Transgender Prisoners

Debate between Cat Smith and Angela Crawley

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have secured my first Adjournment debate on the issue of transgender prisoners. It is not a topic that I knew much about before my election in May, but in my seven months in this House it has certainly gained my attention.

As someone who was interested in equalities issues before entering the House, I was keen to be elected to the Women and Equalities Committee. The Committee’s first inquiry into transgender equality is expected to be published early next year and we have taken evidence on trans people in the prison system. It was at that evidence session that I first became aware of the issue that is before us in this debate. It struck me that trans people face barriers and complications at pretty much every point in their lives, but there is a particular problem in our prison system. The description that was put to me last week was that

“getting involved in transgender issues is like a reverse onion, the more you look to peel off layers, the bigger it gets!”

Research suggests that trans people are over-represented in the criminal justice system. The proportion of trans people in the prison system may be twice the proportion in the general population. Many of the offences for which trans people are incarcerated apparently involve obtaining money for privately funded gender reassignment surgery. That is an insight into the lengths to which some trans people feel they have to go to live life in their acquired gender. Other possible reasons for the over-representation of trans people in the criminal justice system include the involvement of sections of the trans community in sex working and substance misuse. However, throughout my involvement in this issue, it has been a constant struggle to find any reliable data.

The recent cases, which have been much discussed in the media, have focused attention on the policies of the National Offender Management Service towards transgender prisoners in England and Wales.

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for calling this important debate. As a former colleague on the Women and Equalities Committee, I know that she is a great champion of trans issues. The Scottish Prison Service has worked closely with the Scottish Transgender Alliance to produce guidance on gender identity and gender reassignment to ensure that prisoners are placed in the estate that reflects their gender identity, regardless of whether they have a gender recognition certificate. Will she join me in calling for the UK Government to follow the Scottish example?

[Cat Smith]

The hon. Lady has pre-empted the next part of my speech. There are huge differences in the placement of transgender prisoners between the Scottish prison estate and the English and Welsh prison estate. The policy guidelines for England and Wales state that prisoners should normally be located in the prison estate of their gender, as recognised by UK law. For transgender prisoners, that is normally decided by the gender stated on their gender recognition certificate. There is some flexibility to allow transgender prisoners who do not have a GRC to be located in the estate of their acquired gender, where a case conference and multidisciplinary risk assessment determine that it is appropriate.

Women and Low Pay

Debate between Cat Smith and Angela Crawley

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) on securing this important debate, and I pay tribute to the many people on Twitter who are tweeting this morning on #WomenandLowPay, and are contributing to this debate as part of the digital opening up of Parliament.

We have heard this morning that the gender pay gap in the UK remains, and that women earn 81p for every pound that men earn. Many reasons have been given for that, including a system of occupational segregation in the UK; all too often, women find themselves in low-paid sectors such as retail, hospitality and care, and work part time because they have caring responsibilities. Women face barriers in going to employment tribunals because of maternity discrimination. They face barriers to training and development, including apprenticeships. Sadly, this Government have failed to build on Labour’s achievements, and their cuts are hitting women hardest.

My hon. Friend gave a good example of women’s work being valued less than men’s. She referred to a Father Christmas earning £12 an hour and a Mrs Claus earning the national minimum wage—half the hourly wage of Father Christmas. That got me thinking about a few things, including the message that sends to the children who visit that Father Christmas—that we value his work more than Mrs Claus’s. Frankly, I doubt whether Father Christmas could get round the world in one night without the support of a wife like Mrs Claus.

The majority of low-paid workers in this country are women. Three in five national minimum wage jobs are held by women, and over a quarter earn less than the living wage; the figure for men is one in six. Women are pushed into clerical, caring, catering, cashiering and cleaning occupations, as we have heard, and I will add another “C” to the list: classroom assistant. That brings me to my mother, who was born in the 1950s and works as a classroom assistant. With her union, she challenged her employer on equal pay legislation and on why classroom assistants were earning far less than men who were working for the council in similar jobs of equal worth.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) referred to pensions discrimination. I call on the Minister to outline what transitional protection he will introduce for women who have been caught in that trap.

The Resolution Foundation estimates that care workers, 78% of whom are women, are collectively paid £130 million below the national minimum wage, because employers fail to pay for travel time between appointments, and make deductions for items necessary for their job, such as uniforms, mobile phones and petrol. Women are forced into work in which they are undervalued and low paid. For example, 63% of those in retail and customer service are women.

What are the Government doing to end gender segregation and undervaluation of women’s work? Will the Minister give a commitment to take action to encourage women to consider traditionally male-dominated jobs, especially in science, technology, engineering and maths—STEM careers—as well as encouraging men to consider, for example, the caring professions, to ensure that these careers are properly valued and paid at the rate they deserve? We should ask ourselves as a society why we do not value the work that women do to the same extent as that done by men. Some 42% of women are employed part time, but the average part-time hourly rate is less than a third of the full-time hourly wage.

[Angela Crawley]

Does the hon. Lady agree that zero-hours contracts only exacerbate inequality? Will she join me in calling on the Government to ban exploitative zero-hours contracts, particularly as we are coming up to Christmas, when the retail industry in particular exploits such contracts?

[Cat Smith]

The hon. Lady predicts where I am going. I agree that zero-hours contracts make it very difficult—for women, predominantly—to plan, especially at this time of year. Reference has been made to Father Christmas; this is an important time of year for families to come together. It can be an expensive time of year. Budgeting when on low pay is essential, but if someone does not know what wage they will take home at the end of the month, it is very difficult to budget at all.

What are the Government doing to create more well-paid jobs with reduced hours or flexibility? The TUC has researched the issue of single-parent families, who are twice as likely as couple-parent families to live in poverty, and 90% of single parents are women. Women’s low pay arises hugely from the fact that they are often a single parent in a household. Single mothers are more likely than mothers in couples to be in low-skilled work, reflecting the difficulties in finding well-paid work that fits around caring responsibilities.

Research from 2005 showed that 30,000 women were forced out of work through pregnancy discrimination, but 10 years later, that figure has almost doubled to 54,000. What are the Government doing to tackle maternity discrimination, and to ensure that women who are victims of such discrimination have access to justice?

As part of my research for the debate, I contacted the National Union of Students and asked it for the information that it has about apprenticeships as part of the work that it is doing. I pay tribute to Shelly Asquith, its vice-president, welfare, who provided me with the information. On average, young men earn 21% more than young women while doing an apprenticeship. According to the poll, female apprentices earn just £4.82 an hour, compared with £5.85 an hour for male apprentices. What steps are the Government taking to improve training opportunities for women, and to ensure that apprenticeships do not discriminate by gender?

My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth set out Labour’s record on equality issues. The Equal Pay Act 1970, the minimum wage, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Equality Act 2010 were all introduced by a Labour Government. In government, we have also strengthened maternity and paternity rights. What we have seen from the current Government is a lot of job losses in the public sector. Of the local government job losses since 2010, 96,000 have fallen on men, while 141,000 have fallen on women. With the pay for low-paid work being 8% higher in the public sector than in the private sector, how many of these women are being forced out of their public sector jobs into equivalent private sector jobs and in effect receiving a pay cut?

Will the Minister commit to developing all tax and spending in a way that takes on board the likely impact on women’s equality? I ask that because 85% of the tax credit and benefit changes have fallen on women, and 70% of the savings made by cuts to tax credits have fallen on women. Will the Minister include in the new gender pay gap reporting regulations a requirement for employers to publish information on the earnings distribution of men and women in their workforce? I ask that because unless women know that they are receiving less pay for an equal-value job, it is very difficult for them ever to take any action to challenge that.

The full-time gender pay gap is 9.4%, but that masks the adverse experience of those working part time, where pay is typically lower, resulting in an overall gender pay gap of 19.1%. Indeed, the UK’s gender pay gap is above the EU average, and at the current rate of progress, it will take 50 years to close it. Although I am a young MP, I plan to be retired in 50 years’ time. I am not prepared to wait that long, and I am sure that the Minister is not, either. I therefore hope that he will have positive answers to my questions. I leave him with this thought: why do we value women’s work so much less than we value the work that men do?