Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)]

I speak from the nursery Benches here at the far side of the Chamber, but I am sure I shall graduate to the other Benches in good time.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) on her amazing and very moving maiden speech, and also on having four daughters, who have obviously been brought up very successfully. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle). He is not in his place, but I often visit Borough market in his constituency when I visit my daughter who is training to be a doctor at King’s college and is often at Guy’s hospital.

I am pleased to see that equality in my area, certainly as far as this House is concerned, is progressing. We have the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), who is currently sitting on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), who is the first woman to be Minister for the Armed Forces, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), and myself, representing Portsmouth South. That is four strong women whose constituencies surround Portsmouth harbour, which is excellent. We also have seven female MPs representing Hampshire, which is almost 50%. We have a little more to do; we have another male to knock off his perch at some point.

We must keep driving progress outside this House as well. I would like the gender pay gap be much smaller in my constituency. At 22% it is fractionally above the average for the south-east region. We must look at how to close that gap, but we can only do that by boosting aspiration for all women to help them get better jobs, as well as equal pay for equal work.

A growing number of businesses in Portsmouth are led by women, particularly small and medium-sized businesses which they own and run. The Hampshire chamber of commerce and the Portsmouth Federation of Small Businesses are run by women as well, so it is an area where women are beginning to dominate, which is excellent.

In a city where the main source of employment was once the dockyard, a centre for heavy engineering and other trades traditionally dominated by men, we are making important strides—and I suspect that history is part of the reason why we still have a gender pay gap of 22%. Through the efforts of key employers such as British Aerospace and Airbus, a growing number of young people are going into technical and engineering trades, especially through apprenticeships. That is why I welcome the Government’s new initiative on the careers and enterprise company, which will show how young people can go into careers that have normally been dominated by men. A key aim of our university technical college will be to recruit students equally between the genders to drive this progress forward. Education has always been a main source of empowerment for women. That applies in industry, so the £10 million from the Government to help develop engineers will help. One of my daughters was going to go into engineering but has changed to medicine, and I would like much more proactive engineering courses for women, to make it much more interesting for them, so that they stick with it, rather than deciding to go into other careers.

We are backing all that up with our reforms to the childcare system, extending free access to it and helping mothers to get back into the employment market. I would also like greater recognition of the role of mothers and fathers who stay at home and look after the next generation. Their role is largely unrecognised, and we always try to push people back into work even though being at home looking after the children is equally important. Through my membership of the Select Committee on Women and Equalities, I look forward to working to find ways of encouraging and supporting all parents who stay at home to get back into work when they feel it is right to do so. Many of them lose confidence by being at home and find it difficult to get back the skills they need to return to the workplace. I ask employers to provide more flexible working opportunities for mothers and fathers who have taken time out of the workplace to bring up families. Employers should recognise them both in work and in pay, and give them the skills to get back into work, at whatever age they are.