Women in the House of Commons

Debate between Jess Phillips and Bill Grant

Thursday 7th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship again, Mr Sharma. I also give apologies: I have a train to catch heading north, so I need to be away by 3 o’clock.

[Jess Phillips]

Typical men!

[Bill Grant]

I have the dinner to make when I get home as well. First, I must advise of my CV. My mother was a woman and I married a woman as far back as 1970—that reminds me: it was on 19 December. I also have two daughters and one of my grandchildren is a lovely young lady. I am indeed a very fortunate individual.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), I went to an all-boys’ secondary school, which isolated me from the fairer sex—or the other gender. I also worked for 31 years in a male-dominated organisation: the fire service in Strathclyde. As a senior officer, I had the great privilege of working with a female deputy chief officer. It was a privilege to serve with her—I hope it was a privilege for her—and to improve that service. I welcome the involvement of women in male-dominated services such as the fire service and the police service, to which he referred.

Women in the House of Commons are welcome, but let us not legislate for gender balance, even in the short term. We saw good progress on female representation in the House of Commons in the 2017 election, with record numbers of female MPs elected: 208 in total, accounting for 32%. The Conservative party fielded a record 184 female candidates in the election, 32% of the total, which is an improving record that we are proud of. Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats also had record numbers of female candidates in the election.

Some 51 years ago in 1966, when Harold Wilson won the election, there were just 26 female MPs. Today’s figure of 208 reflects, if my calculation is right, a 700% increase in those years. Some would say that is very good.

[Jess Phillips]

Does the hon. Gentleman know which party made the most progress and why that progress was made?

[Bill Grant]

The hon. Lady will be glad that I am not on her quiz team, because I do not know the answer. If she wishes to tell us—[Interruption.] I am sure she will. I think she would agree that that is significant progress over 50 years, but it is probably not fast enough.

The Conservatives have a great track record, having secured not one but two excellent female Prime Ministers. I am sure history will treat kindly their contribution to women in politics, both here in the United Kingdom and probably around the world. In Scotland, until recently, three key party leaders were female. That must be applauded, though the hat-trick has changed with the arrival of Labour’s new leader in Scotland, Mr Richard Leonard, with Ms Dugdale testing the water for a future in television. I think her excursion was relatively short-lived, but I wish her well.

I am pleased to advise of the Conservative organisation Women2Win, mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), which was co-founded by the Prime Minister, ably supported by Ruth Davidson, my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) and many others. It is good to know that we have a passionate advocate for female representation resident at No. 10.

The way forward in increasing female representation in Parliament has no single solution, but in my view much of the remedy lies with political parties, not legislation. Each party must try to attract the right female candidates, giving them support and encouragement, as was said earlier on. The Conservative Women2Win is but one proud example. We must look, as was also mentioned earlier, to the pool of talent of people involved in politics. We all have phone bankers, leaflet deliverers, staff and door knockers, many of whom are female, who keep many local associations of all parties alive in our communities. They help to secure our seats here in Westminster. Let us encourage them and others from a whole range of backgrounds to come forward.

As elected Members, each of us has a role to play in ensuring that the working environment at Westminster is indeed welcoming and human-friendly, as was said earlier, and safe and secure for all who take on the challenge of public office. We must learn and move on from the recent barrage of allegations that undermine the good work of most parliamentarians of all parties. Part of our role as elected parliamentarians is to be ambassadors for Parliament and to encourage female participation in our rich democracy. Having sat in Parliament for only a few months, I know female Members have a lot to give to democracy. Let us all contribute to a fairer and better Parliament, hang up the old school tie, if I dare say it, and strive for better progress in gender balance. Diversity can only strengthen democracy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

I feel utterly disappointed, but the triumph of hope over experience tells me that I have to force my party to look at electing women into the position of metro Mayors. The Conservatives want it too, but they are not willing to do it, whereas I am willing to say, “Yes, we have a problem. I have a solution. It will work.”

To speak to the point made by my hon. Friend, and I will say friend, the Member for Walsall North—is it north? It is all just the Black country to me—the idea that I would not want a surgeon selected via a quota to operate on me is not something I recognise. I would be delighted to have somebody who had been selected from an all-women shortlist be the surgeon in my hospital and operate on me. I would be less happy to have somebody who had probably got the position because he went to a certain school or was born into a certain family. He would be no better; he would just have been given all the tools to allow him to become a surgeon or even to dream of becoming a surgeon. My hon. Friend will know, just as I do, that kids from Birmingham who have kissed the Blarney stone rarely end up being surgeons in Birmingham’s hospitals. I would be more than happy to be operated on.

To draw out the surgeon analogy, when somebody operates on me I expect evidence to have been taken about how they do that procedure. I want to know how they have come to the conclusion that that procedure is the very best thing for my health. I want to know that it is going to work, and I look for evidence. I want to see more women in Parliament, so I will look at the evidence of what works and I will ask that it is implemented. What works is quotas for women and sanctions when they are not realised. There is no other area of Government where we would just say, “Oh, do you know what really works to stop people being hit by buses? Oh, well, I’m just not sure it’s the one we want to go for,” or, “Do you know what really, really works for making sure that more kids go to school? But I just don’t know whether it’s good enough for choice if we do that.” We would not do that with any other thing, so why do we do it about this?

We look at clear evidence about the heavy lifting and the reason we have more women in Parliament now. In the last election, the Conservative party went backward. The Labour party surged forward. Do not get me wrong: the Labour party is in no way faultless in this area—I have just had to apologise for someone having a coffin left outside their house—but it is willing to do the thing that actually works, and to do it at every single level of the political party. It has to be balanced for every single person who sits on the National Executive Committee and for every person who goes to the conference. That is not because of people who want to claim they are great heroes of the movement. It is because of women in the Labour party fighting and bearing the scars.

[Bill Grant]

I note the comments about the negativity of the Conservative party. Here is a reciprocal quiz question: I wonder if the hon. Lady can explain why the party that seems to be quite restrictive on women is the party that has produced two wonderful female Prime Ministers, and yet no other party is following it?

[Jess Phillips]

I will query “wonderful”, in both regards. They are women. As somebody who grew up in the 1980s, I have to say that Mrs Thatcher does not deserve “wonderful”, but she does deserve credit for what she achieved. There are no two ways about it. The jury is out on the current one, because she is the head of the Government who have turned down the exact things that we are asking for.

Of course, there is a problem, and here I will show hon. Members something that I know works: admitting that we have a problem. The Labour party has a problem with having women in leadership positions. That is just a fact, and it is one I can see based on the evidence. There are all sorts of reasons for why that is, and it is partially because women in the Labour party—I feel awful saying this; present company excepted—do not defend the status quo; we are radicals who act for change. The reason our party has fallen short is because we are radicals.

It is very difficult to get people to vote for radicals or for things that would affect the actual status quo, so while it is amazing that the Prime Minister and the late Baroness Thatcher achieved what they have, to me they also very much represent the status quo. They did not challenge an established order. That is one of the reasons I think the Labour party struggles: our women would definitely upset the apple-cart, as they always have in our movement.