Tax Credits

Debate between Seema Malhotra and Stella Creasy

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra]

I will give way in a moment if I can make some more progress.

It is shocking that the Government continue to avoid telling the truth about these changes, including the Prime Minister, to whom I wrote last week, asking him to clarify his comments that after all the Government’s changes a family where one earner is on the minimum wage will be £2,400 better off. He is yet to be clear about how he reached that conclusion, how many families will gain in the way he suggests or what assessment he makes of the analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Resolution Foundation, Barnardo’s and so many others who are against these changes.

The Chancellor chose either not to perform or not to publish an impact assessment of these changes for the Commons—a move that was criticised in no uncertain terms by the Social Security Advisory Committee. There are only two ways to interpret that: the Government either do not want to know or do not want to tell.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend talks about the impact of these changes. Let me give her one simple example from my Walthamstow constituency of a working mum. When her tax credits were delayed, we had to refer her to a food bank because they were literally the difference between being on the breadline and having bread. Does my hon. Friend agree that that will happen to working people across the country if these changes go ahead?

[Seema Malhotra]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She highlights, too, the impact of the Government’s appalling administrative processes on our constituents. They are left trying to make ends meet and having to go to food banks. More than 60% of the use of food banks is due to issues with benefits and benefits administration.

Women Entrepreneurs

Debate between Seema Malhotra and Stella Creasy

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Stella Creasy]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman will be back, because it is good to see male MPs supporting the idea that there is a gender gap that needs to be addressed. However, may I venture to say that that is not necessarily a concern because of his wife but because when 51% of the population are not fully utilised it is a concern for us all that we are missing out on the contribution that they could make? Frankly, sorting this issue out would help a lot of men, because it would help our economy, and therefore it perhaps has less to do with his wife and more to do with his constituents. It is because of them that he should be concerned about why we have such a gender gap. In particular, my hon. Friend set out well the particular gender gap that we see in the UK, because the situation is not the same in other countries, which should be very telling about what we can do in this country to address these issues.

A number of Members have already pointed out that there would be many more businesses if women were starting up businesses at the same rate as men. However, it is worth considering the situation in other countries. It is not only America that has a higher level of female entrepreneurship than the UK but countries around the world. Therefore, there is something happening in the UK. It is also worth noting that we have a higher rate of churn in the UK, so even when women start up businesses here they are failing more often than in other countries. Women entrepreneurs here are also less likely than elsewhere to attribute the closure of their business to business failure and more likely to cite personal reasons as one of the reasons why their businesses were not successful.

Why does this issue matter to us all? It is because equalising the labour market participation rates of men and women would boost the UK economy by an average 0.5 percentage points every year, with a potential gain of 10% of GDP by 2030. Given the recession that we have just gone through and given the fact that our recovery appears to be beginning to slow, getting more women into business and into leading more businesses would clearly make a tremendous difference to us all and our future economic position. Indeed, the Royal Bank of Scotland has calculated that boosting female entrepreneurship could deliver an extra £60 billion to the UK economy.

[Seema Malhotra]

As always, the shadow Minister is making an excellent speech. She raised the issue of female participation in the labour force and the important contribution to the economy that could be made by boosting the number of women entrepreneurs. Does she also see this situation as an opportunity for us to see women not only as entrepreneurs but as the employers of the future, who employ others and make changes as their businesses start to grow?

[Stella Creasy]

My hon. Friend has pre-empted one of the points that I was going to make, namely that this issue is not just about women employing themselves. Indeed, all the evidence suggests that on the whole women’s businesses tend to be better at creating jobs than men’s businesses, because women’s businesses are generally more labour-intensive than men’s businesses. Again, I go back to my initial theme that it would do men, and not just women themselves, a big favour if we could get more women into business.

Therefore, it is worth asking ourselves why we are not seeing that kind of progression in the UK, given that we need it within our economy to make it more stable. My hon. Friend set out the admirable record of the previous Government in bringing forward this agenda and I am very proud of the previous Government for making women’s business a priority for all, and not just for women. However, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) rightly said, we have all seen that the progress on this issue has been too slow. Since 2008, the percentage of small and medium-sized enterprises run by women in this country has only gone from 14% of the total number of SMEs to 20%, which is a 6 percentage point increase in that time period. That is simply not good enough. As a result, women own only about one business in five in this country. When we compare that with America, where women are twice as likely to be entrepreneurially active as women in the UK, even though the rates of entrepreneurship for men are very similar for both countries, that tells us the problem that we face here.

In that same time—the period since 2008—it is also worth reflecting on just how quickly women’s employment in and of itself has changed. Not only have women been hit disproportionately hard by the Government cuts but in terms of unemployment. Therefore, it is not a surprise that in the boom in self-employment that we have seen in this country in the last five or six years, women have accounted for much of that growth. Women account for under a third of those who are in self-employment in our country, but more than half of the increase in self-employment since 2008 has been among women. In fact, between 2008 and 2011 women accounted for an unprecedented 80% of the new self-employed people within our economy, which means about 300,000 more women going into self-employment since the economic downturn.

What sort of businesses might those new businesses be? I am sorry to see that the Members from Northern Ireland in Westminster Hall have now shrunk down to one—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—but I hope that it is a case of quality not quantity. The hon. Gentleman himself talked about online shopping and women using their interest in that to drive business. What we have certainly seen is a boom in the internet economy and the opportunity not so much to shop online as to sell online; we have certainly seen that women have been taking advantage of that opportunity. I would wager that that is not so much because of women’s interest in shopping but because of the reduction in barriers to entrepreneurship that online activity creates. The fact that now someone needs only a few hundred pounds to set up a business rather than several thousand pounds, because it is possible to sell online, changes our economy in substantial ways. Indeed, online businesses have accounted for almost a quarter of total UK growth in recent years, and much of that has been driven by new entrants into the market, including women benefiting from the fact that they can combine work around some of their other commitments to get into that online business.

[Seema Malhotra]

The shadow Minister is making an excellent point and I am reminded of the excellent phrase in the book, “A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom”, by Peninah Thomson, in which she talked about the “customer being queen”, because of the fact that women are responsible for more than 80% of retail purchases, or decisions about them. Does my hon. Friend agree that that highlights even further the need to focus on women and what they can bring to our economy through setting up enterprises? The fact is that when women make decisions about what to purchase for themselves and their families, they understand the market so much more than men, and when they come forward and start businesses they are often filling niches and going on—just as Anita Roddick did with the Body Shop—to be hugely successful.

[Stella Creasy]

Again, my hon. Friend shows her experience in this area. What we are certainly seeing is that women who start businesses tend to bring forward new products, as opposed to men who start businesses, who tend to bring forward competitor products. So women are certainly driving innovation.

My point in referring to the online economy is to set on the record that Labour thinks this issue is less about women bringing their previous experience of purchasing to business so much as their ability to use the opportunity that online behaviour offers to open up markets to people. When someone is bringing a new creative product to the market, having a window that sells to millions of people rather than perhaps having a window just in their local high street opens up the potential for greater success, and it is important that we consider that and ask ourselves how, for example, we can support more women to learn skills, such as coding, to be able to sell online.

A number of Members today have obviously focused on women themselves and what might be stopping them from getting into business. Certainly, one of the issues that people have come up with is child care. So let us be very clear that there probably is an issue around child care and helping women to be able to juggle, which suggests men are holding women back, because, after all, it takes two to have a baby. One thing that I would be interested to hear the Minister’s view on is how we can make men hold up their part of the bargain in looking after children, so that their wives can be the successful entrepreneurs that they want to be.

Labour’s child care proposals will probably help a lot of women entrepreneurs. For example, there is our proposal to increase the number of hours of free child care that are available. With child care costs rising by up to 30%, there could be many parents—for example, the women who want to be the next Anita Roddick or Laura Tenison—who find their ability to be entrepreneurial being hampered as a result of this Government, because they find they cannot afford the child care necessary for them to spend the time setting up a business.

Today, therefore, I will set out four areas that I would like to hear the Government’s response about. They are less to do with women and more to do with the environment that we are asking women entrepreneurs to enter.













First, hon. Members talked about finance. Clearly, finance matters. The evidence shows us that women start businesses undercapitalised, and with not just less finance, but fewer human resources and less social capital. That puts them at a disadvantage by comparison with their male counterparts. Not having the same level of resource is a factor in respect of confidence and risk-aversion among female entrepreneurs. It is important to say that it is not always a bad thing that women are risk-averse, but we should recognise it when they do not have the same resources, and so cannot take the same risks, as their male counterparts. We must consider how to ensure that they have access to more resources, rather than encouraging them to take more risks, and we should recognise that their lack of confidence may not be misplaced and that they might not have the resources to succeed.

How much of a barrier is finance? Some 10% of female entrepreneurs say that access to finance is their only barrier to entrepreneurship, and that it is a particular challenge in respect of expanding in the way they would like to. Again, that appears to be a bigger problem in the UK than in other countries, particularly in Europe. Women in Europe are much more likely to be able to access finance to start and run their businesses than their UK counterparts. Some 20% of women in the UK have tried to get money to start a business but have been turned down, compared with only 11% of European female entrepreneurs.

My hon. Friend talked about the Aspire fund, which was set up in 2008 to try to deal with this challenge and ensure that there was a dedicated pot of money to support women in business. As she said, as of last year only £4.7 million of the £12 million had been invested. It is worth comparing that with other forms of start-up finance backed by the Government to see what the difference is. For example, in the same period, the enterprise finance guarantee scheme, set up to provide assistance to small businesses with an annual turnover of less than £41 million, has offered £2.6 billion, and £2.3 billion has been drawn down. The regional growth fund, which matches private finance with public assistance, has awarded £2.6 billion, of which £1.15 billion has been drawn down. There is a differential. It would be interesting to hear the Minister’s view on why the Aspire fund has not been as successful in promoting and supporting women’s businesses as some other start-up funds.

Research by Strathclyde university states that decisions regarding women and finance are based on the interaction between women, who may lack confidence—perhaps because they recognise that they do not have the same level of resource to start a business—and those offering them finance, who may have a certain attitude and approach. There is an interesting challenge for us: if we can change the attitudes of those offering finance—for example, through the Aspire fund—will more women go into business?

Secondly, we have to acknowledge the issue of confidence. I challenge slightly the vicious circle that the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned: he said that dedicated schemes for women could undermine their confidence. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the other way of looking at that is that it recognises that they are a priority. Dedicated schemes, with mentoring and support for women, recognising that there is a gap, and bringing other women forward are helpful and supportive.

Some 38% of women in the UK, compared with just 3% of women in Europe, take advice from Government business support projects. Women are more likely to use all forms of business support than men, whether public or private, and are more likely to access support from professional services. It is important that mentoring schemes exist. It matters that other women are in business, because you cannot be what you cannot see. It is a simple principle, but seeing other women being successful in business offers a road map for women, showing them how they could be successful.

I pay tribute, as other hon. Members have, to a women’s business forum in my constituency. I venture to say that that forum, run by the amazing Jo Sealy, is more successful than our general business forum.

Domestic Violence

Debate between Seema Malhotra and Stella Creasy

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome you, Mr Leigh, to the Chair. I echo everyone’s words of support for the work that the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) has done both in bringing this debate to the Chamber and in introducing Jane’s law. I had cause to reflect on that law myself as I had a case in my constituency of a woman whose partner had repeatedly attacked and assaulted her. The partner is still out on bail, awaiting sentencing. Having brought in that law, we must ensure that it is used to protect witnesses. As all Members know, there are some cases that keep one up at night and that one worries about and that case was certainly one of them. I spoke to the victim on a regular basis as I worked to get her rehoused and moved away from the area and from immediate harm. I was conscious that Jane’s law would have made a difference in her case.

I also welcome the work that the hon. Gentleman has done today in setting out the challenges that we face in addressing domestic violence. There is, I think, a consensus across the House that this matter needs to be a priority, not just for our criminal justice system but for our public services as a whole because of the impact that it has on so many families across our country.

May I welcome the new Minister to his role and put on record my thanks to his predecessor? We did not always see eye to eye, but I was certainly grateful for his assistance in the work that we were doing both in Walthamstow and nationally. I hope that we can help the new Minister by filling his inbox with some suggestions and proposals that he can take to his colleagues to make good on that premise of addressing domestic violence in our communities. All of us recognise that it is a very different type of crime to deal with. More than any other criminalised behaviour in our society, it involves the most repeat victimisation. Intimate violence, as it tends to get called, requires a different approach from our criminal justice and social care services. The failure of all of our services to address the matter is reflected in the high numbers of serious case reviews that involve domestic violence and in the numbers of homicides that involve domestic violence.

Many Members here have already mentioned the statistics. I am mindful of what the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) said about statistics, but it is worth recognising the scale of the challenge. It is about not just the numbers of people, predominantly women, who are killed through their relationship with their partners, but the impact on other services. In West Yorkshire alone, 10,000 calls to the 999 service were related to domestic violence. That is 20% of the total number of emergency calls that were dealt with over six months.

One of the first things that must concern the new Minister is the need to get the right data. If we are honest, we do not yet have the consistency of data that is required to understand the scale of the problem and the impact that it has. In particular, I am talking about the way in which police forces flag up intimate violence. They need consistency in capturing the data so that they can see not just repeat offenders but repeat victims. That is a huge challenge. Some police forces are proactive about such issues, but others are less so.

The police force is not the only place in which the issue of data has to be addressed. It is across a whole range of public services. In that sense, the movement towards a single definition by the Association of Chief Police Officers is welcome, but it needs to be shared across services, and people must be trained to understand what they are trying to capture, so that we can truly understand the impact of this crime.

Although nearly 750,000 cases are recorded by the police, only 100,000 ever proceed to prosecution. What is happening to those other 600,000 cases? What are we doing to address some of the causes and to understand what happens next? My first call to the Minister is for him to make that commitment about data. We need to ensure that both the public and voluntary sectors have the data necessary for us to understand the level of domestic violence that exists in our society.

I have a second call for the Minister, and we have heard many Members, especially on the Opposition Benches, making this case and I pay tribute to them. Indeed it is always a unique experience to be in the Chamber when my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) is speaking, because he brings such passion and genuine emotion to the case. We also heard my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) and for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) talk about the changes in our benefit system and what impact that might have on victims of domestic violence.

When we talk about this crime, we are talking predominantly about women, but I pay tribute to those in the Chamber today who have recognised that men are the victims of domestic violence as well. The concept of financial control is key to enabling people to leave abusive relationships. In the changes that the Government are making to the benefit system, there is a real danger that the ability to make that choice to leave will be restricted.

Hon. Members have already talked about universal credit. In particular, they have talked about how it will be nominated to a single person in a household, and how some 300,000 households will be affected. The decision about who gets that money will be critical to the choice about how money is spent. Child benefit is crucial to many women because it makes them financially independent. Universal credit will go much further in aggregating people’s incomes and therefore the ability of people within relationships to make choices about how money is spent. May I press the Minister to look again at this issue, and to speak to his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions about the decision to nominate a single person? Can he look at what more can be done to stop this measure from being a source of financial control? If a single person is to be nominated will he ensure that it is the main carer within a family? We do not want to see women stuck in abusive relationships because they are not able to leave them.

I hope that the Minister is pressing his colleagues in the DWP about the way in which universal credit will be paid and the impact it could have on refuges. About 40% of the women who go into refuges tend to be dual housing benefit claimants. They can claim the money on the property they might have fled and also on the cost of staying in a refuge. Under the new provisions, such a measure will come under the benefit cap. It is not difficult to see how a woman might find herself unable to keep up a private property, and so a secured tenancy, which at some point she may wish to return to with her family once the issue about abuse has been resolved or her abuser is in prison, and to pay for a stay in a refuge, let alone pay for the food that her children need or transport costs under the cap as currently constructed. There is a real concern that it will be the cost of staying in a refuge that will fall under that system.

Refuges are a unique form of supported housing for families. First, they are about not just the individual on the claim but the dependants as well. Secondly, there are no waiting lists for refuges. Already 230 women a day are turned away from refuges in this country because we do not have enough places, so there is not that ability to plan ahead for the need that will be required. Every person who turns up at a refuge is in crisis. A refuge provides only short-stay accommodation. Under the new system, the problem will be not only that the dual housing benefit claimant may find themselves not able to pay for a refuge place but that the payment is paid to the client rather than the landlord. We can see refuges having to chase women, who are being moved around the country, for payment for their place. The work that has been done by several refuges already suggests that almost 60% of their income could be affected, which could be crucial to their future survival.

We need to do more to ensure that we have refuges. If the Minister takes away one message from this debate today it is that Opposition Members are desperately concerned that the changes through universal credit may have severe unintended consequences on the refuge movement in the UK. We may see more refuges closing and more women unable to move out of their properties. That is before we even get into the difficulties that women then face when they are in refuges and receiving support.

I am sure that the Minister is well versed in some of the debates about legal aid. Given that 230 women a week need legal aid assistance to escape an abusive partner and given the relationship that exists between being in a refuge and being entitled to legal aid, the changes could have severe unintended consequences. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North pointed out that the universal credit guidelines will come before Parliament shortly. Let me extend a hand across the House to say that we will work with the Minister to try to change those requirements, so that we can ensure that women who are fleeing from violence are not hampered by the way in which universal credit is administered.

When it comes to money, however, we are not just talking about financial freedom. Again, Labour Members have already spoken very strongly about the cuts to funding and the impact that they are having. We know that, although local authority budgets were cut by 27% on average, those organisations working with victims of domestic violence have experienced a disproportionate cut of 31%. Moreover, that figure masks a further difficulty, because many of those organisations are small organisations that operate on a shoestring; they work on very small budgets. However, we know that those organisations receiving funding of less than £20,000 a year have actually experienced, on average, a 70% cut in their funding and many of them have now disappeared. That is in comparison with those organisations receiving funding of more than £100,000 a year, which have done better.

Those cuts are also filtering through the system. Once again, I urge the Minister to make strong representations to his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, given that we have already seen 23 specialist domestic violence courts being closed during the past year. That is despite the fact that we know the difference those specialist courts make in tackling the issue that I mentioned earlier—the number of domestic violence cases that are brought to charge. Indeed, given that only 58% of those 100,000 cases are successfully prosecuted, we need to ensure that we have a court system that understands the issues that we are dealing with and that is able to work with the victims that we are all talking about. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) has now left Westminster Hall, but he ably raised that issue about the court system.

[Seema Malhotra]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to get to a point where we will see a step change in the number of successful prosecutions of domestic violence? It cannot be right that we have such a low rate for successful prosecutions. Surely we need to look at shifting the way that we balance evidence to be in favour of those who are victims rather than adopting the default position, which seems to be taking the view that there is not enough evidence, or, “We cannot prosecute, because it’s his word against hers”? We need to say, “Let’s hunt for the truth and let’s start to see a step change”, and there should be no complacency in wanting to see a much better outcome through the justice system.

[Stella Creasy]

I absolutely agree with my colleague and, if anything, that is the second message that I hope the Minister takes away from our comments today—there needs to be a step change in how we as a society address domestic violence. Clearly, we are not getting it right at this point in time. The changes in relation to universal credit that I briefly mentioned earlier are just a microcosm—the tip of the iceberg—of the way that we need to think differently about how we deal with victims of domestic violence.