Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Maria Miller and Anne Milton(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Anne Milton
It is not just the civil service; we are looking at allied health professionals, civil servants and social workers. The social work programmes are in London, the west midlands, and the east of England. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point: encouraging women to get back into the workplace is critical, and employers should be aware that there are very clear laws about what they can and cannot do when their employees take time off work for maternity leave.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
As the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) said, despite some of the best laws in the world, women in this country who are in work face more discrimination when they are pregnant than they did 10 years ago, and that can also stop them getting back into work. Will the Government consider making it clearer that employment tribunals have discretion in allowing individuals to bring discrimination cases in special circumstances outside the general three-month limit? Surely pregnancy must be a very special circumstance indeed.
Anne Milton
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right—pregnancy is a very special circumstance, and women and employers are not always aware of their legal obligations. Some of the work that we are doing on gender pay gap reporting will be an important part of that, because it will highlight some of those issues and enable us to dig deeper into the reasons behind that pay gap. I have no doubt that some of it will be due to discrimination against women in the workplace.
Parliamentary Candidates: Barriers for Women
Debate between Maria Miller and Anne Milton(6 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Anne Milton)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies) on securing the debate. I was tempted to say “Stop squabbling,” and it is very likely that I will forget the speech I have in front of me: my one point is that if we want to change things, we have to take down the party political barriers. There is fault on every side, but all political parties have done what they can and what they feel is appropriate to make sure that some of the barriers come down.
I go to women’s forums where people stand up and say, particularly in business, “We have done so well.” I get a bit tired of hearing how well we have done; the truth is that we have not done well enough. I am absolutely clear about one thing: as women, we have to take down those barriers. Only then can we get change.
Mrs Miller
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we need to do more. We need the data to understand exactly how much more we need to do. As she knows, the Government could enact section 106 of the Equality Act 2010, so that parties publish the data on candidates who are standing. The Government have rejected that proposal from my Committee.
Anne Milton
I thank my right hon. Friend and praise her for the work she has done. In life, it is the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.