International Women’s Day 2016

Debate between Valerie Vaz and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz]

I will, and I am delighted that she was selected. However, the statistics are still damning. In law, one Supreme Court judge is a woman, and only 13% of QCs are women; in science, women make up only 14.4% of the science, technology, engineering and maths workforce in the UK; in business, only 5.5% of chief executive officers in FTSE 100 companies are women. What about the gender pay gap? In 2014, according to the Office for National Statistics, it was 14.2%, which means that in effect, women work from about 9 November to the end of the year without any pay.

I want to raise two issues about women in my constituency. Locally, there was an equal pay judgment in 2008, and the poor women who worked for Birmingham City Council are still waiting for a pay-out. The men who did the same sort of work picked up extra pay through routine overtime and other bonuses. Mary Ashby and Josephine Haynes are retired, and they have a right to their pay-out. The Government can find £375 billion for quantitative easing, so will they please find the money to make sure that all the women get their pay-out?

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point about women’s pay. According to the OECD, the Scandinavian countries of Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland score highly in where women are most equal. Those countries also lead the UN human development index and a number of other indicators. When women are doing well in a society, everybody does well. That helps the hon. Lady’s argument.

[Valerie Vaz]

I absolutely agree.

The second issue I want to raise is the closure of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs offices in Walsall South. Some 90% of the 60 jobs that will be lost are done by women. They have been offered jobs in Birmingham, but they have caring responsibilities, so they need to stay local. There is also the issue of higher travel costs. The Public and Commercial Services Union has worked out that when 50 jobs are lost, it costs a local economy £1.5 million. That is too much for Walsall to take. If the Government are serious about tax evasion and tax avoidance, they need local staff who have the institutional memory to help people with their tax affairs. The staff build up the skills over the years, which helps them to get promotion through the civil service.