International Women’s Day

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow my friend on the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). As a former Health Minister, her comments about the importance of Health Ministers paying heed to experts and patient safety are incredibly well made. What we are seeing now is an absolute disgrace and I know that we will get it overturned.

As I look around this Chamber, I am honoured to be surrounded by many brilliant and inspirational women. We often focus, as we have done in this debate—it is important—on the way in which women’s lives could be improved, but I want to give a clear message to women, particularly young women, about how great it is to be a woman.

I love being a woman and I love being an woman MP—number 430. I worry that we are sending some bad messages to young women. Once they have navigated adolescence, which is hard for everyone, we talk about pay gaps, glass ceilings, judgment about whether they will have a child, worry about whether they can have a child, constantly having to refight the battle that, “It is my body and I control it,” and the violence. Then there is the menopause, osteoporosis and the pensions gap, and then they might find themselves in an inadequate care system that employs low-paid women to support older women facing social isolation. It is not a happy picture, is it?

There are many issues that, of course, blight women’s lives in my constituency and beyond, but today I want to challenge that narrative and celebrate how great it is to be a woman. Young women going into the new workforce in the future have so much to look forward to. There are huge opportunities in the workforce of the future, with improved research on women’s health issues, a longer healthy life expectancy, and a culture that is changing how we think about family roles and recognising the key care-giving role that men are starting to play.

I learned my politics, as a young woman in the 1970s and 1980s, from watching and learning from the women around me—my mother, my aunties, my grandmother—and they formed me. However, I learned that what went on in the home and the discussions women had around the table were often not actually the same as what was talked about in public. I think that is particularly true of those of us from a working class Irish population in this country. I learned that women as individuals have power, and we can influence things and do remarkable things, but I also learned as I grew up that unless we have economic and political power to change the structures in which we live, we can never be equal in that society. I have seen such a change, and I have been part of that remarkable change. Thanks to the women in the Labour party that I joined in the 1980s, we have changed structures, forced through all-women shortlists and changed the face of Parliament in 1997.

In Bristol, I am very proud to have worked for women MPs at that time—we had women MPs leading that charge—and I am really proud to work with my hon. Friends in Bristol at the moment, the Members for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) and for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). I commend the positive celebration by Bristol Live of 137 women from across Bristol this week. If we look just at the vaccination effort, I would like to highlight my long-time friend and colleague, Bristol’s director of public health, Christina Gray. The vaccination effort was led by the head nurse, Anne Morris, and the clinical commissioning group was led by its chief executive, Julia Ross. I would also like to welcome Sarah Crew as our new police chief constable. There are more amazing women involved in community action than I can mention today, but I really want to pay tribute to those women in my constituency who are leading and inspiring in fields as diverse as tackling food poverty, the charitable sector, music and the arts.

In my lifetime, the opportunities for women have expanded exponentially, and I am so proud of all those women here and across the country—I am proud to be one of them here—who are continuing to push the boundaries so that everywhere we can lead our lives to the full, because it is really fun being a women. I love how we form friendships, share experiences, swap tips for getting through life, trade secrets, organise, challenge, do politics and make change. I love our creativity and our variety, and I love how we always remember what we can achieve if we put our minds to it. I want to celebrate that joy.

We can achieve so much individually, but we do need structures to support women’s efforts, and the Labour party has consistently taken action to ensure that we get the structural change that women need. Labour Governments have shown what can be achieved, and Labour Governments introduced legislation on equal pay, sex discrimination, equalities, the minimum wage and maternity rights. The next Labour Government will do the same, I hope with my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). There can be no levelling up anywhere unless women’s work, inside and outside employment, is at the heart of all plans, and currently it is not—not just on pay, but on good terms and conditions. There was so much during the pandemic that we can learn about for the future that was led by women. Companies with women at the top perform better and women-led businesses contribute billions to the economy, and we will be at the heart of the next Government and the next rise in the economy.

I am the mother of three boys, who are growing into fantastic young men. I am so proud of them, and I am so conscious of how important women are as role models for everyone, not just other women. We need to ensure that conversations and education focus not only on what women can achieve, but on how important our male allies are, and that tackling many of the challenges mentioned today requires a change in the dominant culture surrounding male behaviour. Following the very sad loss recently of our colleague Jack Dromey, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) said, when she spoke about Jack, that he thought his role in life was to lift her up. I am so honoured to have my husband Rob to do the same for me, and I would not be here without him.

It is a century since the first women Labour MPs were elected. I am privileged not only to be the MP for the great constituency of Bristol South, but to be surrounded by so many others, and I pay tribute to them all. In my time here, we have had Brexit, covid and now war. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) highlighted the other day that over 90% of the Brexit debates were dominated by men. We will not let that happen when we talk about the war, the future and the horrific things happening to women right now in Ukraine. Men do often dominate the public face of such debates, but we will not let them do so. Our message to women is, “We are here, we are staying, we are growing and we are pulling you up with us”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Trudy Harrison]

I have certainly heard those calls and I am sure that they have also been heard by Ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care. I understand that a review will take place, but I will ask my colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to write to the right hon. Lady with a response.

[Karin Smyth]

To add to the point of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), I watched the faces of the many brilliant women MPs present when that was mentioned and I think that Conservative Members are not aware of what their Government are doing against all the expert advice and against all the policy advice of the Department of Health and Social Care because of the individual conscience issues of some Ministers. I hope that the Minister does take those calls back, because that is clearly not the will of the House today.

[Trudy Harrison]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I just repeat what I have already said about liaising with Health Ministers. The wellbeing and safety of women requiring access to abortion services has been and will continue to be our first and foremost priority. The Department of Health is developing a new sexual and reproductive health strategy that will set out the ambitions to improve reproductive health outcomes and wellbeing. The strategy will include a focus on improving information and access to contraception to support women to make more informed choices, but on the specific point that she and the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) made, I will endeavour to liaise with colleagues.