Women (Government Policies)

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Mensch]

I apologise profusely for ever having suggested such a thing, Mr Deputy Speaker. I shall try to mind my language in future, as my mother taught me to.

It is this Government who are looking at ways of challenging inequalities in the workplace—

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Mensch]

I shall be happy to do so after I have made a little more progress.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

It is on this point.

[Mrs Mensch]

I have not made it yet. However, I will happily give way.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

First, at no point were what the hon. Lady describes as “sex worker jobs” advertised in jobcentres. Secondly, the advertisements were not displayed for the entire term of the last Government. There had been a court decision that jobs in the broader sex industry ought to be advertised in jobcentres, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and I pressed for it to be changed. I think that the hon. Lady’s claim that that was an achievement by the present Government is fundamentally dishonest, and that it was equally wrong for her to say that the advertisements continued for 13 years. [Interruption.] I am sure that it was done by accident.

[Mrs Mensch]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but I must tell her that I reject her assessment. In the Welfare Reform Bill, the Government have introduced legislation to close the loophole. If the Labour Government did not like the direction in which the courts were moving, it was always open to them to introduce legislation and to do so quickly. They would have been supported by my right hon. and hon. Friends, but they chose to sit on their hands.

I commend the hon. Lady for having done some of the work, but I condemn her party’s Government for not having done it quickly enough. Labour Members cannot escape the fact that it is this Government who have put right that shocking affront to women’s dignity. It is also this Government who are introducing flexible parental leave between parents, and this Government who are working with businesses to bring about transparency in pay so that the massive gap between men’s and women’s wages—which was 16.4% under Labour—can be reduced.

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) made an opportunistic reference to plea bargaining and shorter sentences for rape. It may be an idea that will not go very far, but the present Government are at least trying to introduce measures to tackle the appalling rates of rape conviction that we saw under the hon. Lady’s party. We saw zero ideas from that Government, and zero action to tackle those conviction rates.