Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Stuart C McDonald

Thursday 29th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

2. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the effect of universal credit on women.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Kit Malthouse)]

It is essential that women have opportunities to enter employment and to progress in work, and universal credit is designed to give them the assistance and tools to do so. Colleagues across the Government regularly discuss the impact of policies on women, and indeed on all groups.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

We know from the Women’s Budget Group that the cuts baked into universal credit—the two-child cap, the cuts to the work allowance and the benefits freeze—are having an even more detrimental impact on women than on men, so when will we see an urgent review of the gendered impact of the social security changes?

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Gentleman is mistaken in seeing welfare reform work in isolation from all the other assistance that has been offered to the low-paid, and in particular to women. Other measures, such as shared parental leave, the right to request flexible working, the 30 hours of free childcare and indeed the 85% of childcare funded through universal credit—or 600 hours of free childcare in Scotland—alongside the national living wage, which has given the lowest-paid their highest pay rise for 20 years, and the fact that we are taking millions out of tax by raising the personal allowance, offering training and assistance, and reducing the gender pay gap all point towards and have created the highest employment levels for women, at 70.9%, that this great and glorious country has ever seen.