Cultural and Education Exchanges

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 3.35 pm. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Deech (CB) [V]]

My Lords, we have heard many complaints this week about the effect of the pandemic on women’s potential. The men who have made the relevant decisions are likely to have non-working wives and nannies, and have been oblivious to the reality. However, there is also much to celebrate. There has been a surprising coming to the fore of women’s skills in science and leadership, previously unseen but present. History may look back on this pandemic era as one that was a turning point for women.

If Captain Tom deserved a knighthood for his support for the NHS then Professor Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford vaccine pioneer, should be beatified. She took up her post in 1994, looking at the genetics of malaria, and became a professor at the Jenner Institute, researched flu, then Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and now Covid. Her team is two-thirds female and she, a mother of triplets, is now working to understand the barriers to promotion to senior levels that women face at Oxford. I also congratulate Dr Jenny Harries, and Kate Bingham, who was responsible for the great vaccine procurement.

Then there is Özlem Türeci, co-founder of BioNTech, which produced the Pfizer vaccine. Women make up 54% of her total workforce and 45% of top management. She is reported as thinking that being a gender-balanced team has been critical to developing the vaccine so quickly. The WHO chief scientist is a woman, Soumya Swaminathan, and the senior vice-president at Pfizer is Kathrin Jansen, who also worked on an HPV vaccine. Time does not permit me to mention many others who have taken the lead, despite the fact that Covid restrictions have impinged on women’s research and publication time. Happily in this past year more women have applied to take science, technology, engineering and maths courses. The number applying to higher education for health-related courses rose by 27%, mostly women, and it is the same for nursing.

Mostly, but not in every case, countries led by women have handled Covid better than those led by men: Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, PM Jakobsdóttir in Iceland, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and Prime Minister Marin of Finland. Of course, this is not universal: we have the walking disaster of Ursula von der Leyen, and vaccine has been Mrs Merkel’s nemesis. However, the typical female approach of caution, care for the elderly, empathy, appreciation of schooling and risk aversion have certainly proved winners for some. Those women are in countries that expect women to be independent and to have careers, which has to be contrasted with the default position in this country, especially in family law, that once a woman has found a partner she is exempt for ever more from supporting herself.

In the future we need to highlight how well women scientists have done and that the career is compatible with family life. We need to concentrate on how diseases may affect women differently from men, a topic explored in Criado Perez’s book Invisible Women. We need affordable—ideally free—childcare to be at the top of the list. We must give women free rein, which historically they have been given only when there is a war and they are needed or can work at home. Covid is a war and women have won it.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, has withdrawn, so I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I gave the Minister advance notice that I will speak about the need for a feminist UK foreign policy. She may be expecting me to major on the cutting of foreign aid below the 0.7% of GDP that is set in our law, but I assume that the Government will eventually have to stop breaking the law and bring a Bill to the House. While I am often thinking of the desperate women, men, and children of Yemen, pounded by our weapons and denied our aid, for the moment I will put that issue to one side.

Since this is the International Women’s Day debate, I want to think and speak more conceptually, particularly in the light of the announcement from the Biden Administration that their intention is to:

“Protect and empower women around the world”.


Across the channel, the French Government declare explicitly that they have a feminist foreign policy. I am not hearing the same terminology from the UK. But it is not really terminology that I am interested in, but policy and action.

Around the world, women and girls are increasingly using human rights law to try to force climate justice, from the Union of Swiss Senior Women for Climate Protection going to the European Court of Human Rights to the case that 16 children are taking to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

However, a feminist foreign policy goes well beyond protective action and positive action. It goes beyond steps such as those outlined to me earlier today by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, in supporting access to modern methods of contraception. It is about a transformation of our economic and political systems. It is not just a case of doing some positive things but of reversing centuries of damaging choices and policies; millennia of assuming that humans and the natural world exist to serve that creation of a few—mostly male—humans: the market. It means not operating for the military-industrial complex, or the fossil fuel-finance complex, but making a world that creates a decent life for every individual, from every newborn baby to every centenarian, and that allows ecosystems to flourish and wildlife, for a start, to survive. A feminist foreign policy must be guided by Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics. It means ending what the academic Karen Warren has called the “logic of domination”.

Some global progress is being made, notably in the increasing operationalisation of the rights to universal healthcare which have long been contained in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights—not, however, in the UK, where access to healthcare has been taken backwards for many non-citizens. But there is a growing understanding that we need to go beyond medicine and talk about the need for care societies—a concept with enormous potential, as demonstrated by the Women’s Budget Group’s plan for a care-led recovery from coronavirus.

I have talked largely in big abstract terms. What does all this mean in practice? It means caring for and welcoming refugees as survivors of our disastrous policies, large parts of their wealth having been robbed from them, rather than treating them as threats. It means stopping pumping vast quantities of arms into a world choked with them. Last year the UK was the world’s second-largest arms exporter: £11 billion of exported destruction. Many women, children and men will die as a result. It means acknowledging the historic and continuing massive damage of colonialism, and paying reparations for it; the frame of “loss and damage” at the COP 26 talks provides an important potential way forward.

What has been called the malestream—millennia of thinking of the planet as a mine and a dumping ground and people as an exploitable asset—has produced a maelstrom of destruction and a world on the edge of disaster. A feminist world can be one that lives within the physical limits of this one fragile planet while caring for all. Caring is key.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

I call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. Please can you unmute, Lord Bradshaw? We still cannot hear you. I will move on to the next speaker while we try to sort you out. I call the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness in this important debate marking International Women’s Day on Monday, focusing particularly on the social and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. I also thank my noble friend Lady Scott for her introduction.

I want particularly to say something about the challenge that the pandemic has posed to women’s mental health. I hope that, in closing, my noble friend the Minister will have something to say about this, and particularly about the resources that are being made available.

On average, even prior to the pandemic, women were more likely than men to experience mental health challenges. This has of course been accentuated by the pandemic. During the pandemic, woman have been more likely than men to experience being furloughed, which, although often necessary and on occasion welcome, will mean lower earnings than from the job that is furloughed. Women are more likely to have experienced loss of employment during the pandemic, with some sectors particularly vulnerable, such as retail, hospitality and food services. The switch of employment from shops to warehouses is, in practice, something that is unlikely to help women. All this of course contributes to mental health pressures. This is also true of additional caring responsibilities, which are likely to fall on women, whether for children at home or looking after older relatives. Pressures on finances during the pandemic also have to be factored in.

Your Lordships’ House is currently taking great pride, and rightly so, in the pioneering legislation that is making its way through the House, as referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker: the Domestic Abuse Bill. It is truly a remarkable landmark Bill, and it is much needed. Women—and it is generally, though not always, women who are the victims of domestic abuse—suffer horribly, and that situation has got far worse during lockdown and the pandemic. Often, women victims have been obliged to relive their experiences. This too contributes to mental health pressures. In the light of the importance of this legislation and the pioneering work we are doing, I would be grateful if my noble friend could say something about the resources that will be made available to deal with this accentuated problem.

I also want to take this opportunity to say something about the position beyond our shores, where we are committed to certain global challenges—although it has to be said that they are more challenging with reduced aid. One of them is girls’ education, which the Prime Minister has championed, committing our country to preventing exploitation and unlocking potential around the world. Indeed, we are set to co-host a major international summit in June, to seek to provide global action to educate all children. This is very welcome and, again, I would be grateful if my noble friend could tell us something about the preparatory work for this and the international commitments that we hope to get from the conference.

Action at home and abroad to end inequality globally is both necessary and welcome. I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s response.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

I call again the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Devon (CB) [V]]

The convention is to address this House collectively as “my Lords”. Given the topic of this debate, in which over 70% of the participants are female, excuse me if I open with “my Ladies”.

Covid-19 has tested our society to its limits. It has closed schools, factories, offices and high streets, and the repeated lockdowns have thrust us all into our homes for month after interminable month. That has placed an enormous additional burden on those who manage the home and those who take the lead in home schooling and other domestic matters. Despite huge advances in equality over recent decades, that burden has unquestionably fallen upon women more than men. Statistically, the Covid-19 virus has afflicted men worse than women. However, the nurses and carers who tend to the sick and the elderly are predominantly female, thus the exhaustion, stress and sheer horror of care in the midst of this terrible pandemic have afflicted women far more than men.

Last week the Chancellor delivered his Budget, reporting the precipitous decline in GDP caused by the pandemic, with economic output collapsing in ways unseen for centuries. In the principal sectors impacted, such as retail and hospitality, most employees are women. There is a dichotomy here. Economic indicators tell of an unprecedented decline in output, yet the output of carers, nurses, mothers, wives and daughters has increased exponentially. Nowhere is that outpouring of love and care found in the Government’s data. Why is that? As a society, we are simply not measuring that output and thus we are not valuing it. In 2019 New Zealand introduced a well-being budget, the first western country to base its entire budget on well-being priorities, with a focus on mental health, family violence and child well-being. Will the UK Government consider the same?

As a lawyer, I have many female colleagues, and I know first-hand that their burden increased much more than that of their male colleagues. It was not lost on me that the return to school coincided with International Women’s Day, and that back-to-school cheers from exhausted parents over social media were predominantly in a feminine voice. What steps are the Government taking to encourage fathers to take a more active role in the home and in childcare? Will the Government increase the availability of paternity leave, allowing fathers to bond better with their children in those crucial early months?

Finally, I turn to equality. This House needs to set the standard but it does not. Only 28% of our membership is female, compared with 34% in the other place. That needs to change. The Lords Spiritual (Women) Act is changing the composition of the Bishops and life peerages are increasingly bestowed on women, but the most shocking gender imbalance is found among us 92 male hereditary Peers. As the youngest child of a youngest child, I am a poster child for patriarchal gender discrimination. I am the 38th Earl of Devon since the title was created by our first female monarch, Empress Matilda, and only one of us has been female—the fiercely independent Countess Isabella de Fortibus, who refused to sell the Isle of Wight to King Edward I until the bishops stole it from her on her deathbed.

This discrimination must cease and eldest children, whatever their gender, must be permitted to inherit hereditary titles. Will Her Majesty’s Government introduce a hereditary titles (female succession) Bill in the forth- coming Queen’s Speech?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate both noble Baronesses on their new roles. I too welcome the opportunity to mark International Women’s Day to raise the issue of women’s decreasing life expectancy. The Marmot review of health equity in England makes the shocking finding that, in the last decade:

“Life expectancy for women in the most deprived 10 percent of neighbourhoods decreased in every region”,


bar three. Life expectancy has stalled for the first time in more than 100 years. Healthy life expectancy has also declined for women since 2010, and the percentage of life spent in ill health has increased.

This is a worrying reversal of the established trend for life expectancy at birth, which has been increasing since the beginning of the 20th century. There was around a one-year increase every five and a half years for women from 1981 to 2010, but that has now slowed to a one-year increase every 28 years from 2011 to 2018. Marmot says that

“in England, health is getting worse for people living in more deprived districts and regions, health inequalities are increasing and … lives for people towards the bottom of the social hierarchy have been made more difficult. Some of these difficulties have been the direct result of government policies”.

Austerity-driven cuts in services and changes in benefit provision have had a direct and adverse effect on the most deprived women in society. Real cuts in income are damaging women’s health, and more children are living in poverty.

Michael Marmot highlights the impact of

“rising child poverty … the closure of children’s centres … declines in education funding, an increase in precarious work and zero hours contracts … a housing affordability crisis and a rise in homelessness”

and the increasing need to resort to food banks as all contributing to the decline in women’s health. Benefit cuts and sanctions that push single mothers into poorly paid part-time jobs in which they end up having to juggle families and work are taking their toll. Research has shown that most jobseekers are keen to work and do not require the threat of sanction. Instead, sanctions cause further poverty and, in some cases, destitution—manifested in increased debt and use of food banks, as well as worsening mental health.

A five-year study of welfare conditionality conducted by the University of York from 2013 to 2018 criticised the use of conditionality in England’s employment support system. Another recent study by the University of Liverpool found that universal credit is linked to a rise in psychological stress and has created soaring rates of depression in claimants. The report finds a 6.6% increase in mental health issues among recipients since the introduction of UC, a third of whom become clinically depressed. The stress level is understandable when we imagine the impact of having to wait five weeks to receive the first payment, the resulting mounting debt, the need to resort to food banks, falling behind with rent and, in the worst cases, eviction and homelessness.

The OECD report How’s Life? 2020 points out that “deaths of despair”—those resulting from

“suicide, acute alcohol abuse and drug overdose”—

have increased for women in more than a third of countries. In England, the highest suicide rates among women in 2018 were in Yorkshire and the Humber and the south-west. The Government argue that the way to reduce child poverty is for parents to work, helped by free or reduced-cost childcare places. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says these schemes do not effectively target the most needy. In fact, rates of children in poverty living in working households have increased since 2010. Among lone-parent families in full-time work in 2010-11, after taking housing costs into account, child poverty rates were 18%, but this increased to 30% by 2017-18.

While more women are in work now, average weekly wages have not recovered to the 2010 level. According to the Resolution Foundation, since 2008 there has been a reduction in average real weekly earnings as well as a large reduction in benefits available for working-age people and children.

The nature of work needs to be considered. Being in poverty and working in poor-quality employment have marked effects on physical and mental health, including on children in the families concerned. Zero-hours contracts are highly insecure and add to the stress levels that poorer women are increasingly struggling with. Overall, more people are now on these contracts, the number having increased from 168,000 in 2010 to nearly 900,000 by late 2018. As Marmot says:

“An established evidence base has demonstrated that insecure work, characterised by short-term, or no, contracts and consequent high risk of losing the job and associated anxiety are harmful to health”.


He calls on the Government to create fair employment and good work for all by investing in good-quality active labour-market policies; reducing conditionalities and sanctions in benefit entitlement, particularly for those with children; reducing in-work poverty by increasing the national living wage; and reducing the high levels of poor-quality work and precarious employment. Marmot says that

“over the last decade government allocations of funding have declined most in poorer areas and this must be reversed”.

The Government have the opportunity tomorrow to address these issues in the Budget—as well as to prepare for the impact of the coronavirus—and must recognise how much investment is needed to level up the life chances of the poorest, especially women, having been responsible over the last decade for lowering life expectancy through their policy of austerity.