares for their child in that first year and to give fathers a bigger role. Shared parental leave also helps to strengthen working parents’ connection to the labour market, giving them more flexibility to combine work with family responsibilities. It gives mothers and fathers the opportunity to equalise care and work responsibilities, and it is crucial in helping mothers to retain a link with the labour market. Neither parent should have to make a binary choice between having children and having a career, so we hope that shared parental leave will address long-standing gender stereotypes. There is nothing more important in a child’s development than the role of parents, and it is essential that we support them both in playing a full part in their children’s life.

[Neil Gray]

Will the Minister give way?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I think the hon. Gentleman will have time to sum up at the end, so he can speak then.

The Government have extended the right to request flexible working to help men and women maintain a better work-life balance. Since June 2014, all employees with 26 weeks’ continuous service have had the right to request flexible working, and that extension has doubled the number of employees who are able to make that request to more than 20 million people.

We already have one of the most diverse ranges of working arrangements in Europe. The OECD rates us as the fourth most flexible place to operate a business. Flexible working is steadily becoming more popular. Some 60% of employees surveyed in 2011 had done some form of flexible working; that was up from 56% in 2006 and continues to rise. It is great news for business and the economy that employers have access to the widest pool of talent, but it is also good for individuals.

Draft Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and public authorities) regulations 2017

Debate between Caroline Dinenage and Neil Gray

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Caroline Dinenage)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall. The regulations, which are being introduced under powers in section 153 of the Equality Act 2010, replace and amend the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011. They replicate the measures from the previous specific duties regulations—namely, that public bodies must publish information every year to demonstrate their compliance with the equality duty and must set equality objectives every four years.

Tackling the gender pay gap is a priority for this Government, which is why we have used these powers to include new duties for the relevant public authorities, if they have 250 or more employees, to report on their gender pay differences. We have already delivered on our manifesto commitment to introduce mandatory gender pay gap reporting for large employers in the private and voluntary sectors, and the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 were approved by both Houses last month and signed by the Secretary of State on 6 February.

It is only right that public bodies, including Government Departments, are subject to the same reporting requirements. That is why we announced that we would extend the manifesto commitment to the public sector in October 2015. My Department’s gender pay gap is much lower than the average, at only 5.9%, but I want the Government to be a trailblazer and to lead by example.

The regulations apply to specified public authorities in England, to non-devolved organisations and to certain cross-border organisations and authorities. Scottish and Welsh public bodies are subject to separate specific duties regulations. The devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales have been kept informed of the proposed changes. Both sets of regulations will require the same gender pay gap calculations and use the same methodology for calculating the data.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

Will the Minister advise us on what measure was taken to fall upon the figure of 250 employees? She mentioned Scotland. We in Scotland are further ahead on that, as are other nations in Europe. Why not fewer than 250?

[Caroline Dinenage]

That is a good question. The reason is that we were fundamentally keen that this manifesto commitment was delivered hand in hand with business and that we were with business every step of the way. We are really serious about this and want businesses to be 100% committed to it. Business felt that this number was manageable. I know that the Scottish Government have imposed a lower threshold in Scotland, but it should be noted that the requirements there are less specific and do not include the full range of calculations that will apply to public bodies in England. We want businesses to see this as being in their interests. They want to be able to identify and promote the skills of every single one of their workforce, and we do not want to make this too burdensome. We want to bring them with us every step of the way, hence the number we have settled on.

All specified public bodies will need to publish their gender pay gap data on a website that is accessible to members of the public. Organisations will also need to upload data to a Government-sponsored website, which will also allow us to establish a database of compliant employers and to monitor compliance closely. We have aligned the reporting timetables and obligations as closely as possible, for employers in different sectors to achieve consistency and comparable sets of data.

I firmly believe that the two sets of regulations will provide unprecedented transparency on gender pay differences in all sectors and create the environment we need to drive change.