International Women’s Day
Lola McEvoy Excerpts(1 week, 5 days ago)
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Seema Malhotra
On the hon. Lady’s comment about women making up 40% of the House of Commons today, that is an important milestone, but we are not yet at 50%. I am proud that the Labour party has got close to it, and in fact pretty much reached that level. It is important that we continue to look to the centenary, as she said, with a range of measures to push forward the progress of women’s representation and political parties’ role in that, but also to look forward to the progress of women in every part of society and of our economy.
I recognise that this is about the choices we make. Labour’s manifesto committed to action to tackle gender inequality, from strengthening rights for women in work and reducing the gender pay gap to halving violence against women and girls. Our groundbreaking violence against women and girls strategy begins a decade-long, whole-of-Government and whole-of-society effort to halve violence against women and girls, backed by over £1 billion of funding. I know that every Member of this House will want to get behind that goal.
I want to acknowledge the incredible efforts of my friend and colleague the Minister for Safeguarding—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips)—who I am proud to stand alongside in today’s debate. [Hon. Members: “More.”] Exactly!
We are not just acting at home: we have made tackling violence against women and girls a priority in our foreign policy, too. Recently, the Foreign Secretary launched All In, a new international coalition to scale up action to end violence against women and girls. It brings together global leaders, experts and campaigners, and focuses on preventing violence before it happens.
Labour is working to prioritise women’s health, with a refreshed women’s health strategy to be published soon. Our plans to make work pay are putting in stronger protections for pregnant women and new mothers at work, and tackling maternity inequality. We are reviewing parental leave and making flexible working more easily available. With two consecutive years of minimum wage rises, we are putting more money in the pockets of working women.
Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)
The Minister is making a brilliant speech that lots of us will be feeling very emotional about. Does she agree with me and Members across the House that although increasing the minimum wage is really important, as it disproportionately affects female workers, we also need to restructure how we value women’s work and the workforce predominantly made up of women?
Seema Malhotra
I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. That debate continues, and I will touch on some relevant issues later in my speech.
Last week, alongside the Minister for Women and Equalities, I was proud to launch our voluntary action plans. Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, employers with over 250 employees will be asked to submit action plans showing how they will reduce their gender pay gaps and support employees going through the menopause. We are working with business leaders, civil society organisations and trade unions, because we cannot reach workplace equality without the support and commitment of all.
The removal of the two-child limit will lift 450,000 children out of relative poverty in the final year of this Parliament. As we know, poverty impacts women, whom the Women’s Budget Group describe as the “shock absorbers of poverty”.
On business, the Chancellor has backed the Invest in Women taskforce, launching a funding pool of over £600 million, including £130 million from the British Business Bank, to be invested in women-led businesses. It is the largest fund of its kind globally, addressing the enormous barriers to access to finance that exist for women.
Alongside that, the Government are supporting more women in the UK’s tech sector. Every year, the economy loses an estimated £2 billion to £3.5 billion because women leave the tech sector or change sectors due to barriers that should not exist. Men outnumber women by four to one in computer science degrees, which is a subject I studied. Women are less likely to enter tech, stay in the sector or rise to leadership roles.
Consular Assistance
Lola McEvoy Excerpts(2 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Mr Falconer
I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Member for the constructive and reasonable tone of his question—and not just because he has the finest first name in Parliament. Let me provide some additional commentary on HMS Dragon, given that it has been a subject of such interest. As he will know, decisions are based on operational factors. Force protection is at its highest level in the eastern Mediterranean. The decision about HMS Dragon was brought to the Chief of the Defence Staff and Ministers in the light of the increasingly reckless and indiscriminate attacks by Iran across the region, and it was signed off immediately.
Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for all his work on this ever-changing situation. The Samuels and their two children, who are constituents of mine, are in Dubai at the moment. They are not able to get proper advice from the airlines about the options available to them. Will the Minister elaborate on the work he has been doing with the airlines, where commercial flights are going ahead, and tell us whether they are prioritising based on need and vulnerability?
Mr Falconer
My Department would be very happy to take up the specifics of my hon. Friend’s case. Airlines are seeking to manage very complex caseloads, and we are grateful for their work with us. The British Government are obviously prioritising our most vulnerable nationals, and we are encouraging commercial partners to do the same.
Budget Resolutions
Lola McEvoy Excerpts(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)
Does the hon. Member therefore agree on the point in this Budget around investing £16 million in a cutting-edge science, technology, engineering and maths centre in my constituency to enable us to repair the post-Conservative scarring that we felt as a community, as we saw the hollowing out of our manufacturing sector?
Dr Spencer
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I do not know the specific details regarding her constituency, but what I can say on the broader, macroeconomic details is that the reduction in employment as a consequence of national insurance contributions changes means that there are more children with parents who do not have jobs.
Dr Spencer
Who knew, indeed.
Energy costs are a big chunk of everybody’s outgoings, and we are still waiting for them to come down. Property costs also are a big chunk of people’s outgoings, and this is reducing and putting more pressure on the private rented sector, particularly landlords. The measures in the Budget today around the increased taxation on property revenue will be passed on to the consumer—that is, people who are renting—adding yet another cost pressure. I wish Labour Members would think through what happens not just in step one of a Budget intervention but in steps two, three and four in relation to the impact on their constituents.
One way to deal with child poverty is to look at the cliff edges of the taxation system, including the wrapping down of universal credit when someone works for 28 hours. When the Work and Pensions Committee looked at in-work poverty costs—the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), who is in his place, was the Chair at the time—one of the things that really came out, through and through, was that lots of the families in difficulty were single-parent families and they struggled with the 28 hours’ provision because of childcare costs and the marginal benefit. We also need to look at cliff edges in relation to housing allowance and council tax. We need to get rid of the cliff edges to ensure that work always truly pays.
Also really important in helping child poverty is making sure that the child maintenance system works. There are plenty of families with a parent who should be supporting their child but is not doing so. That is absolutely scandalous and it needs to be fixed.
Lola McEvoy
I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member that the child maintenance system needs reforming. Does he agree that, in 2010, it was wrong of the Conservative and Lib Dem coalition to introduce a £50 access fee for people who were trying to get the money that the absent parent of their child was refusing to pay? Was that a bad decision by his Government at the time?
Dr Spencer
I invite the hon. Member to look at the report that Parliament released on the reform of child maintenance, particularly on the barriers that were set up in the system, both in terms of direct and indirect payments. I think all of us across the House would agree that the child maintenance system needs reform.
The issue with the two-child benefit cap is that most, if not all, parents love their children and would like to have more children, should money, time and other things—[Interruption.] Okay, I stand corrected, but people make decisions when planning their families based on the resources they have, whether those are personal resources, time or money. It is fundamentally unfair to say to one group of people who are making difficult budgetary decisions in relation to having more children, “You’re going to be taxed more so that you can pay for other people who are not subject to those difficult budgetary decisions because they are not employed at the moment.” That is fundamentally not fair.
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
Lola McEvoy Excerpts(10 months, 1 week ago)
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Kim Leadbeater
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We keep coming back to the word “choice”. It is about choice for patients and terminally ill people, but it is also about choice for medical professionals and others.
Because of the unintended consequences, I cannot support amendment (a), but I am confident that new clause 10 and new schedule 1 provide robust protections for employees, regardless of their choices about participating in the provision of assisted dying services.
Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)
Would my hon. Friend mind elaborating on the detail of the transferring of medical records? It is my understanding that someone can request their own medical records as a patient.
Kim Leadbeater
The patient could request information, but so could doctors and other healthcare professionals. It would be wrong if people were not allowed to share that information if it was requested, even if their employer did not want them to do it.
I turn now to new clause 11 and consequential amendments 64 and 65, which will ensure that the Bill is workable by making provision about the replacement of the co-ordinating doctor or the independent doctor where they are unable or unwilling to continue to carry out their functions in the Bill. The doctor may be ill or on holiday, retire, or have a change of personal circumstances.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I wish to speak to new clauses 16 and 17. Rather than giving my own views, I think that powerful testimony on behalf of someone who actually runs a care home should be heard by the House. I want to quote, as briefly as possible, Dan Hayes, who runs the Orders of St John Care Trust, which runs care homes in Lincoln generally and in my constituency:
“we believe that the Bill as drafted is flawed, and the risks to older, vulnerable people, residing within social care environments are substantial.
We believe that any assumption by those drafting the final legislation that it is not intended for use by those living with conditions regarded as part of the ageing process, would be mistaken. Any legislation would be immediately tested and assumed to be accessible to such a cohort of people.
To that end we believe that in order to provide the necessary protections to such a vulnerable part of our society, the Bill must be explicit in its reference to older people living in residential services.”
That is why these new clauses are so important. He continues:
“The Bill must take account of the current unfairness and instability at the heart of our social care system, and question whether such legislation can be introduced whilst such problems exist.
The Bill must recognise that an individual health/social care professional’s ability to remove themselves from the process of Assisted Dying is so difficult, that specific exclusion of the care home sector should be a feature of the Bill. In any case, organisations, and sites, should be given the ability to exclude themselves from the act of an assisted death without prejudice to their approval as providers of services to the state.”
We have experience of that, with regard to Catholic adoption agencies. There is a real risk that some care homes may feel they have to withdraw from this sector. I will carry on quoting:
“Those that fund their own care pay substantial sums, often saved for over a lifetime—including property wealth. These savings will have been set aside for retirement and to pass on to loved ones. Instead, they are used to fund the costs of their own residential care, and to substantially subsidise the state.
We see the real prospect that those that might fit the criteria for assisted dying under the Bill, but have no wish to accelerate their death, would feel an immediate dilemma between prolonging their own lives, and the future quality of life of their loved ones. For illustrative purposes, the six-month period stated within the current Bill would equate to between £25,000 and £40,000 of expense borne by an individual paying for their own residential care in the current system.
Failings in the system mean that older people who should not be in hospital are held there, causing a burden to the NHS, and Local Authorities face an ever-growing proportion of funding needed to support social care, without a proportionate increase in funding from central government.”
Sir Edward Leigh
I wish to be mindful of other people, so I will proceed and make this one simple point on behalf of care homes. Mr Hayes continues:
“During the pandemic, we saw the appalling attempts at a widespread use of ‘Do Not Attempt Resuscitation’ arrangements for older people. This is a clear demonstration that an existing broken system places a lower value upon the lives of older people than of others.”
This is the important point:
“Relationships within residential care for older people are both professional and intimate. Carers, Care Leaders, and Service Managers are all competent health and social care professionals, but they are also friends and confidantes of those that live within social care services. The relationships are familial in the sense of contact for hours each day and the extension of support to ordinary, everyday issues outside the scope of normal healthcare professionals.
Our employees deliver loving care and build relationships in a way that residents come to depend upon and take comfort from. Such relationships are key to excellent care provision, and these important relationships enhance and prolong lives by providing a sense of purpose and place to older people.”
I have been around these care homes. They are fantastic places, with such love and such care for the most vulnerable in society. My Hayes then continues:
“In such a setting, it renders the ability for an individual to refuse to partake…as useless.
In an environment such as a care home, there is no way in which a professional could be fully ‘separated’ from assisted dying, should a resident they work with closely seek to enquire about or make a request.
Imagine a scenario where an individual living in social care is at the point where they will be provided with the approved substance to bring about their own death: In a care home, this is likely to be in their own room, which will be in close proximity to many other older people who live within that setting. It will be commonplace and understandable that the magnitude of the event will mean that the individual will wish to have company and comfort up to and immediately before/during the period in which the substance is taken.
A request for the company of a care professional will create a substantial moral dilemma for that person, profoundly so if they are individually opposed to Assisted Dying.”
That is the choice that these loving care workers will have to make—that would be the pressure on them. He goes on to say:
“Even where they are not, it will mean that they will intimately witness the death of someone with whom they have a strong bond, with that death having come about through facilitation, rather than naturally.”
Imagine the pressure on the workers in that care home.
Tom Gordon
I will make progress.
Let me speak to the reality of my amendment with a story from a constituent who does not wish to be named. She wrote to me about her brother, who died at age 58 from MND. Prior to his diagnosis, he was strong, healthy and, as she put it, a lot of fun. He was a great family man, but it was dreadful to watch his illness progress, and it had a profound impact on the family. It took 18 months of effort, worry and deep distress before he finally passed away. He wanted to have control over the time of his death, knowing what was to come. My constituent wrote:
“A difficult subject for most of us to contemplate, but in his particular case the possibility of assisted dying would have given him much comfort.”
Tom Gordon
I will make a little progress, as I was in the middle of a quotation. It continues:
“Unless you are actually affected by something as desperate as MND, you cannot understand what it really means to have such an option.”
My constituent is right. We can debate legal safeguards, ethics and precedents all day in this Chamber, but for those who are living with devastating diseases, this is not theoretical; it is personal, it is urgent and it is real.