Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for his important and incisive question. The civil service, as he acknowledges, has historically used contractors to provide specialist skills and to manage short-term requirements. We really want to drive that down by improving our own capability. We are developing a pipeline of secondments into major organisations through a new secondments unit. We are building an in-house consultancy, we are creating a civilian reserve, and we are working with the Civil Service Commission to review how we attract entrants with specific high-demand skills, particularly scientists and engineers.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to implement their levelling-up agenda.

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to implement their levelling-up agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)]

Levelling up is at the heart of the Government’s covid recovery agenda, and I am in daily contact with Cabinet colleagues. Through the levelling up fund, we have already committed £4.8 billion of support for local projects that will spur regional growth and improve the lives of local people across the whole United Kingdom. Later this year we will publish a levelling up White Paper.

[Mrs Miller [V]]

If you are in a low-paid job in our country, you are still more likely to be a woman than a man. That is no good for a country that values aspiration, no good for productivity and no good for our economy. Given the focus at the G7 on equal opportunity for women at work, will the Government’s White Paper on levelling up recognise this problem and focus on levelling up for women throughout the United Kingdom?

[Michael Gove]

As a distinguished former Equalities Minister and former Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friend is absolutely right: more must be done as part of levelling in order to ensure that women have the opportunities that they deserve and are paid fairly, and that we make use of everyone’s talents across the whole United Kingdom.