Women and the Economy

Lucy Frazer Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

We did an awful lot better than the coalition Government and this Government. [Interruption.] Yes, we did! The speed of reduction under the Labour Government in the past decade meant that the gender pay gap came down by around a third, but that progress has sadly not been maintained under Conservative-led Governments.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

I will give way to the hon. and learned Lady later, if she will forgive me. I want to make a little progress.

We knew that the Chancellor had been forced to listen, and that he would have to back down on the tax credit cuts he announced in the summer, which would have hit women disproportionately hard. We have to wonder why on earth he thought they were a good idea in the first place, knowing that 70% of the savings to the Treasury from that policy would have come from women.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

Yes, my hon. Friend is right about that, and I believe that even the Work and Pensions Secretary has now acknowledged that what he said at the weekend was not entirely correct.

As we have been discussing lone parents, the House will be interested to know that the Library says that a lone parent with two children, working 20 hours per week on the so-called national living wage, will lose £2,800 by the end of this Parliament. That is a substantial amount for a family who, by definition, can have only one earner—and often a part-time earner, working part time to enable care to be combined with employment responsibilities. The introduction of the so-called national living wage and free childcare places simply cannot compensate wholly for these benefit cuts; the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that that is arithmetically impossible. In any event, as I pointed out to the hon. Member for Havant (Mr Mak), the people who gain from the increased minimum wage are not the same people who are losing out.

[Lucy Frazer]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kate Green]

Yes, of course. I beg the hon. and learned Lady’s pardon; I had promised to give way to her.

[Lucy Frazer]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. What does she say about the fact that 53% of apprenticeship starts in 2014-15 were for women? That is a policy that the Government are very much pushing.

[Kate Green]

I will return to that point in my speech. The hon. and learned Lady is right in what she says, but we will be looking shortly—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) may wish to wait for this part of my speech, as I know he is looking forward to it: we will look at how those apprenticeships are distributed between women and men; the sectors in which they work; how their employment destinations are not equal; and, sadly, at how those apprenticeships contribute, in both the short term and the long run, to the inequality that women still experience in the labour market. I think the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) is acknowledging that point. It is a concern, and I hope that the Minister can say something about the Government strategy for addressing it.

It is not just women of working age who are losing out as a result of Government policies; older women face a situation that is equally serious. Single female pensioners lose most, according to the Women’s Budget Group, while the Fawcett Society points out that in 2017, the full £155-a-week state pension will be paid to only 22% of older women. The difficulty that women face because of working part-time, or because of not being able to fulfil the requirement for an increased 35 years of contributions, puts them at further disadvantage. Women are also less likely to have access to a good occupational pension.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

The hon. Gentleman is right. These cuts are false economies. “Penny wise and pound foolish” underlies the Government’s whole economic strategy, and that is a very good example of it.

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that we need to invest in our young women going through school so that they study STEM subjects, and that is exactly what the Chancellor is doing. Through investment in STEM, a record number of girls are taking A-levels in science and maths, with 10,000 more STEM A-level entries for girls. We must be ambitious and aspirational for our next generation.

[Kate Green]

The hon. and learned Lady is right. Perhaps we can open up some of that when we look at what is happening to young people’s career destinations.

Part-time and temporary work is exacerbating the gender pay gap. Seventy-four per cent. of those working part-time are women. One in five young women have been offered zero-hours contracts. The disproportionately high number of women in low-paid, part-time work means that in-work poverty remains a real issue. Cutting in-work benefits makes life worse, not better, for those women. I can discern no Government strategy to address areas of the economy such as cleaning, retail, care and hospitality where there is chronic and persistent low pay and where women typically work.

In 2013, to follow the point made by the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), the Government published their action plan on women and the economy. Indeed, I think that the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) was responsible for it. That action plan set out Ministers’ ambitions for women’s increased participation. It contained welcome words about increasing girls’ participation in STEM subjects, as noted by the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire; encouraging women into higher-paid careers; and supporting women as entrepreneurs. In practice, however, we have fallen very far short of those ambitions. The CBI reports that 93% of young people are not getting access to adequate careers advice, and girls are still too often pigeonholed into traditionally female career routes.