Women (Government Policies)

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jon Ashworth), who is no longer in his place, for making his maiden speech. I will keep my remarks short and so will not take interventions.

Some people may wonder why we are having this debate and considering the impact of the Government’s policies on the needs and issues facing women, rather than any other group, and they have a point. When we develop policies, we should consider the differential distribution of their effects on a range of different population groups, not just women, but obviously including them. Importantly, we should look at whether those policies improve the circumstances for those groups and how that might happen, whether by improving their educational and job opportunities, through access to minimum income standards or through opportunities to achieve a healthy life expectancy and so on.

Most importantly, we should look at ensuring that those policies reduce rather than exacerbate the inequalities that persist between different population groups in our society. It is about ensuring that those policies are fair and that our society is fair. On that basis, it is appropriate for us to debate the issues that women increasingly and disproportionately face as a result of the Government’s policies. That is the crux of the debate. It is about how the policies are affecting women now. We should not be harking back to the past. The policies are unfortunately affecting women in an unfair, unjust and even discriminatory way and we must be mindful of that.

We have already heard that, more than 40 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970, women are still more likely to be paid less than men for the same work and to live in low-income households. Although Labour did much to address income inequalities in recent years—there is evidence to prove it—the pay gap between men and women remains, at around 16.4%. We have heard different figures today for the pay gap, but it is even worse for women in high-paid jobs. Women are also more likely to work part-time, and half of all part-time workers, both men and women, are paid less than £8 an hour. One in five women, compared with one in 10 men, earns less than £7 an hour, but whichever low-pay threshold we use, we find that the number of low-paid women is approximately double that of men.

On top of that, Equality and Human Rights Commission research shows that approximately 30,000 women a year lose their jobs as a result of pregnancy. Those income and other inequalities persist for women throughout their lives. Lone mothers and single female pensioners are more likely to be in low-income households than their male equivalents, although the evidence indicates that that situation improved under Labour.

This is an unsatisfactory state of affairs, but unfortunately it has been exacerbated by the policies that this Government have introduced. Despite earning less and owning less, women are set to lose an average of £8.80 a week, compared with £4.20 for men, because of the Government’s deficit reduction programme. Reductions in tax credits, benefits, pensions and attendance allowance will all hit women harder, and, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows, last year’s regressive spending review saw families most detrimentally affected, with lone parents worst affected of all.

This year’s Budget did nothing to compensate part-time working mothers, and women pensioners got nothing from the increase in tax allowance. The threat to universal, affordable quality child care, including the removal of ring-fenced funding for Sure Start, is a major hit to women as well as to their children. Child care is probably the biggest issue for women juggling work and family, and similarly the provision to exempt some organisations from the requirement to provide maternity and paternity leave is a retrograde step.

The measure in the Welfare Reform Bill to incentivise separated parents who currently use the Child Support Agency to make private arrangements in the future for child maintenance, and to place financial penalties on them if they do not, is another example whereby support for women is being eroded. Ultimately, support is needed to address the latent discrimination that women face.

Pensions are another crucial area where this Government have penalised women. In the past few weeks, hundreds of women in my constituency have contacted me about the Government’s decision last September to accelerate the equalisation of the state pension age for women to 65 years old in 2016 instead of 2020.

The Government also announced an increase in the state pension age for men and women to 66 years old by 2020 instead of 2024. The Library estimates that in my constituency the changes will affect 4,300 women, compared with 3,800 men, with a notional loss of income from state pensions of up to £10,700 for approximately 200 women.

We all agree that women are living longer, and that we need to change the state pension age, but the issue is about the time being taken to do so.