Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

What steps she is taking to support women at risk of leaving the workforce due to the economic effect of the covid-19 outbreak.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

What steps she is taking to support women at risk of leaving the workforce due to the economic effect of the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

The Government have taken significant steps to protect jobs for women with the coronavirus job retention scheme supporting 4.5 million jobs done by women. We continue to support women in the labour market through our job support and bonus schemes. We have also committed to extending redundancy protections for new mothers returning to work and to make flexible working the default.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

There are 1.8 million more women in work than in 2010, and it is important that we capture that. As I have said, on childcare responsibilities, which are so important, we have introduced 30 hours of free childcare, we have ensured that wraparound childcare remains available in each of the tiers and we will continue to invest to help create more high-quality, wraparound and holiday childcare places so that mothers are not disadvantaged.

[Chris Elmore]

The Women’s Budget Group last week highlighted that working-class women specifically face the biggest cuts to working hours since the beginning of the pandemic, with 43% reporting having had their hours cut to zero since April. Could the Minister set out what specific support he is putting in place to stop these women falling into poverty, because clearly it cannot be right that working-class women are so adversely affected by the pandemic?

[Paul Scully]

This is important, and we know that certain sectors are the worst affected. It is important that we actually do everything we can with “Hands, face, space” to make sure that our economy can start to open again and create opportunities, but we have also put in support with universal credit, the coronavirus job retention scheme, the self-employed income support scheme and the wider winter economy to help everybody, but especially the disadvantaged women that the hon. Gentleman describes.