Women (Government Policies)

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I apologise for my slightly aggressive reaction to the hon. Gentleman when he stood up; I should have checked the EDM beforehand. I commend him for his defence of his vintage, of all sexes. He is right that this issue is of extreme concern, and I hope that we will have further opportunities to vote on it.

I will turn to the wider points in the motion that the hon. Gentleman criticised, but which I think are important. It is women rather than men who are taking the biggest burden in the Government’s deficit reduction plans. The Government know of our deep concern that they are cutting too far and too fast, and that they are hitting growth and pushing up unemployment, which will cost us more. However, even those who support the scale and pace of the Government’s plans should be worried about the way in which they are carrying them out.

The House of Commons Library has produced detailed analysis of the direct tax and benefit changes in the Government’s emergency Budget and the spending review. A net total of £16 billion is being raised. That takes account of the increase in tax allowances and the cuts to tax credits. It looks at the extra money as well as the cuts. The conclusion is that £5 billion is coming from men and £11 billion is coming from women. Women are paying more than twice as much as men to get the deficit down, yet women still earn less and own less than men. How can that be fair?

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady confirm that the numbers she is citing include the £3.75 billion from the child benefit cuts for higher rate taxpayers such as me, who obviously are predominantly women?

[Yvette Cooper]

The figures include everything, so they do include the child benefit changes, as well as the change in tax allowances, the cuts to housing benefit, the cuts to public sector pensions and a series of other things. The point is that the cumulative impact will hit women much harder than men. Women who are on higher incomes will be hit much harder than men who are on higher incomes. Women who are on lower incomes in households where the man is on a higher income will also be hard hit, even though they may only be on part-time or low earnings. The hon. Lady is right that the analysis does not separate women on the basis of different levels of earnings, but it does show that at every level of earnings, in every sector of the economy and in every sector of society, women are being hit harder than men.

[Harriett Baldwin]

rose—

[Claire Perry]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I give way to the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) first.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Is the right hon. Lady saying that she would like my child benefit of £81.20 every four weeks to be reinstated, despite the fact that I make more than £65,000 a year as an MP?

[Yvette Cooper]

We have said that we think there is a serious advantage in some universal benefits. I do not think that the hon. Lady should be paid child tax credit, and she is not, because it is right that some things depend on people’s incomes. However, it is important that some things are universal. That is why we have said that there are serious problems with what the Government are doing on child benefit. She needs to take seriously the point that at every level of income and in every sector of society, women rather than men are the hardest hit.

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[Claire Perry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. As a mother of young children, I cannot emphasise enough how difficult it can often be for women to take those steps—to think about child care for their family if they are not sure that it makes sense financially. As he says, there will be far more certainty under the system that we are proposing.

We are here today, therefore, because of a mass outbreak of bandwagonism on the Labour Benches. We are also here because of a heavy dose of hypocrisy. As I think most Labour Members acknowledge, the Labour Government would have had to make £7 of spending cuts for every £8 of cuts that we are making this year. Are they telling us that they would somehow have ring-fenced those spending reductions, or made them in a different way?

[Harriett Baldwin]

rose—

[Emma Reynolds]

rose—

[Claire Perry]

If they are, we are all ears. [Interruption.] Tell us! The only thing we have heard is that they would restore child benefit for families with a median income of £75,000 a year. I do not think that that is fair or progressive; nor do hard-pressed working women and women on benefits in my constituency. They think it is outrageous—and that is the only Opposition policy we have heard today that would deviate from what the present Government are doing.

I shall give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), and then to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds).

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I was going to make exactly that point: we have heard today that for someone like me who is making £65,000 a year, it is Labour party policy to restore my child benefit after 2013.

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend is right. Moreover, despite the state of the public finances—for every £4 we spend, £1 is borrowed—Labour would like to borrow that money from other countries in order to restore my hon. Friend’s child benefit, thereby putting that debt round the necks of all of our children and grandchildren. How can that be a rational policy? It is sheer, rank hypocrisy—and on that point I will happily give way to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

Is the hon. Lady talking about a constituent whose retirement age is rising to 64? Is that not a policy that her Government brought in?

[Barbara Keeley]

I did not intend to touch on that, but wanted to take the opportunity to read out my constituent’s comments so that Ministers understand the worry and concern.

I want to focus more on women and jobs and social care. I share the concerns expressed by many organisations and individuals about the disproportionate and unfair impact of the Government’s policies on women. As we know, women make up 60% of the public sector work force. Nationally, 40% of women’s jobs are in the public sector compared with 15% of men’s jobs. In my constituency, women’s jobs in the public sector are in local government and the NHS—in the primary care trust and in local hospitals. Local councils are now having to manage the swingeing front-loaded budget cuts made by this Government and thousands of jobs are being lost. Salford council, my old council, will have to cut 500 jobs this year. Wigan council will lose more than 800 jobs and Manchester council 2,000. All the interventions made by Government Members have not made much mention of those swingeing front-loaded cuts to council budgets, but they are very important and they are affecting things.

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[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Leicester South (Jon Ashworth) is no longer in his place, but I too pay tribute to him for a very assured and interesting maiden speech. It was a privilege to be in the Chamber to hear it.

I had not planned to speak today until I saw this patronising and paternalistic motion on the Order Paper—this drivel that we have had to debate all afternoon. I am absolutely incensed by it, because the way in which we address the fact, which we all acknowledge, that women earn and own less on average is not by ensuring that they continue to receive a stream of benefits throughout their lives or only state-sponsored child care options.

From some interesting points that Opposition Members made, we learned that at the next general election the right hon. Members for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) will stand on a platform of restoring their household’s child benefit, which is worth £2,400 a year tax-free, despite their combined income being well into the hundreds of thousands of pounds. That will be a difficult message for them to sell on the doorstep, but it was certainly a fascinating insight into planet deficit-denial on the Opposition Benches.

I also thought that I was living on a different planet when we heard no acknowledgement of the fact that over the past 12 months more than 530,000 jobs in the private sector have been created, with 400,000 more, net of the necessary reductions, in public sector employment. How is it good for families and women to be paying £120 million a day in interest? How is it good for families and women if Opposition Members put their heads in the sand and refuse to identify a single cut or alteration that they support? This Government are introducing welfare reform that will incentivise the economic choices of women in recognising that at the end of the day only additional work will help them to address the earnings gap and the asset gap.

As someone who has fought all my life for greater equality for women in the workplace, I feel somewhat differently about pensions. I think that we should welcome the fact that men and women will be retiring at equal ages and that women and men will be treated equally as regards pensions.

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

I agree that the equalisation of pension rights and ages is an important and necessary thing that we should all support. Does the hon. Lady accept, however, that the real crux of the issue for Opposition Members is the amount of time that certain women will have to prepare for the change because the goalposts have been moved so quickly?

[Harriett Baldwin]

We should bear in mind what these women are preparing for. An average 55-year-old woman today will live to 88, on average, and many more women will live to see their 100th birthday. Having the extra year to prepare for saving for that very old age is not at all a bad thing. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), I have absolutely no intention of retiring in my early 60s, and I welcome the fact that men and women will be treated equally regarding pension age.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

rose—

[Harriett Baldwin]

I am sorry—I do not have enough time to give way.

I acknowledge that equalising the pension age means that there is a group of women who are disproportionately affected, but I would like to hear proposals on how we could avoid that and still end up in what we all agree is the right place, where we have longer to prepare for a much longer old age.

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[Rachel Reeves]

There are three issues. First, the speed at which we cut the budget deficit; secondly, the timing of the cuts; and thirdly—this is critical to today’s debate—whether the cuts are made fairly. I do not believe that it is fair that two thirds of the cuts fall on women. All Members of the House believe that that is unfair. That is the key point.

The cuts to women’s pensions, Sure Start, child benefit and local services are not inevitable; they are choices that the Government have made. As hon. Members have reminded us this afternoon, they are unfair choices—they penalise women pensioners, mothers, women students, women carers and women in the labour market. By choosing to cut too far and too fast, the Government have embarked on a slash-and-burn approach to the services, protections and benefits that provide the most support—in good and bad times—to women up and down the country.

The Minister will have a chance to respond shortly, but surely the question is this: where was she when the Chancellor decided to slash child benefit? Where was she when the Secretary of State for Education decided to cut Sure Start?

[Harriett Baldwin]

Will the hon. Lady confirm that the restoration of tax-free child benefit of £2,400 for the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) will be in the Labour manifesto?

[Rachel Reeves]

I will perhaps ask the hon. Lady—[Hon. Members: “Answer!”] I will answer the question, but does the hon. Lady believe it right that a family in which one person in work earns £45,000 should lose their child benefit, while a family in which two people earn a total of £80,000 still get their child benefit? If the Government’s plans for a fixed-term Parliament go ahead, the election is four years away, and as we do not know what the circumstances of that time will be, it would be inappropriate to write our manifesto now. The hon. Lady would not write hers now.

Where was the Minister when those choices were made? Given those policies, she was not campaigning and fighting for the women whom she ought to represent. If, as some have suggested, women’s equality is a blind spot for this Government, I hope that their eyes have been opened today. I hope not least that the Minister has had a chance today to hear the strength of feeling about the effect on women of the increase in the state pension age. Will she send a message of hope to the 500,000 women who face a delay of more than a year before they receive their state pension, with just five or so years to prepare? If the Government can U-turn on forests—and today they have U-turned on sentencing—surely they can listen and act to protect women approaching retirement with fear and trepidation.

Women must no longer be the shock absorbers for this Government’s cuts. I urge Ministers to move forward in a fairer way—in a way that does not turn the clock back on women’s equality, for which generations of women have fought and will continue to fight.