Sex and Relationship Education

Maria Miller Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Four Members have already told me that they wish to intervene, so I hope that others will bear with me. I think that that will probably be as much as we can contain within the time available.

Children have their first mobile phones when they are nine. Many have smartphones, with unlimited and sometimes unfettered access to the worldwide web and everything it has to offer, so we should perhaps not be surprised that by the time they leave primary school, most children will have seen online pornography and one in five will have had to deal with cyber-bullying. By the time that they finish secondary school, six in 10 will have been asked for a digital nude or sexually explicit image of themselves, usually by a friend. As a result, many will have discovered that private digital images of themselves can be passed on to thousands of people at the touch of a button. Removing such images from the worldwide web is all but impossible, which leads to difficult conversations with family, future employers and friends.

When the Women and Equalities Committee was preparing its report on sexual harassment in schools, we took evidence from children themselves, who told us that sexual harassment had become a normal part of everyday life. Women are called bitches, sluts or slags, and one in three 16 to 18-year-old women say that they have experienced unwanted sexual touching at school. Over the past three years, 5,500 sexual offences have been recorded in UK schools, including 600 rapes. Is abusive behaviour from the online world seeping into the offline world? Perhaps; I do not know.

The facts might look pretty stark to the Members who are present tonight. After hearing them, they might be less surprised to learn of the latest Barnardo’s research findings that seven in 10 children believe that they would be safer if they had age-appropriate classes in sex and relationship education at school. More than nine in 10 specifically said that it was important for them to understand the dangers of being online, especially when sharing images.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I understand and share my right hon. Friend’s concern about there being improved relationship education in schools, particularly for younger children, but does she agree that many parents would be concerned—I would be extremely concerned—if teaching sex education to primary school children were compulsory?

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is right that parents need to have a voice in all this, and I am sure that any consultation carried out by the Government would take that into account. Research published today by Plan International UK shows that eight in 10 adults in this country want sex and relationship education for children at school, but my hon. Friend is right that it has to be age-appropriate. In primary schools, for the most part, we are talking about making sure that children understand what a good and healthy relationship looks like.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on raising this matter. Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), it is crucial, as I have said previously, that parents have control and oversight of what happens to their children, especially when that pertains to outside influences. Does the right hon. Lady agree that parents first, as well as the Government, must consider that when thinking about any changes in sex education?

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is right that parents have a pivotal role, but so do schools, and I was about to come on to that.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

rose—

[Mrs Miller]

I am now, I fear, going to break my rules by allowing my hon. Friend to intervene.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Many of us did not get much from our parents, and many of us did not pass much on to our children, but the truth is that celibacy is the only thing that we cannot inherit from our parents, and many parents are too embarrassed to talk about these things to their children. Does she agree that it would be a good idea if parents and teachers discussed what children ought to know, and considered whether parents or teachers, or both, should talk to them about it?

[Mrs Miller]

As always, we hear pearls of wisdom from my hon. Friend, who knows that involving parents in decision making, and in determining ultimately what children really need to understand, at whatever age, is exactly the right way to proceed.

I know the Minister well, so I am sure that she will remind us that some of the best schools already teach children about mutual respect and self-respect, and about what makes a truly loving relationship. They go beyond what is currently compulsory—the mechanics of sex and the biology of reproduction—and tackle relationships and the context of a sexualised online world, because we need to help young people to make better and informed choices in those early years. However, it is surely clear to both me and her that many schools do not take that approach. Why should we sit by and allow children in those schools to lose out?

As I said, research published today by Plan International UK shows that eight in 10 adults think that teaching sex and relationship education should be compulsory in all schools, regardless of their status. We need children to be able to make informed choices. We need them to understand that sexting is illegal, and that it could affect their mental health, leave them open to extortion and perhaps limit their future career choices. We need them to understand that pornography does not reflect reality, and that bullying behaviour online is just as unacceptable as bullying behaviour offline. To be honest, it might be more accurate to call it relationship and sex education, because what children need more than ever is to understand what a healthy relationship really looks like. What they see and experience online is, for the most part, not that.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes excellent points about sexting and unwanted touching, but does she agree that nowadays, given the insidious nature of early emotional abuse, it is vital that every child in school can understand the signs that it is happening?

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend, who has a great deal of expertise in this area, is absolutely right. It is important that we give children the right information at the right time—that is what I am calling for.

Many of the reputable operators in the internet and mobile communications world understand the real downsides of their products, especially for children, and they are increasingly trying to fit parental controls to sort this out. However, at the moment those controls are only as good as we parents are, and about 40% of parents use them. Parents are conscious of the problems, but children use the internet for an average of more than 20 hours a week. Parents cannot look over their children’s shoulders at every moment and many simply feel out of their depth.

There are reasons for optimism. In a recent debate on the Children and Social Work Bill, Ministers clearly indicated that thinking was under way. The Government have already acted to show that they can work with the online industry. We should all applaud the work that David Cameron did to outlaw child abuse images online. He showed that the internet industry can act when it wants to. We can also welcome the work that the Government are doing to put in place effective age restrictions for online pornography websites.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on securing this debate and the excellent work that her Committee has done in this area. Does she agree that it is significant that there is now such strong cross-party support for moving in this direction? Five Select Committee Chairs have now said that this is an important issue. Does she also agree that the statutory nature of her proposals is essential, because that will mean that children will get good sex and relationship education and personal, social and health education? We need the teacher training to be done well so that we can get good teaching.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady makes an incredibly important point. We need consistency but, as I pointed out earlier, we do not have that at the moment. Placing provisions on a statutory footing would provide such consistency.

The internet has changed everyone’s lives. For some, it has normalised sexualised behaviours, which children can find it difficult to respond to. I see the Barnardo’s research as a cry for help. Parents have to take overall responsibility, but schools have a pivotal role to play in helping more children to understand what a good relationship is and to make better decisions.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes a cogent and compelling case. When we are discussing schools in this context, will she clarify that we are talking about not only local authority schools, but the growing academy sector? It is important that academies are included in such provisions.

[Mrs Miller]

I am sure that one of the many challenges for Ministers will be to ensure that every child can have the right sort of support and teaching. I do not underestimate the challenges that that will present, but I agree with the essence of what my hon. Friend says.

We can pretend that what we are talking about today does not affect children, or that parents have all the specialist knowledge that children need. Alternatively, we who are entrusted to shape our communities can do something different and act to clean up the internet, to support parents, and to give children the understanding that they need to make informed choices. Today’s debate is supported by leading charities including Barnardo’s, the Terrence Higgins Trust, the Children’s Society, the National Children’s Bureau and Plan International UK, as well as by the guides, the scouts and Liberty. They all want sex and relationship education to be compulsory. At the moment, schools are relying on guidance that was agreed more than a decade ago when the internet was still out of most children’s reach. They have failed to adapt to what children need, and it is little wonder that Ofsted recently judged 40% of schools to be inadequate in their teaching of SRE.

Who are we to ignore children calling for change? Children have only one chance of a childhood. We know the damage that is being done by cyber-bullying, sexting and the underage viewing of extreme pornography, and we have an obligation to act. I therefore have a question for the Minister, my friend from Hampshire: how will the Government respond to the seven in 10 children who want change? What are the Government doing, and when will that change happen?

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

That is a rather churlish comment, if you do not mind my saying so, Mr Speaker. We are investing more money in this policy than any Government have ever spent on it before, some £6 billion. The hon. Gentleman needs to be a little more appreciative.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I assure the Minister that working parents in my constituency very much welcome 30 hours of free childcare for their children. Will she set out for them, and in particular for those with disabled children, how she will make sure there will be sufficient funding to give disabled children the best start in life through that 30 hours scheme?

[Caroline Dinenage]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was at Sheringham Nursery School in Newham last week, which is an early implementer and is already seeing the massive difference the scheme is making to working families. There is an inclusion fund that will go to children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

It is a very important question, but, unfortunately, it is somewhat different from the question on the Order Paper. That may explain the Minister’s need to undertake some important research, the fruits of which I am sure we will witness in due course.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Having a disability-accessible train service is hugely important, but disabled people need to be able to get to the train station in the first place. What is the Minister doing to make sure that local authorities have a more consistent approach to making our built environment more disability-accessible, particularly in making sure that we have more consistency in shared space schemes?

[Andrew Jones]

Shared space schemes are a very controversial area, and their name does not help people. With shared space schemes, local authorities are trying to remove some of the visual clutter and improve the built environment, but that cannot be done at the expense of disabled people. In the Department, we have a work group that, with the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation, is looking at good practice in this area, and it will publish its report shortly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, changes were announced in the autumn statement to the taper rate of universal credit. The reality of our changes to the welfare system is that universal credit is encouraging more people into work, and once they are in work, it is helping them, via our work coaches working in every single jobcentre, to make sure that they get more work and indeed better work.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

T5. Research shows that nine out of 10 parents tell us that they want sex and relationship education in our schools to be compulsory. Do the Government agree with them?

[Justine Greening]

I very much welcome the report that my right hon. Friend’s Select Committee published on this issue. That is precisely why we want to look actively at this issue. She will know from our recent meeting that I think it important to have SRE that works for the 21st century. It is indeed time to look at this, and I am very conscious of the House’s overall view that this is a matter that we should now take on board. My right hon. Friend will know from her previous role as the Minister for Women and Equalities that it is a complex issue, but we are looking to see what we can do to address it.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Maria Miller Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and to have heard not only Opposition Members’ broad support for the Bill, but the important points they have raised. There can never be too much consensus on these issues. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, we just need to do better for vulnerable children. Challenge is part of that, as are new ideas. We cannot allow the Bill to be a missed opportunity in terms of prevention or the knowledge we give to children, because they are as much a part of the safeguarding process as any other structure or law that we put through this place.

The focus of the Bill is very much children who cannot remain in the family home, but its scope has been widened, particularly through Government amendments made in the other place, to broader issues around child welfare. I will focus on some of the broader issues, particularly the provisions regarding adopted children and ongoing support for them; the more contentious issue of the power to innovate, which some Members have talked about today, the measures on which were voted down in the other place; and, finally, what more the Bill could do to improve the welfare of children and to empower children.

The Bill proposes improvements to the long-term placement of children for adoption and the assessment of their current and future needs through care orders. I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to tell the House how the new measure sits alongside recent Government announcements on the adoption support fund. In particular, I am thinking about the interim cap on financial support that was put in place midway through the financial year.

The adoption support fund ensures that important therapeutic support can be funded for adopted children, some of whom are coping with difficult trauma, complex and challenging behaviour, and mental health problems. That can result in a high risk of adoption breakdown. The fund already helps thousands of families—I believe it was 3,500 last year—and the Government are increasing the budget to about £23 million this year. That significant investment perhaps underlines the Minister’s deep knowledge of the subject and his understanding of the challenges that parents of adopted children face, which he has gained from his own family’s experiences. I put on record my thanks to the Minister for all that he has done to support families with adopted children. I know that my constituents are enormously grateful for his expertise in this area.

Perhaps we should be unsurprised to hear that the demand for the fund has outstripped the supply of finances. The Minister, with the inevitable fiscal duties on him, had to introduce a cap to the budget in October. Although that was understandable as a normal response to keep control of budgetary pressures, it has inevitably created uncertainties for families such as my constituents, Mr and Mrs Cross, who adopted their son in August 2013. Mr and Mrs Cross are incredible. They have adopted a young child with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder which, as many will know, means their son requires significant support.

Mr and Mrs Cross have taken the necessary measures and are doing a fantastic job. The child’s therapy has been hugely beneficial, leading to real progress, but because it costs in excess of the new £5,000 cap, it is uncertain whether the funding will be available in the near future. The next phase of treatment costs about £10,000 and would require the local authority in Hampshire to match fund, in year, any costs over £5,000. Clause 8 calls for long-term plans for the care of a child to be in place, yet my constituents, who have made an incredible choice to care for a severely disabled child, are now unsure whether his care can be funded. I hope that the Minister, perhaps in his response to the debate, will reflect on how a local authority such as mine in Hampshire might respond, and reassure Mr and Mrs Cross that the support for their child will continue.

The second issue I want to speak about is the controversial power to innovate, which was contentious in the other place. Indeed, the then clauses 15 to 18 were removed from the Bill after a vote. The provisions would have allowed local authorities to apply to the Secretary of State to test new ways of raising children’s outcomes and to allow high-performing local authorities to be involved in that work. It is important that we pay heed to the strongly held concerns raised by expert voices, not just in the other place but outwith this place, and I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those concerns, which have been echoed again today.

None the less, the Department has put in place something that we need to look at again: the idea of giving “partners in practice”—my local authority in Hampshire is one of only eight in the country—the opportunity to look at innovative ways of working. If we are to find better ways to care for the vulnerable children about whom we all feel so deeply, we need to be open to new ideas, so I hope that we can revisit this idea, which was strongly supported by my local authority as well as experts such as Professor Eileen Munro. It is right that this tightly regulated area is as protected as it is, but I cannot believe that there would not be a benefit from our looking at new ways of working. We will all have seen examples of that in today’s briefings.

The problem might be—hon. Members might have put their finger on it today—that the proposals came somewhat out of the blue, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said. We need to take care that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I do not think that the Minister had any intention for the proposals to create competition between local authorities; rather, the intention was to drive improvement, which we would all applaud. No one is suggesting that this approach would do anything other than drive innovation in an area that has developed, inevitably, in a piecemeal way in response to the various and sometimes quite appalling situations in which local authorities have found themselves.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talked about the need for policy and law to work in practice. When I read the Hansard report of what the Minister in the other place said, I felt that that was exactly the purpose of the proposals. I think the intention is that local authorities are able to look at how they can make the law work in practice, rather than creating something of a postcode lottery. When there is an insight into better ways of working, authorities need to be able to pass it on to other areas to improve the way in which we care for this vulnerable group of individuals.

The final issue I want to raise, building on what the hon. Member for Walthamstow said, is what we are doing to empower children themselves, especially vulnerable children who might not have the consistent involvement of their parents in their lives and who, frankly, face really difficult situations when they have to take decisions about their own welfare without the input of other adults to guide them. This Bill is one of many pieces of legislation that have put in place laws, procedures and protocols to help to protect and improve the welfare of children through a whole host of agencies, but that does not directly address what we will do to help those children themselves. We need to ensure that they are armed with the knowledge that they need to make the right choices to safeguard themselves.

That is not a new concept, but something that we have done for many years. For example, we have tried to encourage children to understand the dangers of drugs, alcohol and, indeed, early pregnancy. It is important to take that forward in a more structured way. As parents and carers, we know that we have the prime responsibility to protect our children, but we also know that our children need the ability to make good choices. We cannot be there 24/7; social workers cannot be there 24/7. It is crucial that children have the ability to make decisions themselves in an informed way.

The Bill provides a perfect opportunity for the Government to respond positively to the five Select Committee Chairs who have called for PSHE and, in particular, sex and relationships education, to be made compulsory for school-age children. I am one of those Select Committee Chairs. Our work taking evidence on our recent inquiry on sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools was a sobering experience for all members of our Select Committee.

We need to help to empower children to make their own decisions. When we hear the evidence and some of the statistics about the challenges that young people face in respect of their own personal welfare, it becomes clear that this debate is overdue and that we need to take action now. Two thirds of girls regularly experience sexual harassment in school. Children as young as eight are seeing online pornography as a place to learn about sex, and there were 47,000 sexual offences against children in this country in the last year, a third of which were perpetrated by children against other children. Communities should be able to enjoy freedom and safety, and school communities are no different from any others.

When we look at what happens to children after their school life, we find that, according to a study by the National Union of Students, 68% of students say that they are subject to verbal or physical sexual harassment on campuses. The problem does not stop there, as some 85% of women are experiencing unwanted sexual attention in public places.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow is absolutely right when she says that this is all about prevention and making sure that we can stop these problems from happening in the first place by ensuring that children have the knowledge they need to make good decisions, to understand what consent means, and to achieve some control over their own personal space and their own bodies.

The Bill has been extensively debated in the other place, where many amendments were tabled, particularly relating to the importance for the welfare of children of joint working between agencies, including local authorities, the police and clinical commissioning groups. In the other place, the Government tabled amendment 113, which dealt with that, because they recognised that a multifaceted strategy was vital to children’s welfare.

Another set of organisations also have a crucial role to play in children’s welfare: schools. If the Bill is to do what it sets out to do and to promote welfare for children, it must make sex and relationships education compulsory. What is currently compulsory in secondary schools is the science of reproduction; the rest is based on guidance that was last updated at the turn of the millennium and makes no reference to pornography, through which, as we know, more young children are finding out about sex. We also know that 40% of schools do not teach SRE very well. Perhaps all that explains why organisations such as Barnardo’s have made clear that the development of an early understanding of and respect for each other’s bodies, and a knowledge of when to ask for help through PSHE, can help to build resilience and an understanding of what healthy relationships look like, as well as mitigating the effects of exposure to such things as pornography.

[Tim Loughton]

I am closely following what my right hon. Friend is saying and agree with much of it. As is the wont of speeches on Bills concerning children, hers is straying into a number of subjects that relate to children but are not dealt with in the Bill, but I support her on this subject. Does she agree that one way of securing the better-quality PHSE and SRE that we desperately need would be to bring in experts from outside schools, especially young experts such as youth workers? They could empathise with young people who would listen to them, take notice of them and act on their advice. Would that not be better than giving the task to Mrs Miggins the geography teacher who just happens to have a couple of free periods on a Thursday afternoon?

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Expertise is necessary when it comes to teaching those subjects. However, as I have said, I have raised this issue because if we are to tackle the welfare of children, we must ensure that we do so effectively. It is no good leaving children out of the equation; we must tackle their welfare head on. While I do not disagree with my hon. Friend’s point that undertrained teachers will not provide effective sex and relationships education, I think that all teachers—whether they are Mrs Miggins teaching geography or anyone else—need to understand how they can stop the sexual harassment and sexual violence that too many young people told the Committee they took for granted in their everyday school lives, and which we would never take for granted as adults. All teachers should have some sort of training in this sphere because they are responsible for the wellbeing of children while they are at school.

[Stella Creasy]

The right hon. Lady will know that I completely agree with everything that she is saying. May I help her by reassuring the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) that her speech is entirely in order in relation to the Bill? Clause 16 not only deals with the promotion of the welfare of children in local authority areas, but requires local authorities to work with the “relevant agencies”, which are those that are exercising functions in relation to children in their areas. That is exactly what schools do, and that is why we need to do this now.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank the hon. Lady for her helpful intervention.

We sometimes worry about raising the issue of sex and relationships in the House because we feel that we are taking away a primary function of parents, but that is not the way parents see it. Research conducted by YouGov shows that 90% of parents want compulsory SRE because they understand the pressures that their children are under. Those pressures have the potential to undermine the welfare of those children, especially when they are at school. Teachers understand that, too. They understand the importance of helping young people to navigate, in an appropriate way, the pressures of being a teenager in the internet world.

There is overwhelming evidence of the need for change and I make no apology for underlining it today for the Minister’s benefit. Five Select Committee Chairs have made the same point as a result of work that their Committees have done, and the Department for Education itself told the Education Committee that good PSHE underpins good academic achievement. We know that children who have received sex and relationships education and PSHE more broadly are less likely to engage in risky behaviour and much more likely to seek help when things go wrong. Children need to be able to recognise abuse, grooming and predatory behaviour. As Alison Hadley of the University of Bedfordshire told the Education Committee, if children have no

“ammunition to understand these things, no wonder they are ending up in very dangerous situations.”

Educating children about this is not an optional extra; it needs to be mandatory and an integral part of the Government’s safeguarding strategy.

In January 2014, in response to the Education Committee’s report, the Government said that they would work to ensure that all schools deliver high-quality PSHE, but 40% still do not. In November 2014, the Government established an expert group for PSHE, which recommended that PSHE should be a statutory entitlement for all pupils. Two years on, can the Minister update the House on the progress that has been made on the issue, which 90% of parents want action on, and which Girlguiding, End Violence Against Women, the NSPCC and Barnardo’s—the list goes on—are calling for action on?

I call on the Minister to put in place a timetable for action, including a comprehensive consultation to ensure that we get this right. No one is calling for rushed measures but, as Members have said, the issue of making SRE compulsory has been ongoing for some time. Of course the education should be age-relevant in all cases, and any proposal should be implemented in a way that brings the whole House together, because that is always the best way to handle such important cross-party issues.

Transgender Equality

Maria Miller Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the UK’s status as a pioneer in legislating for equality for LGBT people; welcomes the Government’s announcement of a new trans equality action plan; and calls on the Government to review its response to the recommendations of the Women and Equalities Committee’s report on Transgender Equality to ensure that the UK leads the world on trans equality rights, in particular by giving unequivocal commitments to changing the Gender Recognition Act 2004 in line with the principles of gender self-declaration and replacing confusing and inadequate language regarding trans people in the Equality Act 2010 by creating a new protected characteristic of gender identity.

The motion stands in my name, those of the hon. Members for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) and for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and many other hon. Members. I know many wanted to speak here today, but their other commitments in the House have precluded them from doing so. Their names are listed on the Order Paper.

The Backbench Business Committee has been most generous in allocating the time for this debate, which was inspired by the transgender report published by the Women and Equalities Select Committee in December 2015. I would like to thank, too, the hundreds of people and organisations who gave written and oral evidence to the Committee—evidence from more than 250 people and organisations. We were fortunate in having our specialist advisers, Stephen Whittle and Claire McCann to advise us. Indeed, we had an incredible Select Committee staff, particularly David Turner, Gosia McBride, Sharmini Selvarajah and Helena Ali. I also thank my fellow Select Committee members, particularly those in their places today to speak in the debate.

This is a first—the first ever debate on the Floor of the House on transgender issues. The report published by the Women and Equalities Select Committee was the first ever parliamentary inquiry into transgender issues. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, the Select Committee itself is the first ever such Committee charged with scrutinising the Government’s policies on equality issues. It was established by the House because of the pivotal role that these matters must play in creating a fairer society for us.

When we published our first report and chose to focus on transgender, a few people said to me, “Why are you choosing to focus on that above all other issues? Why use such an important platform to tackle the issues faced by such a small group? Surely there are issues that are higher on the list of priorities.” Others said that they had never met a trans person, and were not aware that they had any trans constituents. Well, it is estimated that more than 650,000 people in this country can identify with being trans: it equates to 1,000 people in every constituency, and that is probably a gross underestimate.

The evidence that the Select Committee received gave us an opportunity to gain some sort of insight into the prejudice, discrimination and ignorance that trans people endure every single day of their lives, but also the great joy that they experience when they are able to be recognised by the gender with which they identify. That is why this debate is important.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

I welcome the debate, because it is vital for us to consider the issue of transgender rights, but should we not also be wary of creating gender-neutral environments that may prove more of a risk to women themselves? A recent case involving my old university, the University of East Anglia, which has gender-neutral toilets, revealed that a man had been using those facilities to harass women. He was charged and convicted. How does the right hon. Lady think we can protect women from male violence in gender-neutral environments?

[Mrs Miller]

That point is often raised when we debate the rights of trans people, but it is not a zero sum game. Giving rights to one group, or enforcing those rights, does not mean that rights must be taken away from another group. We must be careful in this place not to appear to undermine the rights of trans people to enjoy the protections that they are afforded under the Equality Act 2010. As for gender-neutral toilets, many organisations have had them for a great many years. An aeroplane does not have a men’s and a ladies’, and we do not see any significant problems on aeroplanes. We must ensure that people do not use, or perhaps misinterpret, the serious problem of threats to women in environments of that kind to undermine—even, perhaps, inadvertently—the rights of transgender people, which are important and which we, as parliamentarians, should uphold.

[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Does the right hon. Lady not agree that the point raised by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) is a matter for criminal law, and has nothing whatsoever to do with transgender equality?

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman has made an important point, but I think the right hon. Member for Don Valley has the right to make the assertion that she did. I know that some organisations may be at risk of misinterpreting the rights that transgender people have, in the belief that they somehow undermine the rights of women. We need to get the balance right. As the hon. Gentleman says, if criminal behaviour is taking place, it should be dealt with by the criminal law.

This debate is important because it is our job to stamp out prejudice wherever it lies, and to ensure that, as a nation, we are fair to everyone. I think we should judge our success as a Parliament by the way in which we treat the most marginalised and disadvantaged groups in society, and, given the issues with which transgender people must deal, they certainly fall into one of those groups. In striving for the recognition of equality rights that trans people need to enjoy, we reject prejudice, and by doing that, we improve the ability of all who are struggling to be treated equally to achieve their aim.

Attitudes are not static. I think it incumbent on us in Parliament to continually re-evaluate what equality means—what it means to have a free and fair society that gives everyone the opportunity to succeed. If attitudes towards equality were static I would not be standing here today, and the hon. Ladies on our green Benches would not be sitting here today; the civil rights movement in the US would not, in the year I was born, have outlawed segregation in schools and public places; Nelson Mandela would not have been democratically elected in South Africa; homosexuality would not have been decriminalised here in the UK in 1967; and we would not have equal marriage for same-sex couples. We need to continually challenge these norms and things that might be accepted, so we can be sure that equality evolves over time.

Trans people have not been dealt with fairly in this country—they have been marginalised. We know that is wrong, and the motion challenges us to consider what we can do better in the future.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Lady is making a strong speech, and I wholeheartedly support it. Will she join me in praising the work of many public sector organisations, including South Wales Police and the British Army, which has been praised for its work with trans communities and the wider LGBT community? It is by showing leadership in the public sector and through such organisations that we can deliver real equality.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point, and our Select Committee inquiry report looks carefully and closely at the challenges that public sector organisations face. I have to say that we found some were able to cope with them better than others. I particularly have been impressed by the way in which the Ministry of Justice has accepted the challenge around trans prisoners. I note the comments the hon. Gentleman makes about the police as well, and I hope other police authorities are able to follow suit.

The Select Committee report covered a huge range of issues, because that is what was required of us, making recommendations on hate crime, gender markings, prisoners and probation, media representation, schools and social care. I welcome the Government’s very positive responses to our report. Perhaps the Minister in her response today can indicate whether the Government have been able to look further at the issues on which the responses were perhaps a little less positive, because Committee members felt very strongly that every single one of the recommendations we put forward had merit and needed to be looked at, although there was a large number of recommendations—more than 70—so it was clearly difficult for the Departments to respond to them all in the time available.

Today is about looking at progress, so I will focus particularly on the strategic and legislative aspects of the Select Committee report, in the full knowledge that the great number of other Members here today will pick up on progress on the recommendations made for the NHS, child protection, offender management and schools.

The Government have committed to a new trans equality action plan to include a review of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and a cross-Government review of removing unnecessary requests for gender information. All these steps are hugely welcome, but particularly the undertaking to look at training for specialist NHS staff to work in gender identity services, and tackling harassment and bullying of transgender people in education.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady mentions health, and the constituents who have contacted me felt that was an area of great inequality. Does she think it is a disgrace and very worrying that 54% of trans people have been told by their GPs that they do not know enough about trans-related healthcare to even provide it?

[Mrs Miller]

One of the problems we uncovered through the evidence we gathered was that many doctors felt as disempowered as the hon. Lady implies, owing to a lack of training and, perhaps, continuous professional development in this area. However, I should say in response to her intervention that there were also some people who said that whenever they went to the doctor, even if it was somebody who had just a little knowledge, their transgender identity was always at the heart of the response they got from the NHS. We need to make sure that doctors understand the health issues transgender people have to deal with, but also acknowledge that not every health condition they have will be related to their trans identity. That is an important point to make at this juncture.

[Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

A constituent of mine came across a particular problem because she had reassignment surgery before the Gender Recognition Act 2004 came into effect. Fifteen years later, when she tried to get a gender reassignment certificate, she was asked for a great deal of information that was no longer available. The surgeon who had performed the operation was dead, the records were no longer available, and she had a terrible time trying to get the information. Surely that is unfair.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman highlights one of many problems with the Gender Recognition Act. That is why our Committee asked for an urgent review of it, and I am heartened to note that the Government have indicated they understand the sort of problem he outlined, and many others as well, and the very medicalised nature of the process people are asked to go through. That process is talking about something very personal, which is an individual’s identity. It is not something I would particularly like to be discussed by medics and lawyers in some room and in a very technical and quasi-judicial way. One of the recommendations of our report was self-declaration in that respect.

The other part of the Government’s response that I was heartened to read, as it is important for us in terms of planning for the future, was about the need to get the data right in this regard by better measuring the number of trans people in the UK, and also better monitoring people’s attitudes. If we are really going to tackle inequality in this area and really ensure trans people are able to enjoy the equality we all voted for in the Equality Act 2010, we need to make sure that we take the public with us and that there is the cultural change that is needed.

Perhaps today in her response, the Minister—who has been extremely generous with her time, thinking about these issues and talking to the Committee about them—will tell the House what issues in the 2011 action plan remain unaddressed, and what the status of the new plan is—when will it be published and how will the Government monitor its implementation? If we start to see this sort of certainty, trans people will have more confidence in the fact that not just the Government but public services are starting to get to grips with the issues they have to tackle on a daily basis.

The Gender Recognition Act was pioneering in its time. We criticised it slightly a few moments ago, but it was put on a pedestal as being pioneering—albeit a little late for the constituent of the hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir). Now it needs updating, however. In particular, concern was voiced to us about the medicalised, quasi-judicial application process that is used. The Government have undertaken to conduct a review of the Act, and perhaps to de-medicalise the process and, as the previous Equalities Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), said, to

“overturn an outdated system and ensure the transgender person’s needs are at the heart of the process.”

Again, I was very heartened by that very positive response from the then Equalities Minister in July of this year.

Where is that review at the moment? Has the process been streamlined and de-medicalised, as indicated in the response to our report? Will the Government be considering again the Committee’s recommendations around the principle of self-declaration, which I believe would again put this country at the forefront of trans rights on the global stage, so that again we will be leading, as I believe we would like to as a country, on all LGBT rights?

Finally, I want to talk about primary legislation underpinning the rights of trans people. In our report, the Select Committee made the simple recommendation to change the terminology in the Equality Act by making the protected characteristic “gender identity” rather than “gender reassignment”. The Committee was concerned that, based on the evidence and on the legal advice that we took, the current wording does not adequately protect wider categories of people. It provides for trans people in the process of undergoing gender reassignment, but not the many people who may not have clear legal protection—those who do not live full-time in their preferred gender, non-binary or intersex people, or perhaps children whose gender identity is less well-developed than that of an adult.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has recommended that a broader definition would be clearer and give more certainty. The current wording is outdated and confusing, and we believe that our proposed change would be in line with the Yogyakarta principles and with resolution 2048 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Government have not yet accepted this recommendation, but the Minister has undertaken to keep it under review. Will she update the House today and look carefully at the Bill that I have just presented to the House with the support of other hon. Members?

To get things right, we need the right laws, the right strategy and the right culture. The report we published in December 2015 revealed serious shortcomings in legal protection for trans people and in the delivery of public services. We need to have a clear direction of travel. Our Committee has set out more than 70 recommendations, and the Government have undertaken a considerable body of work as a result of that. I hope that today’s debate will give a flavour of their direction of travel, in order to provide clear optimism for trans people in this country. I hope that it will also remind Ministers of the human cost of not taking the actions that are needed.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate—the first on trans issues in this Chamber. It was a privilege to have been a member of the Women and Equalities Committee for the inquiry, although I subsequently stood down due to my Front-Bench role.

Many of us have been strong supporters of LGBT rights for many years, but until the Committee’s inquiry I knew relatively little of the extent of the issues facing transgender people. We heard moving accounts of people’s transitions and subsequent experiences and also from parents who have supported their children through the process of transition. It was also helpful to hear from service providers, academics and health specialists and from those providing representative and advocacy work within and for the trans community. I thank all of them for providing extensive evidence and for responding to our questions.

A cultural shift is going on in this country around issues of gender. There is greater acceptance of gender differences among young people. Our report identified the need for changes in the law and significant cultural, policy and process shifts in the fields of health, criminal justice, education and others. It also revealed that individuals experience high levels of harassment on a daily basis. That harassment can undermine careers, family life, incomes, living standards, access to services, quality of life and physical and mental health. It is no secret that a disproportionally high number of trans people have reported attempting suicide—an extremely sobering and distressing fact. The sooner we advance trans equality through legislative, policy and cultural change in our public institutions, the sooner there will be fewer trans people in the position of wanting to take their life because they are not getting the necessary care and support and the respect they deserve.

[Mrs Miller]

Does the hon. Lady share the concern I felt when I read that the number of hate crimes against trans people has trebled over the past five years? Does she, like me, hope that more will be done on education to ensure that that intolerance is stamped out?

[Ruth Cadbury]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right that there is an awfully long way to go in the recognition of trans people’s rights. Education is an important part of that. On that issue and others, the Committee discussed the need for adequate, high quality, universal, age-appropriate sex and relationship education in all our schools.

We have seen some progress in trans equality over the past few years. Trans and non-binary characters are actually being played by trans and non-binary actors.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Miller]

This has been an historic debate and I thank everyone who has taken part for making it such a positive one. Better protecting trans people does not mean diminishing the protections in place for women. It is not a zero-sum game and we should not allow those who attempt to paint it as such, and who try to undermine the position and legitimate rights of trans people, to succeed.

The debate has given the House and the whole country an opportunity to hear about the progress that the Government are making on the treatment of prisoners; on passport gender identification, on which Britain leads the way; and on reducing waiting times for NHS services. My hon. Friend the Minister, a fellow Hampshire Member of Parliament, is to be applauded for the energy, action and positive approach she brings. I look forward to continuing to watch her work unfold, but I also look forward to continuing to press her in the Select Committee on the recommendations.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes the UK’s status as a pioneer in legislating for equality for LGBT people; welcomes the Government’s announcement of a new trans equality action plan; and calls on the Government to review its response to the recommendations of the Women and Equalities Committee’s report on Transgender Equality to ensure that the UK leads the world on trans equality rights, in particular by giving unequivocal commitments to changing the Gender Recognition Act 2004 in line with the principles of gender self-declaration and replacing confusing and inadequate language regarding trans people in the Equality Act 2010 by creating a new protected characteristic of gender identity.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Lady will know that the Government have in place many measures to deal with prevention; she is quite right to talk about the internet of things. When it comes to prosecution, I am confident that the CPS understands the international nature of this crime, particularly the exploitation by organised crime groups of cybercrime across the world and the need for co-operation with other jurisdictions to deal with it. Our cybercrime strategy will address a lot of the concerns she has expressed.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Do we not rely too much on prosecution guidance when it comes to cybercrimes, such as online abuse, when there is no substitute for clear primary legislation? Will my hon. and learned Friend carefully consider the proposals of the Law Commission’s 13th programme of law reform, which looks at offensive online communications, and will he advise our right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor that this should be a top priority?

[The Solicitor General]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for the work she has done and continues to do to tighten up the law on offences such as revenge pornography. I believe it is incumbent on the police and on prosecutors to use the existing law more thoroughly, but if there is a case for further reform, the Government will of course look at it very carefully.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

I agree that we need look at ensuring how this guidance is brought up to date. From my perspective, the key is making sure that our young people have the right information and get the right advice, and that through this guidance and the quality of teaching in schools we produce the right attitudes for the young generation growing up in our country. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight the need to get that done effectively; that is precisely what I intend to do.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The Select Committee report to which the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) referred uncovered a shocking truth—that most girls in secondary education have experienced physical or verbal sexual abuse. Four Select Committees are now calling for sex and relationship education to be made compulsory. What more evidence is the Minister looking for?

[Justine Greening]

I do not disagree with my right hon. Friend’s point. The Women and Equalities Committee report was an excellent one, to which we shall shortly respond. I have spoken about the nature of what we need to look at, and there are also questions such as what sex and relationship education comprises and how it can be taught at a high quality. As my right hon. Friend suggests, where it is taught and the breadth of schools in which we expect it to be taught are also relevant questions. About nine out of 10 secondary school teachers say that they have seen children bullied on sexual harassment grounds, which is totally unacceptable. We need to make sure that we take the next steps forward through a thoughtful and measured approach that responds to today’s world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

We will certainly be ensuring that the budgets are spent on skills training, but the whole point of devolving them is to give the local combined authorities the power to decide which are the skills priorities in their area, not to have them asking me for permission to spend on a skills need that they have identified.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Area reviews are an important way of understanding local adult education needs. Will the Minister be encouraging such reviews to look at the needs of women returning to work after caring responsibilities, so that they can use the further education sector to really develop their skills and add to the productivity of our country?

Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown). I listened with interest to his points about cash retentions, particularly in relation to the construction industry. We have been looking at the issue in the all-party parliamentary group on the built environment, particularly the fact that such cash retentions do not apply to residential construction and whether that should be considered.

I rise to speak in support of the Bill because the most important thing that we can be doing at this time is talking about enterprise and how we further it. Let us all remember, however, that the best people to run British business are businessmen and businesswomen, and that while many of us in this House may well have run businesses ourselves in the past—I was a director of an advertising agency—that is not our role here today. That role, whether as Ministers such my right hon. Friend the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise or as parliamentarians, is to make sure that we have the right environment for business to thrive.

The Bill has the credentials to suggest that the Government are doing exactly the right things to make sure that British business is thriving. They have cut corporation tax to 20%, and it is now the lowest in the G20. We have the fastest growing economy in the G7. We are building the sorts of trade links that unfortunately were neglected for too many years before this Government came to power. It is important that we acknowledge this up front, because our role is to make sure that we create the environments for businesses to succeed and that we have a Government who understand how best to do that. Our Government do have a good track record on that, and perhaps that is why we are best placed in Europe in terms of starting businesses or growing new businesses.

I urge the Minister to assure me in her closing remarks that the Government are continuing to work collaboratively not only with local authorities but with our local enterprise partnerships, because through such collaborative work my constituency is now enjoying some of the lowest levels of unemployment we have ever seen. We have secured, with the tenacity of our local enterprise partnership, designation for Basing View as an enterprise zone, with the opportunity to create thousands more new jobs through the sorts of targeted interventions that the Bill sets out. We are working with award-winning organisations such as SETsquared, which is a business accelerator helping, I hope, hundreds of new businesses to come to Basingstoke and—thinking about the comments of the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright)—helping more businesses successfully to access finance.

There are two other aspects of the Bill that I want to talk about. The first is the importance of the Bill in supporting an even better environment for businesses to access the right people and the right practices to succeed. I applaud the measure in the Bill to further strengthen apprenticeships, and the commitment by the Government to support more than 3 million new apprenticeships. In my constituency in the past five years we have seen 4,000 people start apprenticeships. That is important because it will help to solve some of the productivity issues that we know we still have to resolve in Britain.

If this ambitious scale of apprenticeships is to be achieved, we need to ensure that the funding of apprenticeships works in the way that Ministers want it to do. I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State for Education say that she will do more to make sure that schools make children aware of the benefits of apprenticeships. I would like to hear more from the Minister about how we can ensure that, for organisations such as Basingstoke College of Technology in my constituency, which is seeing a 9% annual increase in the number of apprenticeships secured, the funding is available to support this dynamic growth in apprenticeships. There are at present more businesses wanting to place apprentices than there are apprentices coming forward. We need a flexible way of ensuring the availability of funding to meet that increased demand and need.

The second aspect is the provision for establishing a small business commissioner—an interesting way of trying to overcome the problems that many hon. Members have talked about in relation to late payments. In Hampshire we have on average £109,000-worth of outstanding payments to small businesses—a figure supplied by the Federation of Small Businesses. Further measures in that area are to be welcomed. I urge the Minister to consider how we can ensure flexibility within these measures to adapt the role of the small business commissioner if we find that new and different ways could be used to support businesses struggling as a result of late payments.

There are many provisions in the Bill. It contains a further set of measures that will help support business, and I hope it secures the full support of the House tonight.

Childcare Bill [Lords]

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am delighted to open this Second Reading debate. At the general election, the Prime Minister promised that a Conservative Government would

“give working parents of three and four-year-olds 30 hours of free childcare a week”.

We put the early years at the heart of our manifesto because we know how important those years are for children’s school readiness and future educational success. We also know that working families struggle to find flexible, affordable and high-quality childcare. For many parents, this challenge is the biggest barrier to work. So I am determined—and this Government are determined—to deliver these measures that will give children the best start in life, support parents to work and allow our economy and our society to prosper as a result.

We brought forward this Bill so that we can give working parents an extra 15 hours of free childcare—in addition to the current 15 hours of free early education for all three and four-year-olds. The 30-hours offer will give hard-working parents a real choice to earn more by going out to work or working more hours, if they want to do so. We have not wasted any time in delivering on this commitment. Just one month after the election, we introduced this legislation to the other place and launched a review of the cost of providing childcare—something that providers had long called for to inform a fair and sustainable funding rate.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend rightly says that she wants to make sure that her measures are delivering for all children. How is she going to make sure that this Bill delivers for disabled children and their access to childcare, which can be so important for helping parents who want to get back into work?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my right hon. Friend very much indeed for that question. She raises an important point. We want local authorities—in fact, they are under a duty—to ensure that they provide places for all children, including those with disabilities.

This Childcare Bill and the 15 additional free hours it provides is, of course, part of an overall package of childcare measures being introduced by this Government. My right hon. Friend has already talked today about the fact that we are spending over the course of this Parliament £1 billion more on childcare every year. I shall come on to talk about this in more detail.

We will conduct an early years funding formula review, as we want to understand how providers cater for children with disabilities and special educational needs. I should also point out for the sake of completeness that our tax-free childcare proposals mean that the maximum amount parents of these children could pay into their childcare accounts is double the amount that could be paid for children without disabilities. Parents can use that money for children with disabilities until they are 18, and for children who are not disabled until they are 12. I hope my right hon. Friend will agree that we are offering a comprehensive package of childcare support for all children and all families.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Childcare is not a political football, and I really hope that the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) is not choosing to make it one. On behalf of my constituents and, indeed, those of Members across the House, we want to make sure that a consistent approach is taken to childcare in the future. That also applies to the children of those constituents and to the providers of childcare as well.

It is important to recognise that there are important differences between Members on the two Front Benches. The Conservative Government are showing a real understanding of the role of childcare, and their proposed measures are vital for working parents. A quiet revolution has been happening in the workplace since the country’s recovery from the recession, with more women in work than ever before, including, to be frank, in this place. It is important to recognise our different approach, particularly the fact that, over the past five years, the Prime Minister has made it central to his work in Government to make sure that shared parental leave and flexible working are in place for all parents and, indeed, in the case of flexible working, for all of us. The Labour party did not deliver those ambitions during its time in office.

There are still many women who are not in work but who would like to be. I am participating in this debate because it is important to support the Bill, which will double free childcare alongside other measures mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary, including, for the first time ever, tax-free childcare. As she has said, it will offer more support to working parents than any previous Government have ever offered. May I gently suggest to her that as well as talking about our being the party of working people, she should talk about our being the party of working women? In essence, that is what this Government are delivering through the childcare priorities that she has set out.

It is vital to understand the pressures faced by working parents, particularly those with small children. In the past, women who wanted to return to work found it almost impossible to do so because of the financial pressures on them. It would be entirely wrong for the other place to seek to delay this important manifesto commitment by forcing yet further research and funding reviews, which are clearly not required for this measure to work. I underline the words “manifesto commitment” to make sure that those in the other place listening to this debate do not seek to block an important measure supported by Members on both sides of this House.

Childcare costs continue to be a real pressure, which is why the Bill is really important. I pay tribute to the work of organisations such as 4Children which have provided us all with excellent briefings in advance of this debate. In its briefing, 4Children points out from its research that one in five parents have considered reducing their working hours because of the cost of childcare. That is why this Government measure is so important. We have gone a long way to make childcare affordable, but there is still more to do, and the Bill will help to do that for parents. I hope that the hon. Member for Manchester Central, who is listening to the debate on the Opposition Front Bench, really registers that point and accepts that it is the will of parents.

I welcome the Bill, as well as the Government’s commitment to increase average childcare funding rates paid to providers. I also welcome the preliminary measures that the Secretary of State has outlined to ensure a fair distribution of funding across the country.

In most of the families in my constituency—one-parent and two-parent households—all the parents are working. Indeed, 16,000 families in Hampshire could benefit from the Bill. This measure will be a seismic change for those families, and it is important to put it in place. In Hampshire, we are well placed to take advantage of the new measures, because 90% of our providers are good or outstanding, according to Ofsted. We have more than 1,400 early years providers in the county, doing a fantastic job providing private and independently owned places to deliver this key public service.

We are, however, still recovering from past measures that were put in place with good intentions but that unintentionally did some damage. In the past, thousands of childminders left the sector because of the pressure they felt from the administrative burdens on them. That was a great shame, because those childminders provided excellent or good childcare for many working parents, particularly those looking for after-school care. Undeniably, Government funding for free places was top-sliced, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) mentioned in his intervention, because of a lack of focus on the detail of how that could be prevented.

Indeed, parents have in the past been overwhelmed by the complexity of what was on offer. Initiatives were so complex, badly communicated or overlapping that many of our constituents found it difficult to understand how they could access them, and they also provided additional complexities for employers. I therefore welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to making the system simpler, which is an admirable place to start.

For a Second Reading debate, the hon. Member for Manchester Central rather over-focused on the financial details. They are important, but so are other things. I will draw the attention of the Secretary of State and her Ministers to a few of them. The first is the importance of making sure that we have stability for parents in terms of their access to childcare. If working parents do not have long-term, permanent contracts, they may have breaks in employment or variable hours during the working week. We need to make sure that there is stability in the childcare on offer to the children involved. Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend Member for East Surrey, will touch on how he will ensure that there are grace periods, so that parents with an underlying eligibility who have short breaks in their employment can still access childcare if at all possible.

My second point is on flexibility, building on some of the points made by the hon. Member for Manchester Central. Some 45% of women with children do not work full-time. Many work atypical hours, but many work less than a full working week. Flexibility should take account of both types of work pattern so that the cost of childcare is not higher than it should be, relative to the hours those women work. This should be at the heart of the proposals that Ministers are introducing, not left to the discretion of local authorities. I hope Ministers will consider this further, to make sure that a great policy works in practice for women and parents who need it so badly.

[Emily Thornberry]

From my study of the Blue Book, it seems that childcare will not be available to parents unless they have a weekly income level per parent equivalent to 16 hours a week worked at the national living wage. That seems to contradict the idea of people, particularly women, being able to work flexibly.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing that up. I am not about to have a Committee debate on the Floor of the House. I hope she is on the Committee because she will bring undoubted expertise to it, to judge from her earlier comments. I am simply setting out the issues that I think should be debated in the course of the Bill’s passage through the House, and I leave the Ministers to answer the detail of the hon. Lady’s point.

On the business model of the providers, the hon. Member for Manchester Central, speaking for the Opposition, highlighted the need to make sure that the provisions work for the providers. Unlike many services that Governments deliver, childcare is delivered predominantly by private and independent providers. It is important that there is an understanding of the business model according to which providers work, and, as was touched on earlier, it is important to make sure that any funding regime takes into account the realities of business life for providers.

I applaud the announcement today of an increase in the average hourly rate that will go to providers, but this will work only if there is a guarantee that the money made available is not top-sliced by local authorities, which may seek to use it to prop up services that apparently support the childcare sector. Some of those services are important, but most important is that the money gets to the providers to provide the care for our children. Making sure that more of that money gets through will ensure the quality of that care.

Another aspect that I hope the Secretary of State will be able to consider as the Bill passes through the House is the knock-on opportunities for staff. Apprenticeships should be made available to those working in the sector in the quantity that will be needed to staff this new initiative.

I thank my right hon. Friend for her response to my intervention about special educational needs. That point was raised with me by Contact a Family, which has undertaken an excellent piece of research that shows that 40% of families with disabled children cannot take up the 15-hour childcare offer that is currently available. That is 10 times more than the families of non-disabled children. Parents of disabled children often feel that staff do not have sufficient training or that providers can refuse a place for a disabled child. Denying a child that opportunity to develop is unacceptable. Denying parents the opportunity to work is unacceptable. I am delighted to hear that there is a focus on ensuring that the support for children who are disabled to get such childcare is manifest. I applaud the work that has been done and hope that it continues.

In conclusion, I am hugely fortunate to come from an area, Basingstoke and north Hampshire, that has a strong childcare sector—strong because we have a strong local economy as a result of the measures that this Government have put in place. Our unemployment levels are at a record low, but this is not the case all over the country. We need to have a strong scheme to ensure that the childcare sector can flourish in every constituency up and down the country.

In my constituency, more than 40 group settings have said that they want to provide the 30-hour offer and 92 childminders have expressed interest in being part of the early implementation of this groundbreaking offer for parents. I believe that Hampshire County Council is registering its interest in being an early adopter of the policy. I hope that, with support from the Government, the council is able to do that, because we need to ensure that such excellent counties are in the vanguard of delivering this exciting new policy. I commend Ministers for the incredibly hard work they have put into this measure and for bringing it before the House today.

Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that, 45 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970, women still earn on average 81 pence for every pound earned by men; welcomes the fact that pay transparency under section 78 of the Equality Act 2010 will be introduced in 2016; and calls on the Government to ensure that this results in real progress to close the gender pay gap by mandating the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to conduct, in consultation with the Low Pay Commission, an annual equal pay check to analyse information provided under section 78 on pay gaps across every sector of the economy and to make recommendations to close the gender pay gap.

The motion stands in the name of my hon. and right hon. Friends. May I take this opportunity to welcome the new Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice? I hope she will put her heart and soul into it and I wish her well in the role.

It gives me great pleasure to have called the debate today on the subject of equal pay. If we boil it down, we see that the cause of equal pay is a matter of simple workplace injustice. It is about people’s basic right to be paid fairly for the work they do, to have the opportunity to move up, and to be able to improve life for themselves and their families, regardless of whether they are a working man or a working woman.

Equal pay is a fight that colours the history of the Labour party and movement, from women tram and bus conductors who went on strike in 1918, to the women machinists in the Ford Dagenham plant. The House first pressed for equal pay in 1944, in relation to equal pay for men and women teachers. The Conservative Member for Islington East, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, inserted a clause in the Education Bill but it was not to be. Churchill was so incensed that he pressured her to withdraw her amendment, telling her, “Now, Thelma. We’ll have no more of that equal pay business.”

Thelma withdrew her proposal, but Churchill agreed to set up a royal commission on equal pay. Four years later, that commission warned that paying women the same as men

“may prove disastrous in the long run even to young and strong women by heavily overtaxing their nervous and muscular energy”.

Thankfully, times changed, and in 1970 Labour’s Barbara Castle ignored those apocalyptic predictions and passed the Equal Pay Act 1970. Until that time, it was commonplace for jobs to be advertised with one rate of pay for a man, and another for a woman. The Equal Pay Act outlawed discrimination in pay and is still used today by women to challenge such discrimination, but it is not enough. Forty-five years on, women still earn on average 81p for every £1 a man earns.

Throughout our history, my party has fought for equality. We fought for the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, which outlawed maternity and sex discrimination; child benefit; the national minimum wage; a year’s maternity leave and the doubling of maternity pay; 15 hours’ free childcare; and the right to flexible working and paid paternity leave. I am proud that my party cut the pay gap by a third during our time in government, but we did not eradicate it.

I am sure the Secretary of State will say in her speech that the gender pay gap is the lowest on record, but I hope she will also concede that, in the past five years, the pace at which the pay gap is closing has slowed. That is why pay transparency is important. When companies publish data on pay, they are often surprised by how few women are in senior positions or earn the same as their male colleagues, and they usually act to change it.

Last summer, we launched a campaign for pay transparency, which called for a small but important action: that the Government implement section 78 of the Equality Act 2010 and mandate big companies to publish their gender pay gap. It is fair to say the Government put up some resistance, despite an excellent private Member’s Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). There was a rally outside Parliament led by a truly unusual and exotic coalition—I am not talking about the Prime Minister and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). Ex-Bond girl Gemma Arterton joined the wonderful Dagenham machinist women, Unite the union members and Grazia magazine readers to call for pay transparency. The Government changed their stance, and I thank them for having the courage to change their mind, because, after all, pay transparency is a pretty humble measure: the simple act of companies that employ more than 250 workers publishing their pay gap. That simple step can help us to take huge strides towards closing the gender pay gap once and for all.

For that to happen, however, the information provided by around 7,000 businesses must lead to change. Transparency is effective only when firms act on the information revealed.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech and some very important points, but she has not touched on a critical factor: for full-time workers, the gender pay gap for women under 40 has all but disappeared.

[Gloria De Piero]

I will come to the way in which full-time and part-time gender pay gaps are measured. I believe there is a flaw in the measurement. An hour at work is an hour at work, no matter whether someone is part-time or full-time. I for one find it peculiar that the Office for National Statistics makes that distinction. Is it because most women are in part-time work? I fear that that is exactly why.

Friends Life, the big insurance company, was one of the first big companies to publish its pay gap. It said that

“what gets measured, gets managed”

and that

“what gets publicly reported, gets managed better”.

In other words, transparency can lead to real and lasting change. We believe it is time to take that principle and apply it to the whole country.

The purpose of the motion is to propose that the independent Equality and Human Rights Commission should be tasked with analysing the information and producing a report to the Government and Parliament each year. It will monitor progress and make recommendations for action. It will act as an equal pay watchdog. An annual equal pay check would be a tool used to measure progress towards the goal of eliminating the gender pay gap in this generation.

By analysing the information, the EHRC could compare progress in different sectors, highlight areas where the gap is unusually high or widening, and identify companies, professions or industries where the gender pay gap is a thing of the past. We recommend that the EHRC draws on the expertise of the statisticians at the Low Pay Commission, because the disproportionate number of women in low-paid jobs is a major factor in the pay gap. Crucially, the EHRC should make recommendations for action, based on its analysis. It could do that by highlighting the best practice it finds in industries and individual companies, because there is not just one reason for the gender pay gap.

Discrimination still happens. I have spoken to women who are senior executives in investment banks and women working as council care assistants who have suffered because of it. Their stories are real and human.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

The point of the review is to take account of questions of exactly that kind. It is being conducted by the Ministry of Justice, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice, who is also a Minister in the MOJ, has heard what the hon. Lady has said.

Girls often do better than boys at school overall, but evidence shows that their subject choices have a direct impact on their future careers and earnings, and that that imbalance can feed directly into our labour market. A proportion of the gap is also due to differences in years of experience of full-time work, or the negative effect on wages of having previously worked part time or—as was mentioned earlier—having taken time out to look after a family. That highlights the important role that employers can play in supporting women in the middle phases of their working lives by providing effective talent management, facilitating access to affordable childcare, and championing flexible working.

We also know that the gender pay gap is higher for older women. For many of them one of the major challenges is keeping their skills updated, but for others the main challenge is the need to reduce their hours to accommodate increased responsibilities to care for children, grandchildren and ageing parents. Again, employers have a key role, namely to provide a supportive working environment that will enable them to get the best out of all their staff. That will include flexible working.

[Mrs Miller]

The Secretary of State has mentioned older women. I recently looked at some statistics relating to women graduates. For more than 25 years more than 40% of university graduates have been women, and today there are female undergraduates in 53% of the Russell Group universities, which are the best in the country. Given those figures, is the Secretary of State as surprised as I am that fewer than 10% of executive positions in FTSE 100 firms are taken by women?

[Nicky Morgan]

I am delighted that my right hon. Friend is to be the first Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. Yes, I am surprised, but I suspect that we all have friends who, although they were just as capable as us at university, did not decide to pursue a career for some reason, or are not as far up the career ladder as we might have expected them to be. I also suspect that that does not apply to all the men whom we may have known at university.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) and no one could doubt her commitment to these issues. I also wish to congratulate the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) on securing this important debate. Everyone can see from the level of participation so far that there are many Members who are interested in contributing, so I will try to keep my comments as brief as I can.

It is important that we recognise the achievements that have been made in reducing the gender pay gap not just by this Government but by other Governments over recent years. If we go back to 1992, when Baroness Shephard first became Minister with responsibility for women, we can see that we have made enormous progress, and that is coming out in some of the statistics that have been rehearsed today.

As I said earlier, the gender pay gap has fallen dramatically in full-time jobs for people under the age of 40. Although regional and industry variations still exist, it is important that we acknowledge the progress that has been made. Indeed, the full-time pay gap is the lowest and narrowest since records began. Progress has not been as good, however, for those in part-time work or those over the age of 40. It is on those two matters that we need to focus. I will try to have a conversation with the hon. Member for Ashfield about this later, but I am not sure that removing the segmentation of the data would give us the clarity we need in trying to find the answers to some of these problems.

It is right that every woman in this country should have the same right as every man to a job that uses their talents and does not marginalise them simply because of their gender or their caring responsibilities. The policies put in place over the past five years by the coalition Government have created momentum for further progress in the next few years. The modernisation of the workplace will help women across the board, whether through the support for career choices mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, such as the “Your Life” campaign, or through parental leave, the right to request flexible working, or tax relief on childcare. All those things will help to give women the same sorts of opportunities as their male counterparts and I applaud and welcome all of them, but I think that all right hon. and hon. Members in the House today will agree that there is an economic and social justice imperative to continue to tackle the gender pay gap, which is why I welcome today’s debate.

To put it simply, girls outperform boys throughout the education system and have done so not just for years but for decades. We are selling the country short by not allowing the best people to do the best job that they can. More than 60% of female youngsters get five good GCSEs, 10 percentage points higher than boys. Today, 29% of girls and 19% of boys achieve the EBacc. Girls outperform boys in English and maths at school and, as I said earlier, 53% of Russell Group university undergraduates are women. More women get first-class degrees than men and 70% of law graduates are women, yet just 20% of judges in this country today are women.

That has not happened just over the past few years. For more than 15 years, more women have gone to university than men and 25 years ago, when perhaps many of us were in university, 40% of university graduates were women—and they are in their late 40s today. We have an enormous talent pool that is alive and kicking, and we should do everything we can to use it in a country that is enjoying renewed economic success.

The Secretary of State talked about the causes of the gender pay gap and she is right that career choice is important, as is time out of the labour market. Some of the changes that have been made will help to fix those causes, but there is much more to do. I want to close by focusing on three different areas and I hope that when the Minister responds she will be able to reflect on them a little more.

The first is the importance of part-time and flexible working and ensuring that there are more opportunities for skilled part-time working. I have some sympathy with the Opposition’s motion today—although I think the Secretary of State is right that it contains some flaws—but we need to understand the data on flexible working. Indeed, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee produced a report in 2013—I think that the Secretary of State might have been a member of the Committee at around that time—that recommended that more data needed to be collected on flexible working and part-time working. I would be interested to know what progress the Government are making on collecting and publishing data on working practices in that area. The Committee also asked the Government to consider their data collection. In 2013, just 3% of Foreign Office staff worked flexibly, whereas about 40% of Department for Work and Pensions staff did so. Collecting data is important. Are we really confident that we have the data available to understand where part-time working occurs and how successful it is?

My second point relates to older women in the workplace—something that the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) mentioned in her intervention. An enormous amount of change is going on and there is good momentum, but I would be concerned if anyone felt that the momentum that we see in younger women’s working practices will simply work its way through the system because I do not believe that that is true.

Some good work has been done, again, in the DWP on the challenges that older women face, particularly with work opportunities. It is particularly telling that in 1983 the British social attitudes survey showed that 13% of women aged 45 to 64 thought that employers gave them too few opportunities when they got older; today, the figure is 71%. Older women are not seeing opportunities to get back into employment, and they find it difficult to balance employment with their caring responsibilities. The carers pilot was an incredibly important piece of work to put in place. I hope that the Minister can tell us about the pilot’s findings and say when an action plan will be produced.

Finally, the role of women in senior management has been rightly a focus for many Ministers in recent years, and I am sure that we would all commend the Davies commission report, which has done so much to promote women’s involvement in non-executive positions on boards.

[Hannah Bardell]

The right hon. Lady makes a point about women in executive positions. Before I came to the House, I worked for an oil and gas services company where I was one of three women in a senior leadership team of 23. Does she not think that we need to do even more to encourage women into those executive positions, including by extending childcare, to which the Scottish Government have given a lot of support?

[Mrs Miller]

Governments across the United Kingdom will support women reaching their potential in whatever position they take. Certainly, in executive positions, that is important, but there has not been enough focus on executive, as opposed to non-executive, positions. The Fawcett Society is right to question whether unconscious bias is at play here, particularly in respect of the work that executive search firms could do to enhance the number of women candidates put forward. That is another area of work that the Government need to continue to make progress on.

Today’s debate is incredibly important, but we would be wrong to think that it will produce the progress that we need if we say that it is just about monitoring data or putting in place commission reports, although I know that that is not what the hon. Member for Ashfield is talking about. We need a culture change, which needs to be driven by changing working practices and by the sort of things that the Government have been doing in recent years.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—