Asylum Seekers: Employment

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Baroness Boycott

Monday 7th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

By the elongated period, I assume that the noble Lord means 12 months. Actually, the best system of all would be for people’s asylum claims to be determined quickly and work towards our new service standard of four months. It is not a good thing if someone waits for 12 months for their asylum claim to be heard, so I agree with the noble Lord in that sense.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister give an assurance that the current position whereby the children of asylum seekers do not receive free school meals is going to be reconsidered? This seems to be extremely unfair, especially when parents are unable to work.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I will have to get back to the noble Baroness on that point, because off the top of my head I am not certain whether the children of asylum seekers can receive school meals. Local authorities have a duty of care and a safeguarding duty for children, and therefore I think that there will be certain circumstances where they can have free school meals.

Gender Equality and Rights in the Workplace

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Baroness Boycott

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am sorry, my Lords; the noble Baroness seemed to stop mid-sentence. The first point that she made—on low-skilled, low-paid women—is very important. Those women tend to be stuck in that low-skill/low pay situation both at the beginning of their potential career and at the end. Graphs very clearly show that pattern. We have a ring-fenced returners fund for marginalised women, and we are actively encouraging women and girls to take up STEM subjects so that they can get involved in things such as engineering. In addition, the economic empowerment strategy that I talked about will very much focus on women throughout their career journey and on how to get them out of that low-skill/low-pay rut.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, compared with our fellow Europeans, the UK lags behind quite a lot in terms of the number of women on boards and in leadership positions. At the moment, only a third of companies place any emphasis on this, but it is clearly crucial to provide good role models for girls coming up through the business community. Last year, research showed that there were more people called David or Steve running FTSE 100 companies than the total number of women and people from ethnic minorities. For the record, there were five minority-ethnic bosses and seven female CEOs, versus nine bosses called David and four called Steve. What are the Government going to do about this?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

David and Steve must be listening. The noble Baroness really pinpoints how far we have to go, but at this point I must also talk about how far we have come. I think that way back in 2014 12% of board members were women; now, over 30% are women. The noble Baroness talks about women in leadership positions. Of course, leadership is provided by ensuring that women are on boards, but I think that at this point in time there are no male-only boards. That may be a small step but it is a step none the less.

Equal Pay

Debate between Baroness Williams of Trafford and Baroness Boycott

Monday 11th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Organisations can indeed do that if they wish, but the noble Baroness raises an important point. Actually, gender pay gap reporting was the first step in what will be a long process. It had never been done before and we wondered before organisations reported what the compliance rate would be. As the noble Baroness will know, it was 100%. It is not that organisations do not want to go further—they do—but she is right that a gender and ethnically diverse workforce makes for a better workforce.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, if we really want to have women working in this country and therefore being equal, as a country we need to take childcare seriously. I have been campaigning for this since I was 21—I am obviously way past the need for it now—but we still do not have it. Have the Government ever considered the scheme that Quebec introduced in 1997 whereby universal childcare was subsidised? You paid about 10 quid a day. It was found that very soon the increased revenues from women’s earnings paid for the measure through the taxation system. If we want women to work and to be equal, surely the state must take a role in doing some of women’s work, which is rearing and looking after children.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am very interested to hear about Quebec’s scheme, and I thank the noble Baroness for that. This Government introduced 39 hours of free childcare for working parents and have encouraged shared parental leave, which is possibly not as good as it should be. We can certainly learn from other countries, such as Sweden, in that regard.