International Women’s Day

Lord Bach Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on her excellent opening to this debate and I look forward to her remarks when she comes to winding it up. She and I have something in common which is very dear to us, and that is our home city, God’s own city, the city of Leicester, where she is held in extremely high regard. I am proud to be able to say that Emmeline Pankhurst, mentioned by the noble Baroness in her opening speech, was my great aunt. My grandmother, who was her younger sister, spent three weeks in Holloway jail for suffragette activity. I am equally proud of that fact, too. As all noble Lords will know, Emmeline Pankhurst had two powerful daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, both of whom, along with all the other suffragettes, did a massive amount to persuade—and I mean in almost every sense of that word—the powers-that-be, the Establishment of the day, that women should have the right to vote. Whether it was the First World War and the magnificent work done by women in the munitions factories that won the vote for women in the 1918 election, I leave to historians to decide, but the Pankhurst influence was clearly formidable.

Sometimes when listening to speeches in this House, I have to admit that my mind wanders just for a moment. I wonder how good it would have been if Mrs Pankhurst and her two daughters had somehow found themselves as Members of this House all those years ago. I daresay they would not have all sat on the same Benches, but that would have been no bad thing. Mrs Pankhurst’s husband, Dr Richard Pankhurst, was a brilliant radical Manchester lawyer who had strong views on absolutely everything, not least on the House of Lords. He believed that it should be abolished, and he described it as,

“the most preposterous institution in Europe”.

I do not know how preposterous it was then, and I hope he would not hold that view today; I do not accept it.

That leads me neatly on to say that although the House of Lords is not a preposterous institution, some of the legislative proposals that will severely affect women are preposterous in themselves and should be opposed for that reason. The legal aid Bill, which I am closely involved with, will decimate legal aid in the area of social welfare law in this country, and I argue that that will affect women in particular. To take benefits out of the scope of legal aid altogether, which is what is intended in the Bill, will affect women badly. Let us take the particular case of a single mother suffering from bipolar disorder, receiving employment and support allowance and other benefits. She has debts totalling £2,500, including overpayments of benefits and arrears owed to utility companies. The local advice and law service assisted her in making successful claims for disability living allowance and associated benefits, thus increasing her income by more than £100 a week. Her housing benefit had been suspended. The service challenged the decision and the benefit was reinstated and backdated, thus avoiding an escalation of rent arrears that ultimately would have led to the loss of her home.

That is one example, but thousands of others could be given of where, at the present time, a small amount of legal aid advice can help people, particularly women, to get out of the difficulties they are in. That advice will not be available in the same way or at all because there will not be any law centres or as many CABs if the Bill goes through. Many women will be badly affected by this legislation, and although of course we are today celebrating women and all that they do in our society, are we really going to pass a piece of legislation that will put women back rather than move them forward, as we all believe they should be?