International Women’s Day

Debate between Maria Miller and Jim Cunningham

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend and fellow member of the Select Committee for raising that point. I am married to a lawyer who works for the firm Kingsley Napley, where more than 50% of the partners are women. However, I urge my hon. Friend to look at some of the other law firms in the City of London that do not have the same proportion of women at the top, and to encourage his daughter to look for those good employers so that she, too, can progress right the way through to the top.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Could the right hon. Lady tell us what progress has been made regarding the pay gap between women and men?

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman raises a really important point. I think that the biggest amount of progress has been in the Government making companies publish their gender pay gap; for the first time ever, the pay gap has become an issue that is on the agenda of businesses throughout the country. However, in answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, there has not been nearly enough progress. Although the gender pay gap has all but evaporated for women under 30, for older women it is alive and well, and we need to resolve it. I will come to that issue later in my speech.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), I believe in equality of opportunity. We need to continue to look for ways of ensuring equality of opportunity for women in our communities. As women we are resilient, but we are so resilient that we sometimes need to stop and appreciate the blatant discrimination that still pervades our lives every single day, and which still denies some women the level playing field of opportunity. Too many women’s confidence is sapped—their career even destroyed—by bullying and sexual harassment at work. Forty per cent. of women in this country, and millions more around the world, suffer sexual harassment.

That issue was well highlighted this week by the day of action that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and I hosted, when women from across the country, supported by CARE International, came into Parliament to lobby Members of Parliament to support the new International Labour Organisation global convention, which will outlaw sexual harassment and abuse at work in every country in the world, if it gets the support of their Governments.

Discrimination is still blatant because so much of the enforcement of the laws that we have passed in the UK is not working as we would want it to. In the Government’s new good workplace report, they set out the importance of enforcement of workplace rights, and they are right to do so. However, I urge the Minister for Women also to look at the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and the laws that pertain to health and safety, as well as others that are being looked at as part of the good workplace report. Legislation puts enforcement powers for those anti-discrimination laws into the hands of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but if it is not exercising those powers, we should give them to somebody who does. No one should be prepared to stand by and watch more than 50,000 women a year leave their jobs simply because they are pregnant, even though we already have laws in place to prohibit that.

One in eight women in this country want to start their own business, often as a way to create their own business culture, yet they find that just 9% of funding for start-ups goes to women, despite women-led businesses delivering double the returns on investment for financial backers. When a woman looks to Parliament to fix the problem, she might see a very strong Prime Minister admired for her resilience, but on these green Benches—well, perhaps not today, but usually—she will see that just one in three MPs are women. As I have said, the most important way to build in a resilient equality between men and women is through women’s economic empowerment—women’s full participation in work, including here.

The truth is that many of the barriers in women’s workplaces, including those that remain here, are in need of reform. With regard to the laws that we are so proud of having passed in this place, the reality is that a lack of enforcement on the ground often makes them worse than useless for many women. Most women do not work in the City of London, in large accountancy or law firms or in City institutions that may have modernised their approaches. Our constituents face a very different workplace, often still stuck in the ’70s, with presenteeism, a long hours culture, a lack of flexible working, employers who routinely use non-disclosure agreements to cover up discrimination, and management who look down on dads who want to take parental leave to share in the care of the newest members of their family.

Domestic Abuse Victims in Family Law Courts

Debate between Maria Miller and Jim Cunningham

Thursday 15th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that what is really required is some form of witness protection scheme? We had a Bill on that many years ago.

[Mrs Miller]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, and that might be appropriate in some cases, but I have to say that many of the people who have spoken to me about this issue simply want these very basic measures in place—things that frankly should be in place already, but are not being given the priority that they need. I know that there are pressures on the court system, and on budgets, but we have to make sure that the courts see this as a priority, and at the moment, we could be forgiven for thinking that they do not.

A third element that I would like to see is proper training for family court staff, particularly on coercive behaviour—an issue that the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) spoke about eloquently. Lastly, but by no means least, there should be expert risk assessments in child contact cases when abuse is involved.

We know that the Government understand the problem. Just three months ago, the Prime Minister said at the Police Federation’s annual conference:

“Victims of abuse are still being let down”.

Improvements such as those announced today are welcome, but the change in culture is still not complete. We need the Lord Chancellor, the Under-Secretary—who is here today—my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister to continue to put this issue at the top of the Government’s agenda, because we need to tackle domestic abuse. We need to tackle the sort of tragic cases that the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge mentioned in opening the debate. I hope that this debate will help to ensure that the issue continues to be at the top of the Government’s agenda for the rest of the Parliament.

Defending Public Services

Debate between Maria Miller and Jim Cunningham

Monday 23rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I welcome the legislative programme that the Government have set out in the Queen’s Speech, particularly on improving life chances for disadvantaged people, which is in the very best traditions of one nation Conservatives.

In opening the debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State demonstrated his strategic vision and his clear personal commitment to improving life chances through the NHS. We owe him a debt of gratitude for the work he is doing in that respect, and for his work on ensuring that the NHS is fit for the future. There has been a great deal of discussion about NHS budgets—perhaps there was a lack of clarity from the Labour Front Benchers on their budgets—but, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said, we need to talk not only about the budget, but how we use that money. That is the point I will focus on in my contribution.

In this Session, whether through legislation or other ministerial action, we need to ensure that we have a nimble, agile and responsive NHS for the future. We need public services that respond to people’s needs as they change. People’s lives are changing: we are living and working longer, and we have growing communities with more housing. The NHS, not simply Ministers, needs to respond to those changes to reflect our changing community needs.

The NHS cannot afford to lag behind its users—its patients—in its thinking. That is why I believe that, more than ever, the Government need in this Session to ensure that there is more devolution to local government to join together NHS spending and social care spending, which will help to make sure that our money goes further in future.

Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, has set out a compelling vision for the NHS in this changed world. People with non-life threatening needs should have access to care as close to home as possible, and people with life-threatening conditions should be treated in centres with the very best 24/7 consultant-led care. That is safer and better for patients.

Like many constituencies throughout the south-east, my community has grown not only in recent years, but throughout the recession. We need the Secretary of State to press for a nimble NHS that can respond to the changes in our community, and hopefully plan for the future. We need clinical commissioning groups to work to ensure that new doctors’ surgeries are delivered where there are new houses, and that hospitals deliver the very best every day of the week.

In my constituency, we are truly fortunate to have clinicians who are already ahead of that thinking. The Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust already has fully funded plans, a site with planning permission and support across the community to establish a 24/7 critical treatment hospital, bringing together emergency care for the sickest patients in one site, leaving those requiring walk-in A&E, planned surgery and out-patient care to our local hospitals in Andover, Winchester and Basingstoke.

That approach has been developed by clinicians to keep services safe and sustainable, and I urge the Secretary of State to ensure that we listen to clinicians carefully. They often see the needs of the NHS changing before others do, and we need to ensure that those changes are put in place. The NHS investigation unit is looking at how we deal with delays at A&E, because the changes proposed by clinicians have not been brought forward in a timely manner. We are now awaiting a new models of care programme, and sustainability and transformation plan. In the meantime, my constituents regularly face more than four-hour waits in A&E, which I hope will come to an end when the long-awaited centralised critical treatment hospital is brought to fruition—after four years of planning and discussion.

Within the NHS programme for the future, we need to find ways to respond to the needs of other groups of people. The first Women and Equalities Committee report brought the needs of transgender people to the fore. It was clear from the evidence we received that access to primary and specialist care for this group of people was far from routine and, in some cases, quite shocking—another example of the need for the NHS to respond carefully to the needs of communities. I do not underestimate the challenges GPs face in our communities, but we need to ensure that they are tasked with, and deliver on, treatment and care plans for every group of people and do not leave minority groups out.

We live in a country with a proud tradition of fairness and some of the most comprehensive legislation in the world to protect disadvantaged people—the theme of the Queen’s Speech. Too often, however, legislation does not create the change in the delivery of public services that we in this House would perhaps like to see. I hope the Government will use every Bill in this parliamentary Session to challenge themselves on whether there is more that can be done to support disadvantaged people: whether, in the modern transport Bill, the Government could consider how disabled and older people can benefit from important developments in transportation; whether, in the local growth and jobs Bill, the Government could look more closely at the three quarters of pregnant women and new mums who suffer negative or discriminatory experiences at work, and bring forward measures to help to address this problem more speedily to unlock this important pool of labour for the future; and whether, in the education for all Bill, the Ministers responsible could look carefully at the House of Lords Select Committee paper on the achievements of disabled children in schools. Despite a great deal of work in recent years, we still need to be better at unlocking the educational achievement of disabled children. At the moment just 18% of children with special educational needs achieve good development, compared with 65% without.

The prison reform Bill will of course be pivotal in supporting disadvantaged people. I am sure there will be a great deal of debate on that today, but I would like very briefly to touch on the importance, in relation to the Bill of Rights, of the need to ensure that we really do tackle the disadvantage that people face. I refer again to the need to address the rights of transgender and non-gendered people. They suffer great disadvantage in our society. If we are to have a Bill of Rights, we need to tackle this issue head on.

Before I close, I want to touch on something very close to my heart from when I was a Minister: superfast broadband. I was delighted to see the Government propose a Bill to ensure that superfast broadband is seen as the essential utility that it is. I am sure the Health Secretary will have responded to this with great joy too, given his previous role as Culture Secretary.

The experience of my local authority means that I will be looking very carefully at the detail of the Bill. My local authority in Basingstoke has long seen superfast broadband as essential infrastructure, but when trying to make it happen, in terms of planning conditions for building, it has been blocked pretty firmly by the local planning inspector. Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council and Hampshire County Council have looked long and hard at how they might make progress on this. I am sure they will welcome, as I do, the measures in the Queen’s Speech. Indeed, they have asked the Government for superfast broadband to be a material planning consideration. I hope the Minister will clarify that superfast broadband will be a material planning consideration and indicate when that will come into force. My local community, like those of many other Members, has seen a rapid increase in the rate of house building, and we need to know when this might come into play.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Coventry has also experienced problems with BT’s delivery of broadband. That is one of the big problems. I know that Ministers have been looking at this, but we need urgent action. BT is a big problem in this regard.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman makes a point that many Members have made, but I am making a very different point—about ensuring that local authorities can make superfast broadband an essential prerequisite for new house building. No one can build a house in this country without water, electricity and the many other utilities we have come to rely on. Superfast broadband has fast become a basic utility of life, and that is how it needs to be viewed; I am sure that other Members will mention the performance of those who put the service into place.

The Government have a powerful opportunity to continue on their mission to improve life chances for disadvantaged people, not only in the obvious Bills, such as the one on prison reform, but in every single Bill on their agenda. I urge Ministers to consider carefully how they can bring that into play. While we might have some of the best equalities legislation in the world, when it comes to putting it into practice, we sometimes fall short. We need to admit that and up our game.

International Women’s Day

Debate between Maria Miller and Jim Cunningham

Thursday 5th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered International Women’s Day.

This motion in support of international women’s day also stands in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee). I should say that my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash did the heavy lifting on all this but was detained elsewhere and unable to go to the Backbench Business Committee on the day we put our bid in. I thank her, and all the right hon. and hon. Members across the House who supported our application for this important debate. It is one of the rare parliamentary moments in our calendar when, across the Chamber, there is more that unites us than divides us. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for its support in making the debate possible.

It is an enormous privilege to open this debate. It is not only here that international women’s day will be marked—more than 300 events will be held in the UK to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women across our globe. Our enduring thanks have to go to organisations such as the United Nations, Oxfam, Women for Women International, CARE International and the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, which bring this event alive for thousands of people across the United Kingdom.

Each international women’s day gives us an opportunity to pause and take stock of the progress that we are making throughout the world in gaining a fundamental right: the right to be treated equally, regardless of our gender. The breadth of today’s debate is daunting, and I do not think that any one speaker can hope to cover every aspect of the important work that many Members are doing in the House, whether it is connected with domestic violence towards women, female genital mutilation, or a host of other issues that are equally important. I want to focus on two issues: the role of women in the workplace and their role in this place.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady and her colleagues on initiating the debate. Does she agree that we still have a long way to go before women have parity with men in terms of pay?

[Maria Miller]

I think we have made important progress in that regard, particularly under the present Government but previously as well. For women under the age of 40, the gender pay gap has all but disappeared, and when we disaggregate the overall data, we see that progress has been made. As the hon. Gentleman says, it is worrying that the gap has not disappeared completely, but, as I am sure he knows, that has much to do with some of the choices that women are making about how they want to lead their lives, which they have an absolute right to do, and also with some of the choices that they are making early in their educational careers. We need to ensure that they are fully aware of the implications of those choices.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

One way in which women could be helped, particularly younger married women with families, is by our having a look at the crèche facilities in this place.

[Maria Miller]

I know that we have crèche facilities, although I am not sure that my 12-year-old would be too excited about going there. The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, which is that at the beginning of the next Parliament, when we start to think about the working hours of this place—I know that there are many different competing demands, with people living in various parts of the country—we have to ask ourselves the questions. If, as the Conservatives will, we have many young women coming into Parliament who may have not yet started their families, and if we are to encourage them to stay here for as long as possible, we have to address the sort of issue he is talking about. I want to encourage more women who have families into Parliament. At the moment, 40% of women MPs do not have children and that is not representative of our population as a whole. In addition, women tend to have shorter parliamentary careers than their male counterparts and tend to have older children, too, so there are some forces at play that he is right to pick up on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Miller and Jim Cunningham

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I am not aware that the FCO would make that sort of advice available to people, although it is obviously important that we advise people on security issues, as we do in relation to many nations. The hon. Lady is right to say that we can use culture and cultural links to advance many human rights issues. When I visited Moscow and St Petersburg in December to discuss the year of culture, I used that opportunity to meet a wide selection of human rights organisations, including those that support people on issues of domestic violence.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

6. What plans she has to bring forward legislative proposals in respect of football governance and finance.

BBC

Debate between Maria Miller and Jim Cunningham

Monday 12th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

Every Member in the Chamber attaches enormous value to the role of the BBC. All those things are regularly under review as part of the charter renewal process. I am sure my hon. Friend will want to give his thoughts as we move forward to that.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Given that the BBC Trust appointed the BBC director-general in the first place and that he has had to resign, does the Secretary of State agree that there is a case for looking at the Trust and its composition?

[Maria Miller]

The role of the Trust is to ensure that the BBC executive works as it should. We will always work closely with Lord Patten on that. At this point, we want to ensure that there is a period of stability in which we can see the outcomes of the reviews that have been put in place. They may well raise the sorts of issues the hon. Gentleman raises.

Employment Support

Debate between Maria Miller and Jim Cunningham

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I am sorry; the hon. Gentleman needs to listen to what I am saying here. What we have done as a Government is to follow the Labour modernisation plan. We have followed it for the last two years and continued to make sure that in these tough economic times £555 million continued to be available. What we are not doing is wasting money; we are making sure that the money we have is going further.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I notice that the excellent Coventry plant is down for reconsideration. I also notice that the Minister certainly has not consulted me, or any of the other Coventry MPs. Can we have an undertaking that she will consult the Coventry MPs? More important, to help her with her reconsideration we are prepared to give her a tour of that very successful factory, which does work for Jaguar Land Rover and other automobile industries. Is the Minister planning to privatise that plant?

[Maria Miller]

I am always happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. I think I have visited the factory in Coventry. We had a consultation on the process, with many contributions from hon. Members, but obviously I shall be happy to meet Coventry Members at any point in time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Maria Miller and Jim Cunningham

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

The average wait at the moment is more than two months for a new application to be processed, and that can lead to non-resident parents unavoidably accruing arrears—a problem that we inherited with the present very difficult system. We have plans to undertake a fundamental reform that will considerably improve this, and lead to a much shorter time for processing claims, which will bring considerable benefits.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Has the Minister had any discussions with the Secretary of State for Education about the future of Sure Start? The Conservatives, before they were elected, gave a solemn commitment to retain Sure Start, yet in Coventry the cost is being passed on to the local authority.

[Maria Miller]

rose—