G8 and G20 Summits

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

On the issue of the Ministers resigning from President Karzai’s Government, he has put in place quite talented replacements. On the issue of Stanley McChrystal, he is a very talented general who we believe had delivered the right strategy. I was consulted on the issue twice by President Obama, but in the end it was about what General McChrystal had said about the US Administration in the interview in Rolling Stone magazine, so it was an issue between the US Administration and Stanley McChrystal, rather than necessarily a matter for me.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has had three international outings and he has acquitted himself very well; it would be churlish not to acknowledge that. Ahead of them, he wrote in the Financial Times on 17 June:

“It is shocking that…women still do not have equal rights in the workplace. This is not just unfair; it makes no sense—because it deprives our economies of their full potential as workers and consumers.”

Will he therefore agree, in this spirit of bipartisanship, that having the gender pay audits that have been suggested in both the public and private sectors would be a way of getting rid of that huge problem?

[The Prime Minister]

We have supported—and, indeed, before the election we put forward a case for—gender pay audits, particularly based on those companies where any unfairness is found. The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point, quoting from my FT article, which is that that is one of the structural reforms that we in the west in the developed world should be carrying out in order to increase our growth rates, and as the right hon. Gentleman is being so friendly, I shall have to take away his thoughts and think about them again.