Diane Abbott
Main Page: Diane Abbott (Independent - Hackney North and Stoke Newington)Department Debates - View all Diane Abbott's debates with the Home Office
Public Expenditure Reductions (Women)
Diane Abbott Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
It gives me great pleasure to introduce the first Adjournment debate after the recess. There could be no more important subject for it than that of women and the economy. Such a debate could not have taken place 50 years ago, when women’s contribution to the economy was seen as marginal, temporary and time-limited. In the 21st century, however, women play a huge role in the economy, and it is right and proper for us to examine the impact of the Government’s “cuts Budget” on women, the family and children.
This Budget—this package of public expenditure cuts—will bear most heavily on the poorest, on women and on children. Our Chancellor has cut and frozen too many programmes that were aimed largely at women, in one of the most unfair and regressive Budgets that I have seen in 23 years in Parliament. His decision to freeze child benefit, scrap the child trust fund, end Sure Start maternity grants, abolish the health in pregnancy grant, cap housing benefit and freeze public sector pay will have a greater impact on women than on men. Women will shoulder fully three quarters of the burden. Research findings in our own House of Commons Library prove that they will shoulder the biggest burden of the cuts. As a result of changes in the revenue raised through direct tax and cuts in benefit, women will contribute £5.8 billion of the £8 billion that the coalition seeks to raise by 2014-15. They will contribute three times as much as men. More than 70% of the £8 billion that Government Members are so proud of raising will come directly from the pockets and wage packets of female taxpayers.
No Labour Member is a deficit denier, and no Labour Member does not believe that we need to take action against the deficit in the long-term interests of society, the country and our economy. However, we are united in believing that the Government’s proposals are uniquely unfair, and will also prove to be ineffective. The research findings in the House of Commons Library take into account changes in tax allowances, capital gains tax rises and changes in tax credit, benefits and pensions, but they do not take into account the £560 million-worth of cuts in the child trust fund, which suggests that women will be hit even harder than the Library figures suggest. Nor do the figures take into account the cuts in public spending and the effect that they will have on women who work in the public sector.
I am an inner-city Member. Most of my constituents work in the public sector. Many of them are women, and many of those women are in female-headed households. They do not have private sector jobs to step into, and they do not have a man to keep them at home. When families lose their major wage earner it is a huge blow to them, and I fear that it may take years for those families and communities to recover. Women will lose out whether or not they are mothers. Support for children has been cut by a huge £2.4 billion, but even when that is discounted women without children will still pay more than men. When we discount all the benefit changes that will affect mothers, women will still pay £3.6 billion towards the deficit compared with £1.9 billion for men—that is twice the amount—and, as we know, the cuts in benefits will only exacerbate existing inequalities in income between men and women.
Underlying the Government’s package—this Government who claim to be new, warm and inclusive—is a very old-fashioned view of society. I was very struck to hear Iain Duncan Smith, who has looked at poverty issues—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I gently say to the hon. Lady that she should not refer to other Members by name?
Ms Abbott
I was very struck to hear the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who has paid a lot of attention to poverty issues, saying that he thought it was important that people were prepared to move around the country from estate to estate in search of work. What family model is he thinking of? The family model he is thinking of is one where only the husband works. It did not seem to occur to him that many of these families also have women who work and who are not willing to pack up and follow their husband around the country. There are some very old-fashioned views of society here.
The Budget, together with the likely changes to the welfare system, seems to me to be more supportive of an outdated male breadwinner and dependent female carer model than the dual earner, dual carer model, which is more representative of society whether in Hackney, inner-city Newcastle or middle England. In short, it suggests that the Government are, for all the window dressing, out of touch and unwilling to move with the times.
The House will not need to be reminded that women rely more on benefits and tax credits than men. A larger share of women’s income is made up of benefits and tax credits. More women than men earn too little—because women are largely among the lower paid—to benefit from the change in income tax thresholds. Women are also more likely to work part time or unpaid, meaning they rely on benefits, particularly tax credits, to boost their income. These changes and the cuts to benefits have been dubbed the worst for women since the creation of the welfare state. I have therefore called this debate in order to put on the record the fact that I think this Budget is not just bad for Britain, but bad for women in Britain.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer insists that his Budget is a progressive Budget but, sadly, that only proves to me that this distinguished product of St Paul’s school does not understand the technical meanings of “progressive” and “regressive” in respect of economic matters. Under any analysis this is a regressive Budget because, in relative terms, it takes more from the poor than from the rich.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
On the comments that have been made about the Budget proving that we are all in this together, the analysis that my hon. Friend is setting out demonstrates not only that women are getting it with both barrels, but that at the same time as women are being asked to pay such a high price for the mistakes of the bankers who got the country into this financial mess, the situation of major industries will, through the cut in corporation tax, improve. Women will be expected to pay more, but big business, and particularly the banking sector, will be better off as a result of the Budget. Does that not demonstrate that we are not in fact all in this together?
Ms Abbott
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that comment. It is extraordinary that this so-called progressive Budget will disadvantage women with families—and particularly poorer women with families—and advantage big business and bankers. The welfare state, which Government Members love to decry, is essential for stay-at-home mums—a strong state is essential for them—but it is also important for working mums.
Government support is essential for mothers who want to stay at home with their children. I went back to work when my son was eight days old—he voted in the Lobby when he was eight days old—but that was my choice. I have always argued—as have my own Government when Labour was in office—that women should have a choice. We should not financially disadvantage women who choose to stay at home. This Budget, in the cuts that it will make to the welfare state, will make it harder for stay-at-home mums and for working women, because of the predominant number of working women in the public sector. Even the initial decision to freeze public sector pay will hit women, because 4 million of the 6 million people who work in the public sector are women and so women are twice as likely to suffer from the pay freeze. When discussing the public sector cuts further, we must consider the number of women who are head of their household and who will be affected by the 600,000 new job cuts likely by 2016.
Widespread discrimination still takes place in the workplace. A report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission calculated that at the current rate of progress it will take 60 years for women to gain equal status on the boards of the FTSE 100 top companies. So we must ask ourselves why the Government have gone ahead with a Budget that hits women so disproportionately. We have to ask ourselves why they have used a ratio of public sector cuts to tax of 80:20, given that even the previous major Tory cuts Budget, which was under Norman Lamont, used a ratio of 50:50. The 80:20 ratio is at the heart of why this Budget hits women so hard.
The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for pay and pensions equality between men and women, has taken the Treasury to court over the Budget; it has filed papers with the High Court to seek a judicial review of the Government’s emergency Budget, and it is right to do so. Its chief executive, Ceri Goddard, has said:
“Successive governments have failed to give enough consideration to how their policies will impact on equality between men and women, but this budget shows a whole new level of disregard for the importance of equality law and everyday women’s lives.”
The public are giving this new Government an element of a honeymoon period, but Government Members must mark my words. They will see what happens as the financial impact of this Budget comes to bear on ordinary people and they realise what the plans for child benefit are, what the consequences of abolishing the child trust fund and the health in pregnancy grant are, and what effects the proposed housing benefit cuts have on children living in housing need in London—the Minister knows this better than I. London is a high-rent area, so many women and children will find themselves homeless or having to live in more overcrowded conditions, which will make it even harder for them to access work.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that the increase in the personal tax allowance will help many women? It will remove 880,000 people out of income tax altogether, the majority of whom will be women.
Ms Abbott
That will help some women, but it will not help women on benefits or the very lowest paid women. As I say, the way in which the figures add up means that women are still hit disproportionately.
In conclusion, I urge the Government, even at this late stage, to re-examine the decisions they have made. In particular, I urge the Minister to take seriously the Government’s legal obligation to assess the equality impact of the Budget on different groups, specifically men and women. I urge them to carry out and publish a gender equality impact assessment of the emergency Budget and to take mitigating actions where policies look set to hurt women disproportionately.
Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)
I am delighted that the hon. Lady has raised this issue in the Chamber tonight, because I have worked with women in business for the past 10 years. On everything that she talks about—every consequence, every dilemma and every situation that women are in—she has to look to her Government and ask why we are in this disastrous economic state, and she has to bear the responsibility for what is happening. The picture for women in business is mixed. The latest results coming out this week say that a third of women are now the main breadwinner, 39% earn more than their partners and 19%—
Esther McVey
My point is that we have to move forward, and the Conservative party is looking at how to get the 150,000 women who are not setting up businesses—when compared with the number of men who are—to do so. That would be worth £7 billion to the economy. What would the hon. Lady’s advice be to women on how to even out the economy?
Ms Abbott
I shall not allow myself to be distracted by the hon. Lady, except to say that the reason why we face the necessity of making cuts on this scale is not Labour’s irresponsibility but greedy bankers’ irresponsibility —greedy, under-regulated bankers who almost crashed the world economy.
Ms Abbott
I am afraid that I cannot, because I want to allow time for the Minister to reply.
I want the Minister to give us her assurance that, before making those cuts, the Government will carry out a full and robust gender equality impact assessment. We all know that savings have to be made; my argument is that they should not be made at the expense of women. We all know that we have to move forward; my argument is that women, certainly in my constituency, will not be able to do so with the ball and chain that welfare cuts and the removal of child tax credits represent. They will not be able to move forward, shackled as they will be by unfair and unthought-out cuts in welfare and public sector spending.
Fifty years ago we could not have had this debate. Fifty years ago there would not have been this many women in the Chamber to debate it. I am glad that Government Members have stayed for this debate. It is important, and women out there, in the country, want to know that their voice will be heard on issues to do with the economy and the potentially devastating cuts package with which the Government seek to meet the challenge of the deficit.
The Minister for Equalities (Lynne Featherstone)
I very much welcome the opportunity to speak on this subject, and to clear up once and for all some of the myths surrounding the Budget and its impact on women.
I shall refer first to some of the points that the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made, before putting the Government’s case per se. The Library findings were biased in their Budget analysis. The analysis was not robust; it included only selective measures.
Mr Speaker
Impugning integrity is neither desirable nor orderly. Perhaps I did not hear as clearly as the hon. Lady heard, but I shall listen intently. To my knowledge, nothing disorderly has occurred, but the hon. Lady is a long-standing—I will not say old, because she is not old—campaigner, and she has put her view forcefully on the record.