Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Triesman Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I will start with what I hope is obvious. Among many others, I consistently supported feminists who campaigned for a wide range of women’s rights including maternity rights. I always supported the rights demanded by the LGBT campaigners for same-sex marriage, adoption and many other entitlements to equality. I always abhorred and campaigned against Section 28. I am grateful for the education and clarity of all those involved for my own political development.

It follows that I wholly support the purpose of the Bill, though I wish it were addressing wider issues. I am also very critical of the language in it for good reason. I cannot accept the slurs levelled at women such as Rosie Duffield MP or JK Rowling for simply acknowledging biological facts. I strongly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and I will back an amendment. The vitriol is ghastly and intended to stop proper debate, to bully and to impose cult thinking on what can realistically be understood only through democratic dialogue.

I trust that nobody will repeat what is sometimes said, and is a slander—that those of us who take this view are transphobic or in the pay of some ultra right-wing organisation here or in the United States. The Government should say today that they will speak up for the people vilified for supporting women’s rights. My objections to erasing words such as “women” and “female” from the description of an individual’s biological sex and their replacement with the tortured formulations of the Bill are simple.

First, legislation must be intelligible and compelling to the people who read it or are affected by it. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, it is very good to know that the Lord Chief Justice understood this. This Parliament is not a private theatre using a private language intended to please a few zealous people. It is a legislature, and legislation belongs to citizens, not to a narrow circle of us. Citizens plainly know that it is women who give birth to babies. Babies are not born of euphemisms.

Secondly, I think most people will find efforts to erase “woman” or words relating to women or their biological sex laughable. We do ourselves no credit by using pretentious meaningless phrases, which nobody would use in their own lives. It patronises people who use plain language about known facts. The Bill, with its laudable purpose, is easy to support. How absurd it would be if its language became a boilerplate for drafting subsequent legislation.

Thirdly, it is an unavoidable and uncomfortable truth that when politicians start using words to describe real people as though they were simply objects—to speak of them as though they are “it”—we erode our sensitivity to the people involved. It was always the way of dictatorships and authoritarians. In our case, it is not what we intend. We probably all accept that it is women who have babies. They are the birth mothers, whoever brings the baby up. However, in this kind of formulation in the Bill, the women and their specific biology become devalued—expunging their recognisable human attributes. In this Bill, let us get rid of foolish metaphors, similes and ill-crafted figures of speech and replace them with everyday English. Our laws and words must never treat people as non-human things.

Finally, like many other noble Lords, I have read the Commons debate and the Minister’s letter to us. I listened carefully to what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, said today. I am sorry to say that the Government have been inaccurate in what they have told us. There was no new legislative edict from Jack Straw, with whom I worked. I will bet no one has even talked to him. He wanted gender-neutral words where possible. There is no need for a word such as “chairman” and it is sensible to use “police officer” or “firefighter” or terms which cover both sexes and any gender choice. In these cases, there is no need or purpose for gendered language. That is what Jack Straw intended.

However, the truth is that legislation on maternity rights, employment data, healthcare provision and many of the things the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others have spoken of, almost only ever refer to women precisely because there is a specific need and specific purpose. This is so that any normal person can read and understand the legislation.

I appeal to the Minister to be truthful about this. Do not hide in the thickets of the Explanatory Notes. Our excellent Library has provided copious evidence in legislation—no metaphors, no similes, no foolish figures of speech. We are not living in a regime which requires or writes its laws and explanations to obscure and confuse its citizens. Our sole aim here is to ensure that senior women politicians have maternity rights, just like other women. Many other rights should have been in the Bill as well, but it at least does that. It does so for their own well-being and that of their babies. It is that simple.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a privilege, as it always is, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. I think that she and I have two reasons to celebrate today. The first, of course, is the change that has taken place as a result of the Minister’s statement, to which I will return in just a second, and the second thing we celebrate is that we are both from Tottenham, and it is one of those rare days when people from Tottenham will be celebrating as well. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, will know exactly what I am talking about.

I join others in expressing my thanks to the Minister. We have not always been on the same side of debates, but I have been enormously impressed, as have other noble Lords, by his willingness not just to listen but to argue his case and then to come to a conclusion, which I am sure is his conclusion, which he has urged on other Ministers to make the Bill a better Bill. I appreciate that and I thank him for it, just as I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for moving the amendment, which I fully support, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Nicholson, and all others who have provided not only a lot of good sense but a very educative process for the House. I appreciate that a lot.

A number of noble Lords have been quite rightly appreciative of the role on all these issues of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. I am afraid that I am going to break ranks a tiny bit with her, and I hope that one day, if not today, she will forgive me, because when people tell you that you that because of the sorts of things you are likely to say or the things that you have said you are going to be called out, it is important to know what you are being called out about and whether it is true. I said at Second Reading, and I know it is true of very many colleagues across the House, that we have been involved in various fights—led by women’s organisations, I have to say—for the extension of women’s rights. I deeply appreciate those who led those fights, and I am grateful for the chance to have taken part.

The same is true about LGBT. I cannot recall one of the significant campaigns that have come from that community for which I have not had 100% support. That is also true about the rights of trans people, so I do not accept in any sense that by raising these issues we somehow have turned our backs on that history, or on the commitments which we have adhered to or that we have made, or that we are engaging in grievous stereotyping. I completely accept, for example, that trans women are under threat, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, but it is also true that other people and other groups are under threat and I do not think we do any of them any service if we play them off one against another.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said that we would be alarmed if we saw some of the things that have been written and said to her, so let me say that I deplore that as well. That kind of nastiness and incivility is deeply damaging to our political life and social life, and I deplore the fact that the noble Baroness has been on the receiving end of that kind of diatribe. But I hope she will accept that when we talk about evidence, there is genuine evidence on all sides. My noble friend Lord Winston made a point about some of the occasions when he has been on the receiving end. I can confirm that, on some issues, for me in the Labour Party the anti-Semitic abuse was completely intolerable at one stage, as I think it was to all people of good will. You do not accept that that behaviour should be meted out to other people, and I do not expect to be on the receiving end of it either.

The truth is, there is a huge amount of evidence. The most important evidence—referred to with great care by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who has also played a huge role in this, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—is that organisations and individuals are having their capacity to act on behalf of people who suffer from discrimination stripped out by being denied the kinds of funds they have had for a long time to conduct that fight. That is all real evidence. It is as real as the evidence on any side of this. I have received a large number of very pleasant emails, but I am afraid to say I have also received a significant amount of abuse on social media.

The language is an issue. Getting the right language in our legislation is always an issue, for reasons I will not repeat because noble Lords have made the point very clearly. It is urgent at the moment, not just because of this Bill but because, for example, the basis on which the ONS has decided to collect data on biological sex—or rather, not to collect this data in the census—now means that a number of leading quantitative social scientists believe we will have inadequate data and an inadequate track back through data historically. We have been given almost no time to comment on the wording of the census, yet that wording, which guides so much social policy, so much of our understanding of our country and should guide a great deal of our debates in this House, will now be poorly defined. I suspect too that it will be poorly used in policy-making. I hope the Minister will comment on how we might rectify that problem.

I started my speech, as has every other speaker in the House, with the words “My Lords”. When the Minister replies, I suspect he will also start with the words “My Lords”. We are in an institution which is named after the male Members and not the female Members. We do not raise the issue—I am not intending to raise it as a specific, sharp problem—because it is a matter of historical convenience and we like traditions. On occasion, we use language which I suspect would be thought offensive or inappropriate in other circumstances.

We of all people should be extremely sensitive to the way in which the people of this country speak, what it is they expect from us, how they quite rightly expect not to be patronised, and how they expect what we do to be intelligible. We should not abandon that, and that is why the language is vitally important. I thank noble Lords for having listened to what I have said. We have a long way to go to get this right but let us applaud the start we can make today.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Triesman. We have a special connection—in fact, it seems we have two. He was the general secretary of the Labour Party when I was expelled, although the credit for that is always claimed by Mr Anthony Blair and one or two other people. I subscribe to my daughter’s feeling that the only thing wrong with me being expelled was that it was 20 years too late. Our other connection is that I spent five years as chair of the Tottenham Conservative Association; if anyone ever took on a hopeless cause, that is it.

I first thank the Minister for the concessions that are being given, but I would like to ask one genuine question. Lots of people have said they prefer the word “woman” to “mother”. Can I ask him why the Government prefer “mother” to “woman”? They must have debated and discussed it, but no one here seems to agree with them. Obviously, I am not going to divide the House or anything like that, but I would be interested in that.

Another thing, which probably cannot be debated but should be borne in mind, is that someone got the Government into this mess. This came about because the people drafting the Bill messed it up: it is as simple as that. This is not a policy that is wrong; it is a drafting measure. I hope that steps will be taken to ensure that we are not put in this position again, because it is a pretty awful position to be in.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referenced the article by Louise Perry in the New Statesman. It is an excellent article which brings this whole debate into focus. She says:

“the number of people who will benefit from this move is truly tiny: specifically, we are concerned here with trans or non-binary people, who are biologically female, and able to bear a child following any surgical or hormonal interventions … and decide to do so, and care about squabbles over vocabulary.”

There are a lot of qualifications in there. She goes on to apply some figures to a much more serious problem: the number of mothers presenting at maternity clinics who do not have a full knowledge of the English language, let alone these ways of interpreting it, which would mean nothing to them. As she says, “the first maternity appointment” for a person who does not speak good English—I am not talking about no English—takes “twice as long” as it does for those with a good command of the language. As she says,

“Now try adding terms such as ‘chest-feeding’ and ‘birthing person’ to the official forms.”

In other words, you are making great difficulties. I draw attention also to the work of the psychologist Rob Henderson, who describes much of this as “luxury beliefs”:

“ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class”.

There is a wider issue here. We need to be careful to make our legislation and policies relevant to all citizens, particularly citizens who are not necessarily as wealthy as the rest of us.

At the beginning of my career, as a lay trade union official I was told that one of the golden rules was that you should never get further ahead of the membership than they could see and understand what you were signalling them to do. On issues like this, I regret to say that we are tending to get a bit too far ahead of ordinary people and their desires. We are, after all, a Parliament for everybody and not just for a few.

Maybe in 20 years’ time—this was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, among others—this issue will come back to us, having developed more maturely, such that we look at changing the language. That point is far from where we are now. I close by mentioning that my daughter, who is going to have a baby in a few months’ time, thinks this whole thing is “hilarious nonsense”.