Public Expenditure Reductions (Women)

John Bercow Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

It gives me great pleasure to introduce the first Adjournment debate after the recess. There could be no more important subject for it than that of women and the economy. Such a debate could not have taken place 50 years ago, when women’s contribution to the economy was seen as marginal, temporary and time-limited. In the 21st century, however, women play a huge role in the economy, and it is right and proper for us to examine the impact of the Government’s “cuts Budget” on women, the family and children.

This Budget—this package of public expenditure cuts—will bear most heavily on the poorest, on women and on children. Our Chancellor has cut and frozen too many programmes that were aimed largely at women, in one of the most unfair and regressive Budgets that I have seen in 23 years in Parliament. His decision to freeze child benefit, scrap the child trust fund, end Sure Start maternity grants, abolish the health in pregnancy grant, cap housing benefit and freeze public sector pay will have a greater impact on women than on men. Women will shoulder fully three quarters of the burden. Research findings in our own House of Commons Library prove that they will shoulder the biggest burden of the cuts. As a result of changes in the revenue raised through direct tax and cuts in benefit, women will contribute £5.8 billion of the £8 billion that the coalition seeks to raise by 2014-15. They will contribute three times as much as men. More than 70% of the £8 billion that Government Members are so proud of raising will come directly from the pockets and wage packets of female taxpayers.

No Labour Member is a deficit denier, and no Labour Member does not believe that we need to take action against the deficit in the long-term interests of society, the country and our economy. However, we are united in believing that the Government’s proposals are uniquely unfair, and will also prove to be ineffective. The research findings in the House of Commons Library take into account changes in tax allowances, capital gains tax rises and changes in tax credit, benefits and pensions, but they do not take into account the £560 million-worth of cuts in the child trust fund, which suggests that women will be hit even harder than the Library figures suggest. Nor do the figures take into account the cuts in public spending and the effect that they will have on women who work in the public sector.

I am an inner-city Member. Most of my constituents work in the public sector. Many of them are women, and many of those women are in female-headed households. They do not have private sector jobs to step into, and they do not have a man to keep them at home. When families lose their major wage earner it is a huge blow to them, and I fear that it may take years for those families and communities to recover. Women will lose out whether or not they are mothers. Support for children has been cut by a huge £2.4 billion, but even when that is discounted women without children will still pay more than men. When we discount all the benefit changes that will affect mothers, women will still pay £3.6 billion towards the deficit compared with £1.9 billion for men—that is twice the amount—and, as we know, the cuts in benefits will only exacerbate existing inequalities in income between men and women.

Underlying the Government’s package—this Government who claim to be new, warm and inclusive—is a very old-fashioned view of society. I was very struck to hear Iain Duncan Smith, who has looked at poverty issues—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I gently say to the hon. Lady that she should not refer to other Members by name?

[Ms Abbott]

I was very struck to hear the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who has paid a lot of attention to poverty issues, saying that he thought it was important that people were prepared to move around the country from estate to estate in search of work. What family model is he thinking of? The family model he is thinking of is one where only the husband works. It did not seem to occur to him that many of these families also have women who work and who are not willing to pack up and follow their husband around the country. There are some very old-fashioned views of society here.

The Budget, together with the likely changes to the welfare system, seems to me to be more supportive of an outdated male breadwinner and dependent female carer model than the dual earner, dual carer model, which is more representative of society whether in Hackney, inner-city Newcastle or middle England. In short, it suggests that the Government are, for all the window dressing, out of touch and unwilling to move with the times.

The House will not need to be reminded that women rely more on benefits and tax credits than men. A larger share of women’s income is made up of benefits and tax credits. More women than men earn too little—because women are largely among the lower paid—to benefit from the change in income tax thresholds. Women are also more likely to work part time or unpaid, meaning they rely on benefits, particularly tax credits, to boost their income. These changes and the cuts to benefits have been dubbed the worst for women since the creation of the welfare state. I have therefore called this debate in order to put on the record the fact that I think this Budget is not just bad for Britain, but bad for women in Britain.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer insists that his Budget is a progressive Budget but, sadly, that only proves to me that this distinguished product of St Paul’s school does not understand the technical meanings of “progressive” and “regressive” in respect of economic matters. Under any analysis this is a regressive Budget because, in relative terms, it takes more from the poor than from the rich.

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[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

I am delighted that the hon. Lady has raised this issue in the Chamber tonight, because I have worked with women in business for the past 10 years. On everything that she talks about—every consequence, every dilemma and every situation that women are in—she has to look to her Government and ask why we are in this disastrous economic state, and she has to bear the responsibility for what is happening. The picture for women in business is mixed. The latest results coming out this week say that a third of women are now the main breadwinner, 39% earn more than their partners and 19%—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Could I just very gently say to the hon. Lady that if this is an intervention—and it is—it needs to come to a conclusion very soon?

[Esther McVey]

My point is that we have to move forward, and the Conservative party is looking at how to get the 150,000 women who are not setting up businesses—when compared with the number of men who are—to do so. That would be worth £7 billion to the economy. What would the hon. Lady’s advice be to women on how to even out the economy?

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[Ms Abbott]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister to impugn the integrity and professionalism of servants of the House?

[Mr Speaker]

Impugning integrity is neither desirable nor orderly. Perhaps I did not hear as clearly as the hon. Lady heard, but I shall listen intently. To my knowledge, nothing disorderly has occurred, but the hon. Lady is a long-standing—I will not say old, because she is not old—campaigner, and she has put her view forcefully on the record.

[Lynne Featherstone]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. No integrity was being impugned, but the Library itself notes that its research paper is not a detailed assessment based on individual tax and benefit data and, therefore, remains a rough and ready approximation.

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[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Lady promised earlier that she would tell the House her assessment of the equality impact assessment.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think that that was an intervention.