International Women’s Day 2016

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and I congratulate everyone who is taking part in the debate. I apologise for squeezing a nine-minute speech into four minutes.

This debate takes place against the background of the recent murder of Berta Cáceres, a feminist activist who was shot in her home in western Honduras because of her defence of the rights of indigenous people. I hope that many women will continue her work. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has said that when he took office there were nine Parliaments in the world without women. That figure is now down to four, but that is four too many, and there has still been no female UN Secretary-General. Hon. Members are right to mention the percentage of women in this Parliament, which now stands at 29%. Her Majesty’s Opposition, the Labour party, has 43% female MPs, which is nearing equality.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend remarks that we have not had a female UN Secretary-General, but will she join me in congratulating the current secretary-general of the Commonwealth, Baroness Scotland?

[Valerie Vaz]

I will, and I am delighted that she was selected. However, the statistics are still damning. In law, one Supreme Court judge is a woman, and only 13% of QCs are women; in science, women make up only 14.4% of the science, technology, engineering and maths workforce in the UK; in business, only 5.5% of chief executive officers in FTSE 100 companies are women. What about the gender pay gap? In 2014, according to the Office for National Statistics, it was 14.2%, which means that in effect, women work from about 9 November to the end of the year without any pay.

I want to raise two issues about women in my constituency. Locally, there was an equal pay judgment in 2008, and the poor women who worked for Birmingham City Council are still waiting for a pay-out. The men who did the same sort of work picked up extra pay through routine overtime and other bonuses. Mary Ashby and Josephine Haynes are retired, and they have a right to their pay-out. The Government can find £375 billion for quantitative easing, so will they please find the money to make sure that all the women get their pay-out?

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I want to structure my speech around the motion, which starts by expressing solidarity with International Women’s Day, as I have done today by dressing in the suffragette colours—just one symbol of that solidarity. Underneath, I am wearing a Fawcett Society feminist T-shirt.

The second part of the motion

“notes with concern that, despite women making up 51 per cent of society as a whole, more progress needs to be made in electing women to Parliament”.

Like you, Mr Speaker, I was a member of the Speaker’s Conference on representation in this place. We have made progress. I am proud of the Labour party, which still provides more than half the women in this place, for taking the decision, which was not an easy one within the party, to use women-only shortlists. I was originally called a “quota woman”, but everyone has forgotten that now because they realise that I am quite an effective Member of Parliament.

We need to go further. I welcome the new Conservative women to the House. In some ways, I am glad that they were beneficiaries of the collapse of the Liberal party which, in my view, has done less than any other party on this issue. Let us remind ourselves why it is so important to have women here. At the moment, democracy fails if people cannot hear their voices in Parliament. Do women make a difference? Absolutely, they do.

I remember asking the Clerk of the Defence Committee at the turn of the century what difference having women on that Committee for the first time had made. I was not sure what the answer would be but, “Of course it has made an enormous difference, Fiona,” was what this rather stuffy Clerk said. I said, “What?” He said, “Well, we just used to talk about how big the bombs were, but now we talk about the families of the people who fight.” I just know that what would make me brave is knowing that my family is safe.

Women bring something additional to Parliament. One thing we achieved under a previous Prime Minister was the first ever stealth tax cut, when he could not bring himself to mention during his Budget that the level of VAT on sanitary protection had gone down. I am disappointed when we get patted on the head on some of these issues, in that the most recent san pro tax cut turned into a way of making this a kind of voluntary tax—“Guess what? We’ll give it to the Eve appeal.” I am glad that the Eve appeal is getting the money—I am a survivor of ovarian cancer myself—but if san pro is being taxed, the money should go into strategic support from the Government.

[Jess Phillips]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government should look at some of their big strategic wins on women’s issues, such as human trafficking legislation and the Modern Slavery Act 2015? Should they not focus the money on something like that?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend anticipates where my speech is going next.

The next part of the motion refers to equal pay. We have made some progress on that, but I am glad that the Women and Equalities Committee is looking at the fact that older women are being left behind when it comes to equal pay. They are being left behind in many other ways, too, so we need to try to sort that out.

The final part of the motion

“calls for greater action against FGM and other practices that are harmful to women.”

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I commend the Government for setting up the National FGM Centre, which helps women and communities to fight against this barbaric act. It is run, as hon. Members may know, by Barnardo’s and the Local Government Association, and a funding decision on the centre is due at the end of this month. Will my right hon. Friend join me in calling on the Government to continue this funding that keeps our daughters safe?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

It is essential that we have a strategic response to violence against women and girls. We have all been moved by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), and we know that women—internationally and in the UK—are particularly likely to be victims of violence, which might be through so-called cultural practices such as FGM, or victims of human trafficking.

I am glad that the Government have introduced the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and are focusing on the issue. We know that, internationally, the biggest reason for trafficking in human beings is trafficking for sexual exploitation. With women who are murdered, we know that if they have been in prostitution, their perpetrator is much less likely to be caught and convicted. Our average murder conviction rate is 75%, but at the moment we convict only 23% of the murderers of prostitutes. That is a shocking figure. We fail to have an intelligent, strategic response to the existence of prostitution, recognising that it is, as it is actually practised, a mechanism for violence towards women, for the sexual exploitation of children and for turning women into commodities, thus making all women’s lives less safe.

I am glad that the Home Affairs Committee is looking at this issue, but until we follow Sweden’s lead by targeting the men who create this problem and saying that it is an offence to pay for women’s sexual services, I do not think we will end the horror that is the reality for most women and girls involved in prostitution—the horror of drug addiction; the horror of pimping; and the horror of exploitation and trafficking. That is something that we really need to focus on. When I first came to this House, we were reluctant to discuss the word “prostitution”, and I am glad that we now have a Chamber that is prepared to talk about it. However, we now have to do things to end this form of exploitation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is no surprise that when we widen the gene pool and get more women and diversity around the table, we make better decisions.

In the time I have left, I want to talk about something close to my heart. Engineering has a turnover of more than £1 trillion, which is a quarter of all UK enterprises, yet 64% of employers say that there is a shortage of engineers. That shortfall will lead to there being 55,000 fewer engineers by 2015 than the UK economy needs. Women make up only 9% of the engineering workforce. That is a scandal, and we need to do more to address it.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I will not, if the right hon. Lady does not mind, because I have only a few seconds left.

A paper by EngineeringUK shows that UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers in the EU. The figure is 9% in the UK, but 30% in Latvia. Girls outperform boys in STEM subjects but fail to continue those studies to A-level and beyond. In the past five years, 12,000 STEM A-levels were taken by women, but in 2013-14 only 3.8% of engineering apprenticeships were taken up by women. That represents a huge missed opportunity. We need to make sure that the girls who are coming through schools now become the engineers, designers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow. That is how women will take their place in the UK economy.