International Women’s Day 2016

Debate between Kate Green and Jim Cunningham

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

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

I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies), the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) on securing today’s debate. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time available for it and all the Members who have participated, women and men, for their contributions.

The debate has been an important opportunity to celebrate women’s achievements and share in an ambition that exists around the world to achiever gender equality, not only as a matter of justice to women but as a prerequisite for a successful, prosperous and peaceful future for our world. Equality for women is not a zero-sum game that means men must lose out if women do well. Whenever women are poor, insecure and unsafe or disempowered, everyone suffers—families, children and communities. When women do well, by contrast, society thrives; health, educational attainment and economic performance all improve. That is why our ambition of gender equality in every country is so important.

Of course, we have made great strides forward, especially here in the UK. Women are achieving educationally, professionally and in public life in ways that our grandmothers could not have dreamed of. More women occupy senior positions in business, in the professions and in sport, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees). We have choices that were denied to previous generations of women.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Kate Green]

I will not, if my hon. Friend will forgive me, because I am very short of time.

As we have heard today, there is still a long way to go. There is a long way to go on economic equality, as we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff), who talked about gender pricing, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who talked about the importance of our membership of the European Union in protecting women’s economic position, and many other hon. Members. We heard about the gender pay gap, which is nearly 20% higher in this country than the European average, and about the average apprenticeship wage for young women being more than £1 lower than it is for young men. We heard about women being trapped in low-paid sectors such as catering, caring and retail. We heard from many hon. Members about the disproportionate representation of men in STEM jobs, and we heard that the disadvantage that women experience in the labour market feeds into their poverty in retirement.

No one who was in the Chamber this afternoon can have failed to be moved and appalled by the names read out by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) of women who are among the two killed every week in this country by a partner or former partner. We heard from hon. Members throughout the House of many other appalling examples of gender-based violence. We heard from the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough, who talked about the violence endemic in prostitution, and the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), who talked about breast ironing, a new and horrific form of abuse that has arrived in this country. We also heard about female genital mutilation. Although we did not hear much about this today, we should also remember the special circumstances of lesbian and transgender women who suffer appalling gender-based violence.

The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and the hon. Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani) rightly talked about cyber-abuse. I join the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) in urging the Government once again to consider introducing compulsory sex and relationships education.

May I make a special mention of the contribution of the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), who spoke up for detained refugee women? Their plight in a civilised country is something that shames all of us. I was proud to sit in this Chamber this afternoon and hear her speak out on behalf of those women. It is a cause that we must continue to champion together.

We also heard that this Parliament has, pleasingly, seen the highest level of representation of women that we have ever had. However, as many hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Eastleigh, my hon. Friends the Members for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) and the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), said, we still have some way to go. When just 29% of our MPs are women, it is clear that our Parliament continues to fall a long way short of reflecting the population of our country.

Given the contributions that we have heard this afternoon, I am pleased that the sustainable development goals, to which we, along with all other countries, are signatories, include a goal dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment. The sustainable development goals are not just for developing economies but apply to every country, including the UK. As we celebrate International Women’s Day, we recognise that the challenges women face here at home are the same as those faced by our sisters everywhere. For sure, there are differences of degree, but not differences of kind. We have heard some shocking examples—the plight of the Yazidi women, women in Saudi Arabia and the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram—but the pattern of poverty, inequality, inadequate representation and gender-based violence exists in every country. As the challenges are the same worldwide, we can learn from and support each other to achieve solutions. We can work together to ensure that we embed gender equality into every aspect of our policy and practice.

I know that the Minister shares my passion for gender equality, and I am sure she will take the opportunity today to reaffirm the Government’s commitment to systematically addressing gender inequality, wherever and whenever it arises. As we sign up to the vital sustainable development goals, I hope she will say that they will shape and underpin policy right across Government —both domestic policy and the way we use our influence and share learning with others internationally.

I also hope that Members will today affirm our determination that this debate will take place every International Women’s Day—in this Chamber and in Government time, as the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham suggested, in solidarity with our sisters around the world and as a measure of our resolve to place gender equality at the heart of our politics.

In conclusion, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I take this opportunity to wish you, all right hon. and hon. Members, and our sisters and brothers around the world a happy International Women’s Day?

Compulsory Jobs Guarantee

Debate between Kate Green and Jim Cunningham

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

Very few households choose to be workless. Indeed, very few—[Interruption.] I understand that the hon. Gentleman was not saying that. It is an issue not just of role models, but of opportunities. It is welcome that more people are in paid employment, but today’s debate is about that vulnerable minority who are scarred by long-term unemployment.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

One thing we should remember is that the Labour Government helped one-parent families through Sure Start, whose schemes allowed trapped housewives on council estates to get back into work if they wanted it.

[Kate Green]

I am extremely proud of the fact that, under Labour, lone parent employment rose from 44% in 1997 to nearly 60% by the time we left office.

An interesting debate opened up this afternoon about the proper role of Government in relation to long-term unemployment. One argument was expressed very well in a thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), who suggested that the role of Government was only to create the conditions for business to thrive and to make employment available. That is the real philosophical divide between Opposition and Government Members. We believe that it is the role of Government proactively to intervene as a backstop to tackle entrenched long-term unemployment. We believe that programmes that have attempted to do that—for example, the future jobs fund and Jobs Growth Wales—prove that such programmes, in those terms, are effective.

Those programmes were much criticised today by the Secretary of State, but they have been cost-effective and have created real jobs with real pay for those who participated. That, fundamentally, is what young people want.

Our compulsory jobs guarantee will be a quality offer for long-term unemployed people. It will be paid at least at the national minimum wage. It will guarantee work for at least six months. We expect, drawing on our experience of other programmes, that many of those jobs will turn into permanent jobs. It will consist also of support, to ensure that training and the opportunity to develop one’s career are embedded as part of the programme. Contrast those conditions with work experience which, of course, is important, but which fulfils a different function. I do not think it is appropriate to expect anyone, even our young people, to work for three months without proper pay, because at that point they must be doing a proper job.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who is not in his place, made an important point about our compulsory jobs guarantee—the fact that it is founded on the concept of mutual obligation. For those who are out of work, we will make sure that after a period of one year for the under-25s or two years for the over-25s it will be our role to take the responsibility to guarantee them employment, and in return that individual will be expected to take up the opportunity that is offered.

The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), who made a very useful speech in many respects, seemed to think that the sort of conditionality that we propose in our compulsory jobs guarantee programme was not appropriate. I am entirely with her in the appropriate and careful use of sanctions—which I do not think we are seeing under the present Government—but I do not see what the problem is with having conditions for support which our compulsory jobs guarantee will offer, and it is right that they should be contained in the programme.

There was an important and interesting debate about engaging the private sector in our programme. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham pointed out in opening the debate, we have seen successful engagement of the private sector, particularly of the small and medium-sized enterprise sector, in Jobs Growth Wales. One criticism that many Government Members levelled at the future jobs fund was that it had not engaged with private sector employers. I readily accept that the programme was brought in as an emergency in response to a significant employment and financial crisis, and at that time the most straightforward way to do so was through the medium of the voluntary and the public sectors. But there is no reason at all why that could not have evolved to encompass private sector employers, and indeed those private sector employers who did participate, such as Jaguar, as my right hon. Friend mentioned, found it a very positive programme, as did those who went through it.

We heard some useful contributions from, for example, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), about the importance of accompanying jobs programmes with investment in education, skills and vocational training. As the hon. Member for Stroud said, it is right that certain industry sectors struggle to recruit suitably qualified and appropriately skilled workers. That is why I so deplore some of the reforms that we have seen to the education system under this Government, which so erode the value of vocational education and training. Although Government Members like to tell us often about the growth in apprenticeships under this Government, young people aged 16 to 19 have not seen a growth in opportunities to take up apprenticeships. What is more, those apprenticeships too often take young people to only a level 2 qualification, and we know that many employers consider a level 2 qualification insufficient for someone to make a meaningful start in the kind of jobs that the hon. Gentleman rightly talks of.

Finally, let me address the concerns that were raised by a number of Government Members about whether our programme is fully funded and costed. May I take the opportunity to assure them that it is? It will be funded by the bankers’ bonus tax—[Interruption.] Not again, as the Minister says. This will be the only purpose to which an incoming Labour Government will put the funds raised by this one-off repeat of the bonus tax. When the Minister for Disabled People is sitting on the Opposition Benches after 7 May, I invite him to hold us to that commitment, because this is one that I confidently give on behalf of my party.

We also think it is right to impose further restrictions on pensions tax relief for the very highest earners. I can see no objection to those with the broadest shoulders bearing more of the burden of funding so that some of our young people have the chance of employment, and that is what we will do.

Many people lost out after the global economic crash and in the three years after the general election, when the economy hardly grew under this Government. Even now, as Ministers point to improving levels of employment, long-term and youth unemployment remain a scourge on our economy. Labour’s compulsory jobs guarantee is the key policy to change that, and the sooner we have a Labour Government ready to introduce it, the better.

Probation Service

Debate between Kate Green and Jim Cunningham

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right. It is highly regrettable that the expertise and commitment that we all see in our probation service was not taken advantage of and that probation staff were not given the opportunity to deliver these new programmes of post-release supervision.

Indeed, in Greater Manchester we had piloted such a programme—the Choose Change programme—and learned many valuable lessons about the challenges of working with this particular group. Since Greater Manchester Probation Trust obviously no longer exists, and so cannot take forward the lessons from Choose Change, perhaps the Minister will say how that learning will be transferred across to the new structures, so that what we now know after that experiment is not lost.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I hope that she agrees that we had a perfectly good service before the Government tinkered with it. For ideological reasons, the Government made changes and used a private sector model. However, everyone knows that in the private sector—I know, because I worked in it—before any changes are made, a pilot scheme is introduced so that companies learn from their mistakes. Does she agree?

[Kate Green]

I agree with every word that my hon. Friend said. Indeed, it is surprising to me that one of the first acts of the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice was to cancel some of the pilots in relation to these new structures, rather than adopting the sensible approach of continuing with them and evaluating the lessons learned before proceeding with the new model—if there was evidence that it was the right model to follow.

In the aftermath of the changeover, probation officers have talked to me about an overwhelming work load, about IT systems that do not speak to each other and require the same information to be inputted over and over, and about random allocation of staff to the new community rehabilitation companies or the new NPS. Morale has suffered, staff are stressed and the human resources support in the new NPS in particular has been inadequate throughout this period of major change, given that the MoJ closed down the shared support service and that communication to staff has been haphazard and often delayed.

Offenders have also noticed problems. I met offenders in my constituency late last summer and they told me that they were constantly finding themselves seeing different offender managers who did not know anything about them or their circumstances. Now the chief inspector of probation has produced a highly critical report of the early implementation of the changes and the problems that have been experienced, and it bears out much of what I and other MPs have been told.

The report specifically recognises that the speed of the implementation caused problems that could have been avoided or mitigated. It makes a number of suggestions about how those problems can be addressed. The Minister may argue that these problems are teething problems and that the recommendations in the report will be followed, but in fact the problems run deeper. They are a reflection of a model that fragments the management of offenders, adding bureaucracy, damaging effective communication and increasing risk. I have genuine concerns about the implications of Transforming Rehabilitation for public safety, and indeed for the safety of officers supervising offenders.

My first concern is that there are clearly issues about access to the full and timely information necessary for the initial risk assessment to be made. It was worrying to read in the chief inspector’s report of delays in obtaining information about an offender after they had been sentenced, because that information is needed to enable a full risk assessment to be carried out.

The MoJ claims that that situation is not different from what happened previously, when an offender could be allocated to an offender manager who would not necessarily have the full information at the first appointment. I appreciate that Ministers want the allocation process to be speedier, with an expectation that cases will be assessed on the Offender Assessment System, or OASys, within two working days of sentencing, rather than five weeks, as can be the case now. However, that would represent a huge step change in service standards. How confident is the Minister that such an improvement can be achieved?

Moreover, even if the assessment can be done speedily, there is increased risk from the fragmentation that arises from having two entirely separate services. If the initial risk assessment and allocation are wrong, there will inevitably be a delay in getting the offender to the right place and therefore a delay in the offender’s building a relationship with his or her supervisor, as well as in beginning the appropriate programme of support to address their offending behaviour.

It also seems that the information for forming an assessment, even if timely, may not be sufficient. I was pretty shocked that the inspector identified a failure to address diversity issues in the assessment and allocation process. Ethnic, religious and cultural background may have a bearing, for example, on the language needs of an offender or on appropriate sentence planning, such as what unpaid work might be suitable.

There is a high prevalence of mental health problems and learning disability among offenders, and those need to be identified at the outset; the offender manager must be made aware, so that tailor-made sentence planning and effective communication with the offender takes place. Understanding the offender’s family circumstances is relevant. Child care responsibilities may impact on sentence planning and information about family members and relationships is especially important in relation to risk and safeguarding.

Clearly, these all-important matters go to the heart of successful intervention to address offending behaviours and to protect the public. What steps will the Minister take to address the concerns raised by the inspector in relation to reflecting diverse circumstances in reports and in the allocation process?

The Minister may not be surprised to hear that I am particularly concerned about the need for specific, tailor-made approaches for women offenders. The weaknesses in preparing assessment reports, identified by the inspector, are of real concern in this context, but there is also concern about the nature of the interventions that women will receive. As far as I can see, none of the community rehabilitation companies or the organisations that they are working with appear to be specialists in managing women offenders.

In recent years, there has been some good learning and recognition of the specific needs of women offenders and of what works. Specialist women’s centres are effective and positively regarded by offenders. I recently met a group of female offenders in Manchester—Women Moving Forward—who told me how important the support they received from the women’s centre was and who expressed anxiety about future provision, as well they might when women’s centres lack any certainty about their funding after March.

Education Funding for 18-year-olds

Debate between Kate Green and Jim Cunningham

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Williams. I am very glad to have secured this debate on a subject that affects not only the excellent Trafford college, which serves my constituency, but further education and sixth-form colleges right across the country, as is demonstrated by the presence of so many colleagues.

On 10 December last year, without any prior notice or consultation and before any impact assessment had been published, the national director for young people at the Education Funding Agency announced a 17.5% cut in funding per full-time student aged 18 at the start of the academic year 2014-15, as part of a strategy to achieve the savings required in the 2015-16 spending review period. The cut, which it is estimated will affect 100,000 students and save £150 million, means that the funding per student would be reduced from £4,000 to £3,300, at an average cost to FE colleges of £600,000 per college, although some will suffer much greater cuts—in some cases, in excess of £1 million. Sixth-form colleges will also be hit, many of which have already suffered substantial funding cuts; some face the loss of as much as a third of their funding over the lifetime of this Parliament.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I hope that my hon. Friend realises that the student opportunity fund will also be cut. That will badly affect Coventry university, which will receive a cut of £790,000. The figure for Warwickshire college is £361,000, and for North Warwickshire and Hinckley college it is £162,000. Effectively, Coventry and those Warwickshire colleges will have a cut—so much for helping young people to find jobs and acquire skills. What does she think about that?

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the wider context of the cuts faced, both by the FE sector and by this particular age group.