Equality: Autumn Statement

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The logic of the hon. Lady’s point appears to be that there is no link between what happens in the economy and Government policies. What has been demonstrated over the past 10 years is that there is a very clear link between Government policies and what happens in the economy, and it is because of the policies of this—[Interruption.] We are the fastest-growing economy in the G7 at present, so it is going quite well, given that, among the major economies, we were the economy that was most affected by the crash in 2008. We have put in place an environment where we are creating jobs and seeing living standards improving, and that is happening across the economy for men and women.

It is, of course, right that we continue our work to address long-standing barriers to work for BME people, including through Baroness McGregor-Smith’s review, new support in schools, and new guidance for jobcentres and local partners. We have also set a public target to increase the proportion of apprenticeships started by people from BME backgrounds to 20% by 2020, building on good progress since 2010.

So we are strengthening our economy by managing stable public finances, backing our businesses and creating jobs. At the same time, we are helping people regardless of gender or race make their money go further in their day-to-day lives. That is why we confirmed in the autumn statement that we will raise the personal allowance to £12,500 by the end of the Parliament. By 2020, it will have increased by over 90% since 2010, taking millions of the lowest paid out of paying income tax, and representing a tax cut for over 13 million women by 2018, compared to 2015.

We have also introduced the national living wage at £7.20 an hour to help over a million people on the lowest wages, and we announced at the autumn statement that we would raise this to £7.50 in 2017. The national living wage is focused on hard-working, low-paid workers, regardless of their gender or race, and hon. Members should note that women are expected to account for around two thirds of those who will benefit from this, with people from BME communities expected to gain disproportionately.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I understand what the Minister is saying about the national living wage and the increase in the floor, but on the 40% tax rate, only 27% of higher rate taxpayers are women, so the changes to the 40% tax rate disproportionately benefit men, not women. What are the Government doing about that?

[Mr Gauke]

Income tax in Scotland will be a matter for the Scottish Government. I look forward to seeing what they will do.

From early 2017, we are also introducing tax-free childcare to help working parents with their childcare costs. Parents will be able to receive up to £2,000 childcare support per child each year. We are also helping around 3 million households by reducing the universal credit taper, which will further strengthen the incentives for people to increase the number of hours they work and to earn their way out of financial insecurity and welfare dependency.

That goes hand in hand with our sustained investment in the public services that families value. That includes our focus on quality schools, with the highest-ever recorded proportion of children being taught in good or outstanding schools; the pupil premium, which will be worth £2.5 billion this year alone and will support pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds; and an investment of £23 billion in the school estate over the next five years.

Our investment in infrastructure—from the roads and rails we travel on, to the homes we live in—will help all. The recent autumn statement contributed to tackling our long-standing challenge to deliver more homes, with a further £5.3 billion investment in housing, including a £2.3 billion housing infrastructure fund to deliver infrastructure to unlock up to 100,000 new homes, and £1.4 billion to deliver 40,000 new affordable homes.

So our economic plans are based on delivering an economy that works for everyone, and that means an economy that benefits all races and genders. I note the efforts to analyse the effect of the measures we have taken on women and BME groups. Hon. Members will be aware of the research of the House of Commons Library and the Women’s Budget Group, on which the premise of today’s motion is based, but a cautious approach should be taken when analysing specific impacts on that basis. Their findings should not be considered without first undertaking an honest reflection on the flaws inherent in their research methodologies. Let me provide a few examples.

First, the House of Commons Library analysis looks only at taxes and benefits. That means it overlooks key parts of the broader economic picture, which includes the benefits to women and people from BME groups of a strong economy and rising employment and earnings. It also fails to take into account the public services that families value, such as support for childcare, schools and health services.

Secondly, the analysis has been based on assumptions made about how income is shared in any given household. For example, it is not reasonable to assume that the measure to limit support as part of child tax credits and universal credit to the first two children for new claimants will overwhelmingly affect women merely because women are usually the nominal payee of child tax credits, as the House of Commons Library did in previous analysis. This not only treats women rather than children as the beneficiary of child tax credits, but assumes that other sources of income, such as earnings, are not shared within a household in response to benefit changes.

Thirdly, the analysis makes a comparison with a world where benefits were uprated between 2010 and 2015 by the retail prices index, but RPI is a flawed measure of inflation, and it lost its status as a national statistic in 2013. So there are a range of issues with the methods used to calculate these impacts, and the findings should be seen in that light.

It is, however, right that we assess carefully the effects of any new fiscal measures on groups across our society. We carefully consider the implications of all our measures for protected equality groups, which includes gender, race and disability. That is in line with not only our own guiding principle of a fairer society but our legal responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010. We publish information alongside the autumn statement about the impact of individual tax measures. We also publish a comprehensive distributional analysis to monitor how our decisions on tax, welfare and spending would support households on a range of different incomes.

Our commitment to fairness runs through everything we do. It goes to the heart of the economic approach we have taken since 2010. The Prime Minister could not have been clearer about her determination to keep taking every action to make this a country that works for everyone. That is why, for example, we have launched an audit to look into racial disparities in our public services, which stretches right across Government, covering every area from health to education, and childcare to welfare, employment, skills and justice.

This Government are fully resolved to make this a country that works for all races and genders. That is exactly what we are working to deliver through our work to build a stronger economy and to help people in their day-to-day lives, and that is what last month’s autumn statement continued to support.

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[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Quite a lot of percentages and stats have been mentioned. I will throw a few more in, but not that many, in the hope that we will not bamboozle everyone too much.

The Government have been saying that things are getting better for women and that the autumn statement must therefore be okay. They have tried pretty much to gloss over the fact that the autumn statement was written without considering the impact on the two different genders. Afterwards, they tried to fudge a response to the question that inevitably came. That is the situation, and it is not good enough—it is not good enough for the Government simply to fudge this issue.

The position that women are starting from is not a level playing field. More than 90% of lone parents are female. The gender pay gap in the UK is still 13.9% for full-time employees—that figure is from the Fawcett Society. Women are 60% of those earning below the living wage, by which I mean the real living wage, not the “pretendy” one. Women make up only 27% of higher rate taxpayers. We are starting from a position of disadvantage, in which there is a gender pay gap. The Government cannot simply say that they are not doing anything bad to women. They need to stand up and say that they will do good things for women. They need policies that make the situation better, rather than simply trying to stand still. As I have said, women do not start on a level playing field.

We should also really criticise the Government because they keep saying that the Library briefings and the evidence provided are wrong. They cannot say the evidence is wrong just because they disagree with it. That does not make it wrong; it simply means that they disagree with it. It is the same with the national living wage. The Government cannot call it a national living wage and then expect people to be able to live on it just because they have called it that. That is not how these things work. They need to make actual changes.

In November 2013, the Full Fact website did some work looking at Labour’s work and policies on the gender pay gap. It said that

“women just tend to be in the groups more affected by benefit changes.”

That is absolutely the case, because of the percentage of women who are lone parents, and are therefore managing a household on their own, along with the reduction in the number of benefits being given to people with children—because of all of these changes, which disproportionately affect women. We start from a position in society of less privilege, fewer opportunities and less advantage. The Government need to do the opposite of what they are doing; they need to be making positive interventions.

The speech about people being able to climb up the ladder was frankly rubbish. People cannot climb up the ladder. People of my generation are having more trouble climbing up it than those of the previous generation. Things are going backwards. We are getting worse. People from less affluent backgrounds, women, those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds and disabled people have struggled more in the last few years to climb up that ladder than they did 20 or 30 years ago, when there was the possibility of that dream. The Government talk about how 26%, or something, of people on a FTSE 100 board are now female. For a start, that is nowhere 50%; moreover, of those heading up FTSE 100 boards, only five are women. That needs to be fixed.