Women (Government Policies)

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

As someone who has staunchly defended universal child benefit precisely because of the reach that it secures for the poorest families—better than the means-tested benefits that are designed to reach them—I am pleased to tell the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) that I will certainly campaign for the reinstatement of child benefit for all parents. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one reason why it is so important to have benefits that are predominantly directed at women is that even in the best-off households, the way in which income is divided between a couple often favours the man? It is important to give women some independent income to protect their financial independence within the household.

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right, because who gets the income in the household matters for a lot of women. Child benefit was about giving women an independent income, and it has given women a greater ability to make choices about their own lives.

The Government have dismissed the figures about the impact on women and men. They say that those figures cannot be calculated, but they have calculated no figures of their own. They claim that it cannot be done. That is rubbish, because the House of Commons Library did it, and pretty quickly. They also claim that it is not possible for the Government to come up with such figures, but the Treasury has done it before. When the Minister for Women and Equalities and I were new Back Benchers, I asked Treasury Ministers a written question on exactly the same thing. I asked what was the impact on women compared with men of the 1997, 1998 and 1999 Budgets. Treasury Ministers were able to calculate it then and they can calculate it now. The answer was that men benefited by £2.30 per week and that women benefited by £5.30 per week from the changes brought in by the Labour Government. This is the contrast: the Labour Government’s first Budget helped women twice as much as men; the Tory-led Government’s first Budget hit women twice as hard as men.

The Government say that one cannot look at men and women separately, but that one must look at households. That is the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) made. The Government’s plans for universal credit have the same kind of flaw. They are talking about a single payment being paid to a single household member, with the risk that it will go predominantly to the man. What the Government say is just not true. Of course people choose to share their money in the household and in the family, but that is the point—they choose to share their money. Who gets the money in the first place matters. Beveridge understood that 60 years ago. That is why he introduced the family allowance, which led to child benefit. I do not understand why Government Members and the Government are so blind to this issue. Women on the Government Benches would be horrified if suddenly their salaries were paid to their husbands on the basis that it does not really matter because they are in the same household. That is the logical consequence of the Government’s arguments about households and for not being able to do such analysis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady’s claim that the Opposition understand dealing with the deficit rings false when we hear what they say the Government should do about the deficit. On the one hand, the Labour party tries to argue that what the Government are doing to address the deficit is wrong, and on the other hand Labour Members remain silent about the fact that a Labour Government would cut £7 of every £8 that this Government are cutting this year. We hear nothing from the Opposition about where those cuts would fall.

[Kate Green]

The issue for the Opposition is exactly where the cuts fall. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) said, not only is the bulk of the Government’s deficit reduction programme hitting women, but women’s unemployment is increasing disproportionately compared with men’s unemployment.

[Mrs May]

In the last three months, the increase in employment for women was greater than the increase in employment for men. Opposition Members, including the hon. Lady and the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), have said today that what the Government are doing is wrong. We hear that in debate after debate. Opposition Members stand up and tell us that the cuts in virtually every area of public sector expenditure are wrong. If they were in government, they would be making cuts. In that case, the question for them is where they would make those cuts.