Women and the Cost of Living

Debate between Stephen Metcalfe and Lilian Greenwood

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

A few weeks ago I was listening to “The Morning Show” on Radio Nottingham. They were discussing whether people felt better off now that the economy is growing again. A mum rang in. She was working but finding it a real struggle to make ends meet. She admitted that sometimes, in order to get by, she had to ask her son if she could borrow some money from his piggy bank. That is just one story—an anecdote—but I think that it says a lot about life under this Government. Government Members talk about intergenerational fairness. What is fair about a mum having to borrow money from her child to manage until her next payday?

Of course, it is not just one mother who is struggling to get by; millions of women are, and not just in Nottingham, but up and down the country. It is not just women who are struggling, because families up and down the country are facing a cost of living crisis, but it is women who are being hit hardest of all, through cuts in public services, cut in public sector jobs, cuts in the real value of their wages and cuts in the social security benefits they rely on. It is women who are unable to access or afford care for their children or disabled or frail relatives, who are being denied adequate support when they experience domestic abuse, who are losing good jobs in the public services and who are unable to cope with longer waits for the social security benefits they have earned.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

The hon. Lady talks about responsibility. Does she think that it was responsible for the previous Government to borrow £1 of every £4 they spent? Is that not one reason for the problems we now face?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I am not going to take any lectures from Government Members who have doubled the amount of debt in this country.

Of the £14 billion the Government are taking from people’s pockets to pay down the deficit through changes in tax, benefits, pay and pensions since the general election, £11 billion is from women, even though they still earn less and own less than men. More than 40 years after Labour’s Equal Pay Act 1970 outlawed paying women less than men for the same work, women still face a lifetime of earning less. For every £1 a man takes home, a women takes home just 85p.

Under this Government, the situation is likely to get worse. The cuts mean that women are losing employment in the public sector, but they are not getting comparable jobs in the private sector. The Women’s Budget Group analysis shows the following: although unemployment across the whole UK has fallen by 0.6% for men, it has increased by 0.8% for women; the number of women who are unemployed has increased by nearly 15% to over 1 million, the highest level for a generation; and long-term unemployment has increased eight times faster for women than for men. For older women aged over 50, the situation is even worse: unemployment is up by 42,000—more than a third—since the general election, while for older men it has fallen. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) said, unemployment rates are particularly high among black and ethnic minority women.

Some jobs have been created in the private sector, but overall 63% of them went to men and only 37% to women. For women who are still working in the public sector, while wages have been frozen, at least progress was being made year on year to close the gender pay gap, with the difference between the hourly pay rates for men and women narrowing from 18.2% to 14.2% in recent years. There has been no comparable reduction in the private sector, where women earn, on average, 25.1% less per hour than men. As the Fawcett Society warns:

“Unless the government takes urgent action, women will lose their precarious footing in the workforce. We face a labour market characterised by persistent and rising levels of women’s unemployment, shrinking pay levels for women and a widening of the gender pay gap.”

Even the recent return to growth will not necessarily help if the Government do not act. Professor Diane Elson of the Women’s Budget Group says:

“Our big concern is that…women are going to be so far behind they will not be able to catch up.”

Is there any reason to hope the Government are listening and will act? Not if recent announcements are anything to go by. The Tories’ Free Enterprise Group wants to extend VAT—a deeply regressive tax that hits the poorest hardest—to essentials such as food, children’s clothes and bus fares. The Lib Dems tell us that the answer is to increase the income tax threshold. The Deputy Prime Minister claims that that will help those on low incomes, but any gain will be far outweighed by the Government’s tax rises and unfair changes to tax credits—and of course the very poorest will not benefit at all.