Cost of School Uniforms

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I know how well this debate will be received in my constituency, where one parent contacted me to tell me about the extortionate £135 cost of their children’s school uniforms. The fact is that parents should be allowed to go to the high street, the supermarket or anywhere to get a school uniform. That is what happened under the last Labour Government—it was stated in the guidance, and it should be reintroduced.

[Frank Field]

That is a suggestion for the Minister. It could be guidance; I would love it to made be stronger than guidance—that schools must do this. I will come back to that.

16-to-19 Education Funding

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend is completely right. Cuts elsewhere in further education budgets make life even more difficult and challenging for people leading those institutions and delivering not only for adults but for 16 to19-year old learners.

Alongside these funding cuts, inflationary pressures have continued to bite and costs have continued to rise. Employer contributions to the teachers’ pension scheme increased from 14.1% to 16.4% in 2015, employer national insurance contributions rose from 10.4% to 13.8% in 2016, and business rates increased in 2017.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I was contacted about this debate by the principal of Sutton Community Academy in my constituency, who tells me that the budget is over £1 million less than it was three years ago and that the only way to balance the books would be to shut the sixth form, but it is desperate not to do that. My constituents need a leg up. They cannot afford to see a ladder that enables them to move on and up being pulled down.

Social Mobility

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Post-16 and youth service funding is critical to the debate and I will touch on that later.

I urge all colleagues to read the Social Mobility Commission’s powerful report. It highlights the fact that the challenges we faced in 1997 are very different from those we face in 2017. It rightly calls for social mobility to be at the heart of all Government policy, decisions and actions, because it is only through a prolonged, determined and comprehensive Government-wide strategy that we may actually start to change the entrenched inequalities and the lack of social mobility for the many. The social mobility agenda is about the many, not the tiny few we often hear about who manage to get themselves from the council estate to the boardroom or around the Cabinet table. The Prime Minister says that she is looking for a national purpose that brings all parties and the country together, and I say to her that if she made tackling social mobility her calling and the key test for her Government, against which all her actions were tested, she would get wide support from across the House.

Before looking at some of the policy areas where more needs to be done, let us remind ourselves why tackling the divides in Britain is so important. The Sutton Trust has found that failing to improve Britain’s low levels of social mobility will cost the UK economy a staggering £140 billion a year by 2050, or the equivalent of 4% of GDP. On current trends, by 2022 there will be 9 million low-skilled people chasing just 4 million low-skilled jobs, yet there will be a shortfall of 3 million higher-skilled people for the jobs of the future. The economic divides are even starker when we look at the regional disparities. Output per person in London is more than £43,000 a year, yet in the north-east of England it is less than £19,000. London and some of our renewed cities, such as my own city of Manchester, are increasingly the home of graduates and have vibrant growing economies.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Getting kids from ordinary backgrounds to university is a key way of enabling them to move up and get on. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the previous Labour Government on increasing student numbers, while acknowledging that there is still work to be done, particularly in post-industrial towns such as Ashfield, where we send only 21% of 18-year-olds to university, compared with an English national average of 32%?

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend’s excellent point fits entirely with one of the main thrusts of the Social Mobility Commission’s report, which is that there are huge regional inequalities, particularly between our growing and vibrant cities, where many graduates live and work, and our heartland towns and former industrial places.

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[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. I know that he has been championing the issues in Oldham, and I hope to work with him to continue to do that. I will say something on school funding in a moment, if I could make some progress.

Of all the measures and policies of the last 20 years, one that stands out as transformational for our schools is the London Challenge. London went from having some of the worst schools to now achieving the narrowest attainment gap of anywhere in the country. It is a key part of the overall London effect; 30 of the top 50 constituencies for social mobility are in London.

There are two key learnings from the London Challenge, which are now seriously at risk. The first is the supply of great teachers. The Minister’s colleague in the Department for Education has finally started to recognise that recruitment and retention are major issues. Figures obtained by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) show that a quarter of teachers who have qualified since 2011 have left the profession. Statistic after statistic backs that up, and we know that it is the poorest children and the struggling schools that suffer most when teacher numbers drop.

Teachers deserve a pay rise. Yesterday’s pay settlement is a huge disappointment. Real wages of teachers are down by more than 10%. But it is not just about pay; it is about workload and the constant changes to curriculums and expectations. Ministers really must get a grip of the issue and do it fast.

The second learning from the London Challenge is about funding, which my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) mentioned. The increase in school budgets over many years, coupled with targeted support such as the pupil premium, has had a real impact on the attainment gap, which was narrowing until very recently. It has narrowed significantly in London, where funding was boosted the most. The real terms cuts to schools’ budgets that schools are now having to make—before we even get to the national funding formula—will, again, hit the poorest hardest. Interventions, extra support and supported activities all benefit the poorest most. Recent teacher polling has shown that a third of school leaders are now using the pupil premium to plug the gaps in general funding, that almost two thirds of secondary heads had had to cut back on teaching staff and that schools with more disadvantaged intakes were the most likely to report cuts to staffing.

The Government are totally kidding themselves if they think that the real terms cuts to school budgets, together with the teacher supply crisis, are not going to show in a widening of the attainment gap and a major step back in social mobility in our schools.

[Gloria De Piero]

I met with the headteacher of Ashfield Comprehensive yesterday. The school faces a budget cut of almost £1 million from last September to this September, and he is facing a choice between bigger class sizes and fewer subjects. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is the sort of thing that hinders social mobility?

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those are some of the unpalatable decisions that headteachers are having to make. There is no question but that those decisions will have a real impact on outcomes, so I am sure we would all support the Minister going back to the Treasury to say that the real-terms cuts need addressing, and quickly.

Social mobility should be at the heart of education policy; every part of the system should work to unleash the talents of all young people. That means that existing grammar schools must do more to tackle the issues, rather than entrenching advantage and damaging wider social mobility. I am very pleased that the Government have dropped their plans to open new grammar schools. However, they said that they would tackle social mobility in existing grammar schools. Figures that I have released today show that since 2016, the number of children on free school meals in grammar schools has hardly shifted at all—it has gone up by just 0.1 percentage point—despite calls from Ministers that existing grammar schools should increase their intake of low-income children.

In the “Schools that work for Everyone” consultation, Ministers said that existing grammar schools needed to do more. They are now saying that they feel that they have fulfilled that objective and so are dropping plans to require existing grammar schools to address the issue. If existing grammar schools do not reform their admissions and play their part in boosting social mobility, they should cease to receive public funding. We should be rewarding the schools that do the most for pupil progress for the majority of pupils, and that narrow the attainment gap, which is why we should reform league tables so that they show not just attainment but pupil progress, and progress in narrowing the attainment gap.

I cannot cover everything in the short time we have. Needless to say, huge gaps remain in post-16 education. I hope that the new T-levels and quality apprenticeships will help to address that, but that will happen only if they remain focused entirely on social mobility outcomes and people do not get distracted by other agendas. As others have said, and as the Sixth Form Colleges Association and others have shown, post-16 funding in Britain is still among the lowest in the OECD. We need to address that too.

As we have discussed previously, access to university and, crucially, outcomes and access to work beyond university remain a huge concern. Too few graduates are working in graduate jobs; in fact, we have the third lowest level of graduates working in graduate jobs of all OECD countries. The only countries behind us in that league table are Greece and Estonia. That is a travesty and it brings into question whether the debt, and the exercise, is worth it. Destinations of graduates and others are still most determined not by qualification and ability but by networks and social connections.

We could have a whole other debate about regional inequalities and how we boost social mobility everywhere. The devolution agenda that we all support must also have social mobility at its heart.

I know that the Minister will want to tell us why we cannot afford any of these plans. I would say that we cannot afford not to do them. Our economy and society pays a heavy price for people working below their ability and for wasted talent and wasted communities. The Minister’s economics are false economics and will end up costing us dear in the long run. Achieving a step-change in social mobility for the many, not just the lucky few, is the challenge of our time. Opportunity and progress for the young, a new deal for left-behind communities and a radical rethink on tax and spend policies all need reshaping around a new national mission to make Britain a world leader in social mobility, not a country that sits towards the bottom of the pack, as we do today. Although Brexit will dominate and define, I am sure that we across the House will all come together around that national mission.

School Funding

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I certainly recognise that it is hugely challenging to ensure that there is fair funding for all schools in all parts of the country, but the cuts that I am referring to, and the cuts that my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State talked about, are not to do with the national funding formula. I addressed it because it is an important issue, and because it is contained in the Government’s amendment to the motion. The motion is about the funding pressures that schools face before the implementation of the national funding formula, and we need to address that as well.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Like my hon. Friend, I consulted headteachers in my constituency. Jacquie Sainsbury, the headteacher of Brookhill Leys Primary School, where 55% of kids are on the pupil premium, said, “How am I going to find £230,000 out of next year’s budget?” Do the Government not have a duty to help headteachers such as Mrs Sainsbury?

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Schools across the country in constituencies in all parts of the country are facing these challenges. In the end, my view is that investment in education should be a priority, and we should be able to agree to that on a cross-party basis.

Education and Social Mobility

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. There are clearly many questions to be answered about the evidence for such a policy.

I want to give the Education Secretary the chance to end this uncertainty in our school system. Can she tell us which of the commission’s recommendations she will be accepting, and whether the Government have rejected the recommendation on schools, in particular? The challenges that we face as a country go much further than this one misguided policy.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Last year in Ashfield 66% of children from disadvantaged backgrounds did not get five A* to C GCSEs. We are the 13th lowest constituency at sending 18-year-olds to higher education. That is the real scandal, is it not—not the grammar school proposals?

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for her absolutely splendid intervention, because we know that increasing selection is not the answer to the crisis that is facing our school system.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The good news is that we expect many—indeed, most—of the jobs created over the next few years to be graduate-level jobs. Our economy is creating opportunities, but we need to make sure that our young people are in a position to take them. That is part of the reason why this Bill is absolutely critical. Wherever and whatever a person is studying, part of how they are able to succeed is making sure that they get high-quality teaching. That is why we are delivering on the Government’s manifesto pledge to implement a new teaching excellence framework for universities.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

May I also congratulate the right hon. Lady on her new job? I was also the first in my family to go to university. Ashfield, which I represent, has among the lowest number of 18-year-olds in the whole country going to university. The Secretary of State says that she wants to see opportunities for people from ordinary backgrounds, but how is scrapping grants for the poorest kids going to help?

[Justine Greening]

The bottom line is that the evidence base shows not only that more young people are going to university than ever before, but that a higher proportion of them are from disadvantaged backgrounds. As I said to the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), we do our young people a disservice if our system cannot be financed to create places for them.

Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that, 45 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970, women still earn on average 81 pence for every pound earned by men; welcomes the fact that pay transparency under section 78 of the Equality Act 2010 will be introduced in 2016; and calls on the Government to ensure that this results in real progress to close the gender pay gap by mandating the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to conduct, in consultation with the Low Pay Commission, an annual equal pay check to analyse information provided under section 78 on pay gaps across every sector of the economy and to make recommendations to close the gender pay gap.

The motion stands in the name of my hon. and right hon. Friends. May I take this opportunity to welcome the new Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice? I hope she will put her heart and soul into it and I wish her well in the role.

It gives me great pleasure to have called the debate today on the subject of equal pay. If we boil it down, we see that the cause of equal pay is a matter of simple workplace injustice. It is about people’s basic right to be paid fairly for the work they do, to have the opportunity to move up, and to be able to improve life for themselves and their families, regardless of whether they are a working man or a working woman.

Equal pay is a fight that colours the history of the Labour party and movement, from women tram and bus conductors who went on strike in 1918, to the women machinists in the Ford Dagenham plant. The House first pressed for equal pay in 1944, in relation to equal pay for men and women teachers. The Conservative Member for Islington East, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, inserted a clause in the Education Bill but it was not to be. Churchill was so incensed that he pressured her to withdraw her amendment, telling her, “Now, Thelma. We’ll have no more of that equal pay business.”

Thelma withdrew her proposal, but Churchill agreed to set up a royal commission on equal pay. Four years later, that commission warned that paying women the same as men

“may prove disastrous in the long run even to young and strong women by heavily overtaxing their nervous and muscular energy”.

Thankfully, times changed, and in 1970 Labour’s Barbara Castle ignored those apocalyptic predictions and passed the Equal Pay Act 1970. Until that time, it was commonplace for jobs to be advertised with one rate of pay for a man, and another for a woman. The Equal Pay Act outlawed discrimination in pay and is still used today by women to challenge such discrimination, but it is not enough. Forty-five years on, women still earn on average 81p for every £1 a man earns.

Throughout our history, my party has fought for equality. We fought for the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, which outlawed maternity and sex discrimination; child benefit; the national minimum wage; a year’s maternity leave and the doubling of maternity pay; 15 hours’ free childcare; and the right to flexible working and paid paternity leave. I am proud that my party cut the pay gap by a third during our time in government, but we did not eradicate it.

I am sure the Secretary of State will say in her speech that the gender pay gap is the lowest on record, but I hope she will also concede that, in the past five years, the pace at which the pay gap is closing has slowed. That is why pay transparency is important. When companies publish data on pay, they are often surprised by how few women are in senior positions or earn the same as their male colleagues, and they usually act to change it.

Last summer, we launched a campaign for pay transparency, which called for a small but important action: that the Government implement section 78 of the Equality Act 2010 and mandate big companies to publish their gender pay gap. It is fair to say the Government put up some resistance, despite an excellent private Member’s Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). There was a rally outside Parliament led by a truly unusual and exotic coalition—I am not talking about the Prime Minister and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). Ex-Bond girl Gemma Arterton joined the wonderful Dagenham machinist women, Unite the union members and Grazia magazine readers to call for pay transparency. The Government changed their stance, and I thank them for having the courage to change their mind, because, after all, pay transparency is a pretty humble measure: the simple act of companies that employ more than 250 workers publishing their pay gap. That simple step can help us to take huge strides towards closing the gender pay gap once and for all.

For that to happen, however, the information provided by around 7,000 businesses must lead to change. Transparency is effective only when firms act on the information revealed.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech and some very important points, but she has not touched on a critical factor: for full-time workers, the gender pay gap for women under 40 has all but disappeared.

[Gloria De Piero]

I will come to the way in which full-time and part-time gender pay gaps are measured. I believe there is a flaw in the measurement. An hour at work is an hour at work, no matter whether someone is part-time or full-time. I for one find it peculiar that the Office for National Statistics makes that distinction. Is it because most women are in part-time work? I fear that that is exactly why.

Friends Life, the big insurance company, was one of the first big companies to publish its pay gap. It said that

“what gets measured, gets managed”

and that

“what gets publicly reported, gets managed better”.

In other words, transparency can lead to real and lasting change. We believe it is time to take that principle and apply it to the whole country.

The purpose of the motion is to propose that the independent Equality and Human Rights Commission should be tasked with analysing the information and producing a report to the Government and Parliament each year. It will monitor progress and make recommendations for action. It will act as an equal pay watchdog. An annual equal pay check would be a tool used to measure progress towards the goal of eliminating the gender pay gap in this generation.

By analysing the information, the EHRC could compare progress in different sectors, highlight areas where the gap is unusually high or widening, and identify companies, professions or industries where the gender pay gap is a thing of the past. We recommend that the EHRC draws on the expertise of the statisticians at the Low Pay Commission, because the disproportionate number of women in low-paid jobs is a major factor in the pay gap. Crucially, the EHRC should make recommendations for action, based on its analysis. It could do that by highlighting the best practice it finds in industries and individual companies, because there is not just one reason for the gender pay gap.

Discrimination still happens. I have spoken to women who are senior executives in investment banks and women working as council care assistants who have suffered because of it. Their stories are real and human.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making a very good speech and an important point, but does she agree that it is unacceptable for Labour-controlled North Lanarkshire Council, which encompasses my constituency, to have dragged the equal pay claims of its hard-working staff through the courts for years at great cost to the taxpayer?

[Gloria De Piero]

I am not an expert on North Lanarkshire Council, but I would say, in relation to Scotland, that the pay gap has increased while the Scottish National party has been in government. That is a worry and it goes against the trend.

One woman who works in childcare won her equal pay claim after years of being paid less than men working in jobs that required fewer skills. She told me:

“I’d got a fair amount of money through the payout, but all of those years I struggled to pay my bills and the debt I was in as a low-waged woman worker…all those years I was in debt to credit card companies, even though I had been to college for two years. I’d got qualifications; it was a vocation not a job. And I think what would my life have been like if I’d been paid a fair wage?”

Winning an equal pay claim has never been easy. Equal pay claims make up only a fraction of employment tribunal claims. The Government have made the task even harder with the introduction of tribunal fees, which have led to a 69% fall in equal pay claims. Fewer women are accessing justice to challenge pay discrimination.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is crucial that cost never acts as a barrier to justice?

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[Gloria De Piero]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Indeed, our manifesto stated that the whole system needs reform, so that nobody is priced out of seeking justice at work.

Pay transparency has never only been about pay discrimination. The causes of the gender pay gap across business and across Britain are far more complex. Why is most low-paid work today done by women? Women do 59% of all minimum wage jobs: a quarter of working women earning less than the living wage, compared with a sixth of men. Why are only 9.6% of executive directors on FTSE boards women?

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making a number of very good points and I have a great amount of respect for her. Will she join me in congratulating our female First Minister, the first female First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who topped the “Woman’s Hour” international influencers poll today? She has instilled one of the first 50:50 gender balance Cabinets and has done a huge amount to champion the cause of equality for women and young girls in Scotland and across the UK.

[Gloria De Piero]

I always welcome and applaud senior women in our politics. I do not want to be too churlish, but I will put on record that the Labour Benches still have more women MPs, despite the fact that we left office, than all the other parties put together.

By monitoring and assessing the evidence, the annual equal pay check will help us to determine whether the continued existence of the pay gap is driven mainly by a lack of women in top jobs, and enable us to identify the industries in which women are paid less because they are mainly employed in flexible or part-time work.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

The number of women in top jobs is an important issue. I had the privilege, in my business career prior to coming to the House, of working with top female executives such as Angela Spindler and Libby Chambers—people I really respected. Good progress has been made to increase the representation of women on boards. Does the hon. Lady believe that this will help to tackle the challenge that she is rightly putting to the House today?

[Gloria De Piero]

I am delighted that we have more women on boards, but we have so much further to go. We want women to take decisions and to be in executive roles on boards. I am afraid progress on that is really not good enough.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

While we are talking about the kind of industries that do not have women at the top, will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the first woman Bishop of Hull, who will be ordained in York Minster on Friday? Alongside her will be our first female chief constable of Humberside police. Indeed, I will be there too, as the first women ever to represent a constituency in Hull. This is about increasing young women’s chances of having those types of careers, as well as others.

[Gloria De Piero]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Those moments of progress are indeed reasons to celebrate. What happens in schools is really important. The decline of careers advice and work experience will take us backwards in challenging stereotypes in career choices.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a very powerful and thoughtful speech. I ask this question in the interests of genuine debate and gaining information. We have heard that we do not have enough women in senior positions. It is possible that that is because we have not reached a tipping point where more women feel it is perfectly normal to be on a board of directors. Does the hon. Lady think we should employ more positive discrimination to reach that tipping point, so that senior roles become much more acceptable for younger women coming through?

[Gloria De Piero]

That has certainly worked for non-executive positions on boards. My experience, and the experience of friends and colleagues, is that when in work, women want to progress, take decisions and move up the ladder to executive roles. It is therefore important for us as a country to ask why more women are not in senior positions, because it is not credible that there are simply not enough talented women who could rise to the top of their professions. I think it is fair to say that something else is going on. Nobody wants their daughters, wives or girlfriends to miss out on those kinds of opportunities. This is not just a women’s issue; it is an issue for Britons.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being most generous in giving way. Does she share my disappointment that, rather uniquely, the debate has twice as many women MPs in the Chamber, listening to her excellent remarks, as men? There are only half as many men in the Chamber.

[Gloria De Piero]

That is why I am so delighted that my hon. Friend has made that intervention. This cannot be seen as a women’s issue; it is a family issue. If women are not paid what they are due, all families are poorer and we are all poorer. It is for that reason that those of us on the Labour Benches have long argued for the gender pay gap to be measured in the difference in hourly wages among all male and female workers—full-time and part-time workers combined. The ONS and the current Government use the figure for full-time workers when referring to the gender pay gap, but that masks the true extent of the pay gap across our economy. An hour at work is an hour at work.

As I am sure everyone in this House would recognise, the gender pay gap in Britain is not simply about the difference between those performing the same work for different pay. It is about the dominance of women in low-paid work, and the lack of highly paid, high-quality flexible and part-time positions at the top of companies that allow parents to balance work and family life.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I probably should declare that I have an outstanding equal pay claim against my former employer. It is clear that a number of public bodies have a number of employees—thousands, in fact—with outstanding pay claims. How does the hon. Lady think that should be settled? Should the Government step in and discuss with public bodies how to settle these outstanding claims?

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[Gloria De Piero]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is my understanding that many of the claims in the public sector were resolved under the Labour Government through various means, such as “Agenda for Change” in the NHS and other workplace agreements. If there is further work to do, then of course it should be completed.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Following on from the point on the numbers game made by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), will the hon. Lady comment on the fact that there are more Conservative male Members on the Benches today than there are Labour?

[Gloria De Piero]

Well done! [Laughter.]

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

Not proportionally.

[Gloria De Piero]

Not proportionally—the shadow Education Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), is performing the role of Carol Vorderman. It is a delight to see my male colleagues on the Labour Front Bench today.

Some 41% of female jobs are part-time jobs, yet on an hourly basis this part-time work is paid a third less than the full-time equivalent. So, to get a real picture of the extent of pay inequality in Britain between men and women, we have to recognise this full-time/part-time pay gap. Otherwise, we will never take the steps needed to encourage the creation of higher-paid, flexible working at every level in our economy.

[Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a matter of deep concern affecting young women? Since 2001, there have been, on average, 130,000 more young women a year not in education, employment or training than young men—that is currently 418,000 18 to 24-year-old women. Does she think we need to address that issue specifically, and does she support what the Young Women’s Trust is doing in setting up an inquiry chaired by Sian Williams into female NEETs?

[Gloria De Piero]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before the hon. Lady continues, let me remind Members, especially those fairly new to the House, that interventions have to be short, because it is otherwise not fair for people who sit here all day waiting to make their speeches.

[Gloria De Piero]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and the Young Women’s Trust is doing fantastic work, with Deborah Mattinson at the helm. What my hon. Friend mentioned is, of course, a cause of real concern. Women’s participation in further education over the past five years has almost halved, so I hope that the Government will address those important points.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I hope my hon. Friend will agree with me. She mentioned women in part-time work, and it was a fantastic and proud moment when the Labour Government enabled councils to get capitalisation to provide equal pay for local authority workers. Does she also agree about the current threat from deregulation and the accompanying rhetoric on legislating to change employment law?

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[Gloria De Piero]

The Labour Government did some fantastic work on equal pay. My hon. Friend will know that we Labour Members never stop fighting for progress and never stop challenging. That is why today is part of the overall journey; we must monitor what happens to make sure that we do not go backwards.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is generous in giving way. I have to say that I have never had any difficulty in being short. The last Labour Government might have done a great deal in this area, but one thing they did not do was indicate that they would bring into force section 78 of the Equality Act 2010. It has taken this Government to do that, so will she explain why the last Labour Government did not consider transparency important?

[Gloria De Piero]

Gosh—let me explain what happened. Just before we left office, we introduced—led by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the acting leader of the Labour party—the Equality Act 2010. We passed the Act and section 78 merely needed to be implemented, but the coalition parties decided to ditch that section. [Interruption.] Yes, that is what happened, so I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for enabling me to remind the House of what happened.

It is extraordinary that even in professions dominated by women—hairdressing, catering, cleaning—the pay gap still exists, while women in skilled trades, including plumbers and mechanics, suffer the biggest pay gap of all. They are paid close to 30% less than their male colleagues. That is an astonishing statistic.

The information that companies will start publishing next year will provide the most comprehensive account of the gender pay gap in this country. It can tell us where progress needs to be made—sector by sector, industry by industry—but only if a central independent watchdog is tasked with ensuring that that happens.

Today, girls are outperforming boys at school and university, but even at ages 18 to 21, women are paid less on average than young men of their age. When women hit their 20s, they are already 5p behind male colleagues. This gap continues to widen throughout women’s working lives, peaking when women reach their 50s when they can expect to earn just 73p for every male pound.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

In later life, one of the issues is child rearing. Does the hon. Lady agree that what the coalition Government did in bringing in shared parental leave will help ease that burden and enable more women to be equal partners in the workplace?

[Gloria De Piero]

When it comes to parental leave, I welcome any progress. We need to ensure that more dads take paternity leave. That is why at the last election, the Labour party said that we would double the number and increase the funding. Sadly, we are not able to implement what we wanted.

Let me provide a few more figures before I close my speech. If a woman is working in sales or the care industry, the pay gap means losing more than £100,000 over the course of a working life. A woman working in finance or law will stand to lose over £200,000. We do not fight against this injustice for women alone, because no man wants his wife, daughter, sister or mother to be earning less simply because they are a woman. Women should not have to wait another 45 years—or another 70 years, as the UN has estimated—for equal pay in Britain. I hope that today’s motion will be viewed as uncontroversial in many ways, and that the Government will be happy to vote with us.

I understand that the plan is to consult over the summer, so this is about setting the ambition high and securing an annual equal pay check that will use the information soon to be published to drive forward progress and end this injustice once and for all. Labour Members have a long and proud history of campaigning for equal pay. This motion represents the next step on that journey. I commend it to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I can absolutely confirm that.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

The number of young women claiming jobseeker’s allowance for more than one year is up by 30%. Bankers have done very well under this Government, so why does the Minister not use a tax on bank bonuses to pay for a guaranteed job for young women?

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

I would be very interested to see the report, which I understand has been requested by the Opposition and has not been forthcoming. We have cut income tax for people on low pay, many of whom are women, and in particular, the majority of the 3 million people who have been taken out of paying income tax at all are women. The Government take these issues seriously to ensure that women and indeed men are protected in these difficult economic times.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I was reading about the case of a woman who is told by her boss each day whether or not she has work by a text with a picture of a happy face or a sad face. Should those practices be banned?

[Jo Swinson]

As employment relations Minister I certainly would not endorse that as good employment practice. There are clearly significant issues with zero-hours contracts and the Government recognise that, which is why we are legislating through the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill to make exclusivity clauses illegal. It is also why we are taking further steps to work with industry sectors to produce guidance so that best practice is followed in using such contracts, which work for some people, as the surveys from the CIPD clearly show. We need to ensure that the contracts are used properly and I agree with the hon. Lady when she points out that there are examples of bad practice in that area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight this as a hugely important issue. Only 7% of engineers are women, and these jobs, as he rightly says, are often very well paid. As the Perkins review set out very clearly, we urgently need more engineers in terms of our overall economy and skills, and we therefore need more women to fill that gap. We have announced a £30 million fund to increase the supply of engineers and encourage more women into the area, £10 million of which is specifically earmarked for our Developing Women Engineers programme. We are working with the Royal Academy of Engineering and with organisations such as the Institute of Physics, because making sure that girls take the subjects that open up an engineering career to them is also really important in making sure that this happens.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

We all praise companies such as Friends Life, Genesis Housing and PricewaterhouseCoopers which annually publish their gender pay gap because they want to reduce it, but there are too few examples of that. Can we therefore achieve cross-party consensus and will all the parties back Labour’s proposal—we will bring it to the House next month—to require all big companies to publish annually their pay gap?

[Jo Swinson]

The hon. Lady is quite right to say that there is cross-party agreement that this issue needs to be tackled. The 2010 equality strategy set out very clearly that we would pursue the voluntary approach and then assess how it was working and come to a conclusion about what needed to happen next. The hon. Lady will be aware that my party published proposals—I am delighted that her party has subsequently agreed with them—to implement section 78 of the Equality Act 2010. I am sure that the issue will be very much discussed in the approaching election and that all parties will want to set out very clearly how they propose to tackle the pay gap.