Equality: Autumn Statement

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for championing this issue so well today. I also thank all of today’s fantastic speakers. We have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) and for Croydon North (Mr Reed), from the hon. Members for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) and for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), and from the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer). We heard from them on a range of issues, from the gross injustice faced by the WASPI women, the disability work gap, the productivity gap and the benefit cap to the universal credit cuts, paternity rights and the fact that austerity and cuts have ultimately fallen largely on the shoulders of women over recent years.

Last month’s autumn statement was an opportunity for the new Chancellor to signal a change of direction and repair some of the damage caused by six years of Conservative failure. Indeed, we were told that our cumulative deficit would be £122 billion by 2021, a far cry from the eradication of the deficit that we were promised by 2015. We have seen six wasted years, in which the deficit has spiralled, debt has spiralled and productivity, which drives our economy, has hit rock bottom; six years of pernicious cuts and schemes aimed at dismantling and marketising our public services, which are now teetering on the edge of a cliff; six years in which the wealthiest enjoyed tax giveaways, while the most vulnerable saw their incomes savagely cut.

How did women fare in all this? I was quietly optimistic before the statement, given that we have a female Prime Minister after all, and she waxed lyrical in the days preceding the statement that the Government would help the so-called just about managing. Sadly, nothing could have been further from the truth. As we have heard, the autumn statement ensures that 86% of cuts will still come from women. There was nothing for those dubbed “just about managing”, no reversal of universal credit cuts, no reversal of cuts to employment and support allowance, nothing for our NHS and not even a mention of social care. The figures are even more depressing. Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that real wages will not recover to 2008 levels even by 2021. This is unprecedented in modern British history, and that is before we even start looking at the gender pay gap.

The statement was sadly noteworthy more for what it was missing than what it achieved, but perhaps most disappointing was the Chancellor’s failure to address the disproportionate impact of the past six years on women. He had his chance. For example, Labour made it clear that we would support him should he fully reverse cuts to universal credit, yet he chose not to and announced a meagre change to the taper rate, which will do little to mitigate the effect of the wider cuts, which disproportionately affect women.

The House of Commons Library helpfully modelled the effects of the changes on different family situations. A lone parent on the national living wage with one child is set to experience a net loss of £2,600 in 2020-21, even with the reduced taper rate. Of course, that is a desperate situation for any family, but further analysis shows, interestingly, that single female adults make up 88% of total single adults in receipt of the child and/or working tax credits that form part of the new universal credit bundle.

Not only did the statement fail to address the discrepancy in the impact of tax and benefit changes, but the systematic failure to properly fund our public services impacts on women more than men. For example, the social care sector is in crisis. In fact, it is not just in crisis; it is on the brink of collapse, which in turn puts even greater pressure on our already creaking NHS. Yet the autumn statement did not provide a single penny. Not only is this situation untenable for all in need of care, but the chronic underfunding excessively impacts on women. Women are the main recipients of social care services and constitute the majority of both paid and unpaid carers. About 80% of all jobs in adult social care are held by women, and let us be honest: the majority of them are not very well paid.

The Government seem to be suggesting that allowing local authorities to raise council tax will address the situation, but we on the Labour Benches know that such a solution creates severe geographical discrepancies and will go nowhere near plugging the gap. In fact, in my constituency of Salford and Eccles it will not even touch the sides of what we need to fund our social care system.

I began by saying that the autumn statement was an opportunity for the new Chancellor to change direction. Sadly he missed that chance, but the Minister today has another chance to correct the gender imbalance that the economic policies of the last six years have created. We need to address the fact that tonight, in my constituency, some women are going to struggle to put themselves to bed because they have no access to social care, or indeed they might be the unpaid carers putting their loved ones to bed. Women will stay on late at work—just to counteract the entrenched gender stereotype in our dog-eat-dog job market—often working longer and harder than their male counterparts for far less pay. Some mothers who have been hit by the pernicious cuts of the last six years will struggle to feed their children and themselves. All these women will dream of a future for their daughter—a future that takes them away from the desperation and shattered ambition that has seeped into society over the past six years.

The Government talk a lot about aspiration, and we have heard some of their words today. Their words, however, are hollow, and the clock has, frankly, been turned back on gender equality over the last six wasted years, with an economic plan that has failed Britain and failed women.