Sarah Newton
Main Page: Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)Department Debates - View all Sarah Newton's debates with the Home Office
(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Lynne Featherstone
After 13 years of a Labour Government who left behind them a more unequal society with a widening gap between rich and poor, the idea that an exceptionally weak clause in an Act that has not been enacted or implemented was major legislation, when it contained only a duty to consider, is everything that is bad about politics. [Interruption.] It has not been implemented.
The public sector equality duty that will be introduced in the spring is the strongest measure possible. It will allow for transparency, and it will allow people to hold the authority to account in their locality. What the Government are doing is far more important than the duty the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) mentions. We are taking 880,000 lower-paid people out of tax, and spending £7 billion on the fairness premium and £2.5 billion on the pupil premium, which is additional money and the single most important measure for changing children’s life chances.
What is more, let me read to the hon. Lady what the last Government’s social mobility tsar Alan Milburn said:
“The challenges of the future call for a different relationship between the state and the citizen…It will mean…not just passing laws.”
But that was all the Labour party did—pass laws. What we are doing is about outcomes, not ticking boxes.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
The most disadvantaged children, like all children, need time with their parents to thrive and prosper. Does the Minister think that flexible parental leave and the right to request flexible working are a more progressive concept than equality by diktat?
Lynne Featherstone
Of course, the right for all employees to request flexible working is a hugely important step and extremely progressive. It is about shifting the stigma that has always appertained to women requesting flexible working, and accepting that in whole-life journeys we all have caring responsibilities, including men, who were part of the equation last time I looked.