Queen’s Speech

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I welcome the statement in the gracious Speech that the,

“Government will strive to improve the lives of children and families”.

To this end, like my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen, I look forward to the strengthening of the powers of the Children’s Commissioner so as to,

“champion children’s rights and hold government to account for legislation and policy”,

to quote the Department for Education. I hope that this means that in the future, when the commissioner publishes a critical report drawing attention to the way in which a Bill such as the Welfare Reform Bill undermines children’s rights, the Government might pay more attention.

Also welcome is the promise of measures to,

“make parental leave more flexible so both parents may share parenting responsibilities and balance work and family commitments”.

Things have gone quiet on exactly what these measures will be since they were first proposed a year ago in the Consultation on Modern Workplaces, so perhaps the Minister could, when he winds up, tell the House when firm proposals will be published. What was most encouraging to me about this document was its acceptance of the case for a period of parental leave reserved for fathers on a “use it or lose it” basis, which the Nordic experience shows can increase fathers’ involvement in the care of their children. I hope that rumours that this proposal could be dropped are unfounded.

International experience has also shown that, unless the payment provides adequate wage replacement, it is unlikely to be economically viable for most fathers to take leave. At present, under a quarter of fathers in the UK take up their paternity leave entitlement. Moreover, if the commitment to shared parenting is to extend to low-income families, there needs to be a rethink on universal credit, which promotes the opposite by increasing the disincentive for second earners to work, along with a rethink on financial support for childcare, a point made by my noble friend Lady Hughes of Stretford.

However helpful the measures set out in the gracious Speech might be, there is no acknowledgment that the best way in which government can improve the lives of children and families generally is by ensuring adequate financial support, especially in the face of growing evidence of hardship. For instance, there has been a huge rise in the numbers turning to food banks. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has projected a big increase in child poverty, which will only partially be offset by the impact of the introduction of universal credit, and there is evidence that it is families with children, especially lone-parent families, who are the biggest losers from the cuts announced so far.

If the Government genuinely want to improve the lives of children and families, perhaps I may suggest that they should reverse the three-year freeze on child benefit. Inflation-proofing child benefit would do more to help the lowest-income working families than the proposed increase in tax allowances. The money goes direct to the person caring for the child and therefore is more likely to be spent on the child. Also, the Government should drop the widely criticised plan for means-testing child benefit, described only today by the Institute of Chartered Accountants as “seriously flawed”.

I suggest that the Government reverse the change in working tax credit rules that has meant a significant loss for over 200,000 of the “strivers” and “hard-working people” whom the Prime Minister prayed in aid six times in his speech in the debate on the Address, and for whom the advice to seek additional hours is a cruel joke in the current labour market. I also suggest that the Government call a halt to further cuts in social security, signalled in the Budget, which even the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is now resisting, as did a number of his predecessors in the 1980s, some of whom now sit in your Lordships’ House. I hope that they might add their voices to those arguing against further cuts in social security, which will make life that much harder for families and children.

On a slightly different tack, and echoing my noble friend Lord Collins of Highbury, I hope that the silence on equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians does not mean that this has been filed away as too controversial. This is a matter of justice—a value highlighted in the gracious Speech—and it was to the Government’s credit that they appeared to be willing to build on the progress made by the previous Government in this area. Perhaps the Minister can tell your Lordships’ House what is going to happen when the consultation on this has ended. I hope that he can provide reassurance that this is not being filed away as too controversial and difficult.

In an earlier debate on the Address, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, reminded your Lordships’ House that the recent Hansard Society audit of political engagement drew attention to a public increasingly disengaged from and disenchanted with formal politics and government, and in the recent elections people were saying that politics has no connection with their lives. It is difficult to see what there is in this Queen’s Speech to reconnect them to the political process, which surely we must all regret.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, in this welcome celebration of International Women’s Day, we should take note of women’s contribution to society as well as the economy, particularly the large amount of unpaid care work that women still contribute, which underpins the economy and should be counted as such, as already stated by my noble friends Lady Pitkeathley and Lady Kinnock. Nevertheless, following the theme of the debate, I will focus on the obstacles that women and mothers face in contributing to economic growth through paid work.

The significance of women’s paid work to economic prosperity was brought out in a recent Resolution Foundation report, which has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lady Healy of Primrose Hill. However, it also points out that, compared to the better and best-performing countries, around 1 million women could be considered missing from the UK workplace. I want briefly to discuss three policy areas.

The first is the gendered division of labour. In my academic work on feminist perspectives on citizenship, I identify who does what in the private sphere of the home as critical to women’s opportunities for citizenship in the public sphere of the labour market and politics. As women still take the main responsibility for care and housework in the domestic economy, many make their contribution to the wider economy with one hand tied behind them, as the suffragette Hannah Mitchell put it so well many years ago. The Resolution Foundation argues that couples in the UK continue to adopt unusually unequal caring and working roles within the household, and would prefer to adopt more equal roles. It says that there is an opportunity for public policy to raise female employment by freeing couples to share roles in the home.

I suggest that public policy can help through the regulation of working time. A long-hours culture for men is harmful to gender equality for those with family responsibilities. A shorter full-time working week, combined with a range of flexible working opportunities and better pay and conditions for part-time workers would help. So, too, would a reformed parental leave system that followed the Nordic model—which appears so fashionable at present—of earmarking a period of parental leave for fathers on a “use it or lose it” basis without penalising mothers. This, which is often called the “daddy quota”, is typically leave of one or two months. Cross-national analysis suggests that Nordic fathers typically spend more time on childcare than other fathers. While we cannot be sure that that is attributable to parental leave, there is Nordic research that indicates that male use of parental leave has a positive effect on the gendered division of labour and the father’s subsequent involvement in childcare. This also relates to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, about men’s involvement in primary schools. Therefore, I very much welcome the Government’s support for the idea of a daddy quota in their consultation on modern workplaces. I hope they will not be discouraged from pursuing it by those who argue that it would somehow be detrimental to business.

The second related obstacle is childcare, already discussed by my noble friends Lady Healy and Lord Davies of Abersoch. The OECD has highlighted the extent to which unusually high childcare costs represent a barrier to dual-earner families in the UK and, of course, to lone parents. Unfortunately, the cut in help with childcare costs through the tax credit system, at a time when the Daycare Trust shows that these costs are spiralling, raises the barrier further, despite the welcome planned extension to those doing mini-jobs.

Thirdly and finally, the cutback in support for childcare contributes to a deterioration in work incentives for second earners, the majority of whom are women. In low-income households, second earners’ work incentives will also be badly hit by the introduction of universal credit. It is supposed to improve work incentives, yet the policy briefing of the Department for Work and Pensions shows how, even without taking account of childcare costs, most second earners on universal credit will face a reduced incentive to take or stay in paid work, and about three-quarters will face a reduced incentive to improve their earnings once in work. We raised this issue in the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill, pointing out that universal credit could mean a shift back to a more traditional male-breadwinner model and weaken the labour market position of women. As the Women’s Budget Group has pointed out, even a fairly short period out of the labour market can mean the depreciation of women’s human capital and future earning power. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, acknowledged the importance of the issue but said that it was not a priority. Therefore, I hope that the Minister might talk to him about how the impact of universal credit on second earners might be monitored.

To conclude, I suggest that there is no point in your Lordships’ House taking note of women’s contribution to economic growth if we do not also identify the obstacles to that contribution and how they might be overcome. This has implications for a number of government departments and I hope that the Minister will pass on the message as well as the many powerful messages that have come from noble sisters and brothers today.