International Women’s Day and Protecting the Equality of Women in the UK and Internationally

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. At least I will not feel lonely talking about the economics of gender inequality. First, the title of the debate says

“furthering and protecting the equality of women”.

We are really saying that we are combating inequality and hoping that we can reduce it as much as possible.

The central inequality I want to talk about, which is almost eternal, is who does the work. Economists tend to talk about work in terms of paid work. They say there is work then there is leisure, but how does an individual choose how many hours to work? That is all fine, but a lot of work is unpaid and most unpaid work is done by women. We have very little accounting of unpaid work in formal economic analysis and very few policies to deal with unpaid work.

Over a long career in economics, I have explored the idea of citizens’ income—basic income, as it used to be called. The argument with basic income for a long time was that it did not actually deal with the gender issue. How it was dealt with was that citizens’ income should be available for all voters, paid without asking any questions. But then it was said that, if you paid people just the basic income, without work, they would stop working—and then what would happen? That is an irony about paid work: whether you pay basic income or not, unpaid work has to be carried on, because society lives on unpaid work—not only with cooking, childcare, nursing and care of the elderly, but all sorts of things, such as cleaning the house, that are mainly done by women.

It is a very interesting paradox—not paradox, but something to note—that when something like universal credit or other welfare state arrangements are made, there is a great compulsion to say whether you are seeking work. Unless you are seeking work, you are not eligible to be paid money when you are out of work. It is very interesting, because quite a lot of women will not be able to seek work because of unpaid work demands made on them because of the size of the family and other things, which may make it difficult for them to qualify for universal credit in a world in which that is a requirement.

One problem we will have to face is whether we can fashion a basic income package just for women, or for anybody who does unpaid work. That is especially important in the discussion on the Health and Care Bill. It has often been mentioned that some social care workers are not involuntary social care workers as such, but in a family the social care burden has fallen on the woman, who is around. They are unpaid, in a whole category of unpaid social workers, and we ought to be doing something about unpaid social care workers. One idea would be to create a basic income especially for women. Just as we talk about citizens’ income, this would be women’s citizens’ income. You would have to be of voting age to be able to accrue, earn or receive that basic income.

I recently contributed a piece to something called the Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income with a co-author who was a woman, who was very much the leading light in this joint work. She pointed out that the distinction between paid and unpaid work is central to the issue of gender inequality. Because unpaid work is not compensated, women always have inequality of income relative to men. I know that there is no money in the Government and that they want to cut taxes rather than give money away and so on, but we are about to enter a very difficult economic period in the next five or six years. We will have stagflation and all those sorts of things, so we will have to take greater care of vulnerable citizens, who are mainly women.

Since the Minister answering for the Government is in charge of giving money away on pensions and all sorts of other things—we always have to go to her and say, “Look, can you give us a bit more?”—she ought to explore the idea that women should be paid something like £50 a day for the weekend. It would be a sort of weekend bonus; nothing very much, but only for working-age women. We ought to experiment with that, because doing so would be an experiment in trying to reduce the inequality gap between men and women who are of working age.

That is about it; I do not want to say any more about this and that, because I am the 17th speaker out of 18. However, I want to make one remark on what the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, said. He mentioned the woke controversy that is going on. It is a peculiar thing that the debate about what and who is a woman. It is interesting. It is a difficult job, because the people who question the word “woman”, and so on, are probably as deprived as everybody else. However, we cannot have the majority suffer because the minority feels that it is deprived.

I am not a lawyer, and this is not a flippant comment, but I think we ought to make a distinction of women by birth and women by choice, and men by birth and men by choice. That kind of usage could become normal, or at least usual. We are not insulting anybody, but there is a question of choice. There should be symmetry for both sexes. If you can say “women by birth” and “women by choice”, it may be that the noise—

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I want to say something to my dear friend and former economics teacher at the LSE: he probably should not go there because this is not about choice. People who are gay do not choose to be so; they are gay. People who believe that they are a woman believe they are a woman. People who believe that they are a man believe they are a man. There is absolutely a debate to be had but, frankly, it is not a choice.

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

This is not the first time one of my proposals has bitten the dust. The fact that I taught the noble Baroness at LSE makes me proud that she has finally sorted me out. That being said, I think I should conclude.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

I have the unenvious task of being yet one more pale male.

I do not always agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, but I agreed with many things in her contribution. I certainly agree with her that, next year, we should not let us become second-class citizens and have the debate in here again. It should be in the Chamber. The symbolism of it—that this has somehow become a second-class debate, with someone saying, “It’ll do, just put it in the Moses Room”—has rightly been remarked on. He was one of my ancestors was perhaps not the most progressive male on the planet, but he was a man of his time. And I cannot help but say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham that the Church fought long and hard to have women bishops. It has to mark its calendar; they should be represented.

I want to return to the last part of the debate. I disagreed with my noble friend Lady Thornton when she endeavoured to say, “Well, this is how it is and we shouldn’t go there”. Well, the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, did go there, as he had absolutely every right to do. He asserted a view that is held by many—perhaps not by my noble friend, but by many—that there is a biological sex of men and women.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

Please just stop there.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

No, I am not going to stop—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

Hear, hear. First, I apologise to the Committee for my seated comments to my noble friend Lord Young. I want to say something to the noble Lords, Lord Farmer, Lord Young and Lord Clement-Jones, who all meant very well by what they said—and I think we could all agree about the need for careful and respectful debate, and not taking for granted or assuming what people might think or what they might be saying. The only thing that I would say to them is that I have been a feminist all my life. One thing that you learn as a feminist, and as someone who has been active in women’s politics, is that you need to be in control of the battles that you fight. I say to them that it is great that they feel as strongly as they do, and please support me and my feminist friends in any way you can, but actually the fight is ours.

I intend to make a speech that is about breaking the bias and about ending the prejudice and discrimination that women face on a daily basis in 2022. As other noble Lords have said, of course, who could not be absolutely choked up when we heard little Gabriella saying “Mummy” to her mummy? Goodness me, is it not wonderful that that family is reunited? I pay tribute to my honourable friend Tulip Siddiq, the MP for that family. I also wish everybody a happy St Patrick’s Day.

I thank the Minister for getting us this debate because, like other noble Lords, I am sure that she will agree that it deserves to be in the main Chamber; so I will just ask her to put it in the diaries of the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip for next year and mount a campaign—one that we will all join her in—to make sure that we get the debate that we want on the special day on which we want it. I did, however, visit Central England Co-op’s wonderful International Women’s Day debate at the National Memorial Arboretum last week, and spent a very lovely morning there. It was not New York, but it was actually a great event. My job there was to speak about bias in my life and lessons to be learned, so I thought I might mention a few biases that I have known and experienced.

The first example I want to mention involves my late mum, Jean Thornton, the eldest of 11 children in a working-class family in Batley and Spen. I cannot remember a time in my life when I was not aware that my mum was top of her class in her primary school. She was very ill and failed to be able to take her 11-plus exams, and despite the fact that her teachers were really very keen that she should take it, her family did not arrange for her to re-sit it, but they did send her brother to the grammar school the following year and could not afford two sets of uniforms. She felt that missed opportunity literally all her life, which is why I can remember it: I have always known this story about my mum missing that opportunity and suffering from that bias.

Even though she made a great success of her working life and her public life and had seven children of her own, it did make her very ambitious for us, her six daughters. I am the eldest of seven. When the head teacher suggested—and it has to be said that I was definitely a troublesome, campaigning sixth-former—that I might not be university material, and should settle for a teacher-training college, I was not actually sure that he would escape with his life. I did, indeed, head to the LSE.

When I was in my early 30s, in the 1980s, I decided to take a pop at getting selected as a parliamentary candidate in Bradford, when one of our Labour MPs had died. Those of you who have subjected yourself to the ordeal of trying to be selected to fight a parliamentary seat will know that you have to attend a lot of meetings to sell yourself to the members of the local party. However, two of the meetings for this parliamentary selection were held in local working men’s clubs in Bradford, and I, as a woman, could not enter. I had to be signed in and escorted through the club; so while I watched all the other candidates, who were all men, waltz into the selection meeting, I had to wait until the secretary came to sign me in and escort me to the meeting.

At the time, I probably did what most of the women here would have done: I just got on with it. I made the best speech that I could and, needless to say, I did not get selected. It did, however, harden me, and it gave me a campaigning zeal to change the Labour Party selection rules and to ensure that there would be a great pipeline of women ready to stand for election. So in 1997 we saw the 100-plus Labour women, and now more than half of our Parliamentary Labour Party are women.

We have all experienced bias, be it minor but annoying. For example, I am fairly sure that when I came to your Lordships’ House in 1998, Conservative women here in the House did not wear trousers. I do not know if there was a rule or what, but it simply was not done.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

It was the same in the courts.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

Yes, it was the same in the courts. In 1998, women Peers had two little toilets that were by the Chamber. The men still had the splendid Victorian ones, but we gained the one just around the corner within a few years.

Then, of course, the bias goes to the downright dangerous and discriminatory. I have an admiration for the organisation Pregnant Then Screwed. This is partly because, when I was pregnant with my first child, I was without doubt the most senior person in the whole co-operative movement to have ever taken maternity leave; I was not that senior, actually. The chair of the committee for which I worked simply thought that I was being awkward and unco-operative by not saying exactly when I would return to work after my baby was born. Today, I would have known to take out a complaint and have them in a tribunal as quick as you like, but I did not know and so just had not as happy a time during my pregnancy as I should have had.

In the medical and health world where I work, there is still a clinical bias whereby medicines and devices are designed for and tested on men. This is changing but, of course, it is potentially dangerous and certainly can be very uncomfortable. The bias, otherwise known as misogynism, in our police, which has been mentioned already, has appalling consequences for both individual women and their treatment. We know about Sarah Everard but, more recently, a young girl was strip-searched at her school, including the removal of her sanitary wear, by two police officers. She was traumatised by her treatment, which took place without her mother or an adult present.

We have the lowest rape convictions for an age, as noble Lords have mentioned. As Dame Vera Baird said, 1.5% of rape cases reach court, meaning that 98% do not. We have long argued for the inclusion of domestic abuse and sexual offences in the definition of “serious violence”. We argued for violence against women and girls to be a strategic policing issue, given the same prominence as terrorism and organised crime. We argued for safeguards to be set out on the extraction of data from victims’ phones. We argued for a lifting of the limit for prosecution of common assault or battery in domestic abuse cases. We argued for a review into spiking, so that we can get to the bottom of this appalling practice. None of these measures were included in the Government’s original Bill. They are all there as a result of the campaigning work of women’s organisations, the Labour Party and, I have to say, the Liberal Democrats and other Members of your Lordships’ House. We have changed the law for women for the better. The Government have been asked some pertinent questions by my noble friend Lady Kennedy about ensuring that misogyny is made a hate crime and publishing a perpetrator strategy at the end of the month, as the Domestic Abuse Act requires. The Government must adopt these measures.

Turning to health, the area in which I work, we need the women’s health strategy to be produced. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has now said that it will be. The UK has been found to have the largest female health gap in the G20 and the 12th-largest globally. Research has shown a gender health gap in the UK where many women receive poorer healthcare than men and are routinely misunderstood, mistreated and misdiagnosed. There is still a great deal of work to do.

I want briefly to turn to the international issues mentioned by several noble Lords. I just want to add my voice and say this: what a short-sighted, counter- productive decision it was to reduce funding for women and girls across the world at every single level. This was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, my noble friend Lady Armstrong—virtually everybody. We need to return the funding for women and girls to its pre-2020 level; this requires the return of the £1.9 billion in programming. We need it now. We cannot afford not to find it.

I want to mention two other issues. One is to do with bias and tone. Both the current Secretary of State for Health and his predecessor have called out my honourable colleague Rosena Allin-Khan at the Dispatch Box because they did not appreciate her tone. That makes me quite angry because when men do that and say to women, “You’re not using the right tone, my dear”, what they are actually saying is, “You shouldn’t be speaking at all. Please speak only with our permission”. I place that on the table but, do not worry, my honourable friend Rosena is absolutely aware what is happening: those men are saying that she should not be speaking.

Finally, the Labour Party is the party of equality. We are the party of the Equal Pay Act, the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equality Act. We understand that our society, our economy and our country are poorer if women cannot play their full part. Women hold the key to a stronger economy. My noble friend Lord Sikka was quite right and I have been asking, all the time I have been in the House, for gender impact assessments. We have been asking for them for many years, so I plead with the Minister to add that to her to-do list.

International Women’s Day is always a bittersweet moment. It celebrates how far we have come, which is a great distance—certainly a great distance in the time I have been in your Lordships’ House—but also notes, with regret, how far we still have to go. It is a chance to recommit ourselves to the struggle for women, the girls of today, and our daughters and granddaughters of tomorrow. Women across the country and the world deserve security, prosperity and respect. We think a Labour Government would give them that but, for as long as we are still on these Benches, we will push the Government to deliver it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

He was. We have heard some powerful, moving and challenging questions today from across the Room, and I thank all noble Lords who have contributed. The richness of this debate shows how important it is that we have the opportunity to mark International Women’s Day and highlight the wide range of challenges that disproportionately affect women and prevent them accessing the opportunities to help them thrive.

I will deal with one of the elephants in the room, which is not having this debate on the day that so many wanted it. I remember being asked about this in an Oral Question. I went to find out and am advised—I have no reason to disbelieve it—that the usual channels agreed time for the debate as soon as was possible. I will make the case, as much as I can, to have it on a better day.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

We will help you.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I have agreed to meet you to do that and I stand by that.

I will start by talking about Ukraine; there are many things to talk about in that respect. The noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Loomba, and others mentioned it. We are absolutely committed to supporting Ukrainian women and girls, recognising the critical contribution that women are making on the front line and in communities affected by the conflict. Somebody told me that women were making Molotov cocktails to try to keep back the Russians. All power to their elbows.

We are particularly concerned about the impact of the conflict on women and girls. They will be more exposed to the risk of violence, particularly sexual and gender-based violence. We acknowledge the vital work of civil society organisations. I think I am a poacher turned gamekeeper in that respect, so noble Lords can be assured of my support for good civil society organisations.

I reflect that, when I stood with the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN on Monday, he asked me to do one thing: come back here and ask everybody, regardless of whether they were politicians or not, to help these women and children integrate into our communities when they come to our country. If we do not, sex traffickers will get hold of them. They will be forced into prostitution, there will be forced adoptions—the list goes on. I gave him my word that I would do that. I ask noble Lords to get that message out to make sure that we can stand by the ambassador’s need.

I did not attend all of the concert at the Met but I was there. A Ukrainian bass sang the Ukrainian national anthem. He fell into the arms of the conductor afterwards, such was the depth of despair he felt. Let us all continue to stand by these dear people who need us.

I will answer the question about the Istanbul convention. The UK remains strongly committed to ratification of the Istanbul convention. Almost all the obstacles to ratification have now been removed. We should be in a position to ratify the convention quite soon. [Laughter.] I did not think that was funny; I was being serious.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, mentioned political representation. They gave some figures about the balance of people. We must congratulate the Greens on their 100% record; that is worthy of mention. We will come later to the issue of women in political life and the abuse that goes with it, if I get to answer that. The Government continue to keep Section 106 of the Equality Act 2010 under review but remain of the view that political parties should lead the way in improving diverse electoral representation through their own selection.

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, talked about the development strategy having women and girls right throughout it. The Government will publish a new international development strategy this spring. That will guide our work for the coming decades and beyond. The new strategy will prioritise spending on life-saving humanitarian aid and support women and girls. The Foreign Secretary is committed to that, and will go through the business plan and strategy development.

The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and others talked about an equality impact assessment of the ODA cuts. We treat equality issues seriously. The UK is a leading global voice on women and girls, LGBT people, disability and wider human rights. We have processes in place through spending reviews and FCDO business planning to ensure that we meet our legal obligations. The equalities assessment was a snapshot in March 2021 aimed at predicting how spending decisions for 2021-22 would have an impact on protected groups. As we move through the project cycle, we will review the actual impact of the spending.

On scrutiny and transparency, which was also raised, we fulfil our international legal and public transparency commitments and continue to be accountable to Parliament and taxpayers for how we spend UK aid and to mandate our partners to be transparent.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham mentioned Lesotho. One thing that came out of this week was that someone asked the question: why are women not in the room when decisions are made, because the decisions would be very different? We want women in the room, women in the chair and women in the lead.

I come to the question asked many times by the right reverend Prelate about the two-child limit. The last time I answered it, I got told off for being a little discourteous, so let me be as polite as I can. Nothing has changed since I answered the question last time and there is nothing else I can say that will help him.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and my noble friend Lord Sandhurst mentioned childcare. This will be critical to get women in work, back to work and into better jobs. I had the pleasure of talking to people from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Denmark, and we formed what you could call an unholy alliance. We will exchange information about what happens in our countries and see whether we can learn from each other to make improvements. Childcare is critical, because this issue is stopping women taking more hours and progressing, and we should redouble our efforts to find solutions to make that better.

The right reverend Prelate asked about the official development assistance budget for women and girls. The Foreign Secretary has been clear that we intend to restore funding to women and girls and to humanitarian programmes. Our spending review 2021 highlighted that we will increase aid funding for our highest priorities. We are bound by the International Development (Gender Equality) Act 2014 to ensure that gender equality remains at the heart of the UK’s work on international development and humanitarian crises.

In November, the Foreign Secretary announced that she would restore ODA funding for women and girls to pre-cut levels. The baseline year and timing of restoration is under discussion as part of the Foreign Office’s business planning process. So it will be done, but I cannot say when. That is one that I will not let go until he gets the answer he needs.

To mark International Women’s Day, the UK was proud to launch new funding for women’s rights organisations and civil society actors, and there is a £220 million pot of humanitarian aid, to which we are making our largest ever aid match. It will contribute to the Disasters Emergency Committee Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal, matching the first £25 million donated, so it is not insignificant.

My noble friend Lady Hodgson asked about the new convention to hold perpetrators of sexual violence to account. As part of the network of liberty, the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative remains a key focus for the UK Government, and the Foreign Secretary has made tackling sexual violence in conflict one of her top priorities. In November 2021, the Foreign Secretary announced her intention to work towards a new convention on sexual violence in conflict, and it is an opportunity to strengthen the international response to prevent such atrocities, support survivors and hold perpetrators to account.

My noble friend Lady Hodgson and others asked about Afghanistan and what is going on there. I will write on that point.

The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, talked about a rollback of rights. The UK is recognised as a world leader in defending and promoting women and girls’ rights. We have a reputation for addressing often neglected or difficult issues on the global stage, such as sex education and relationships, access to safe abortion, female genital mutilation, child marriage and gender-based violence. In negotiations at the UN and in other multilateral fora, the UK stands firm against organised attempts to undermine women and girls’ rights, including a big discussion at this year’s Commission on the Status of Women.

I also say to the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, that I would be very pleased to learn about the VSO, so if she would like to jack up a meeting, I will be there. I was listening to a very powerful story from a Minister from Chad about how their water has completely run out, so they cannot grow food or look after themselves. It was heart-rending.

On engaging with women’s organisations, I have held a series of round tables with women across England to discuss the impact of Covid-19. I also hosted a round table at the UN with civil society organisations. If there is an organisation noble Lords think I should speak to, please let me know and I will endeavour to meet it.

The noble Lord, Lord Hussain, mentioned Kashmir. We recognise that there are many human rights concerns in Indian-administered Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. We encourage all states to ensure domestic law is in line with international standards. The British high commission in New Delhi and our network of deputy high commissioners work closely with Indian civil society and non-governmental organisations to promote gender equality and tackle gender-based violence. The noble Lord asked me to write, so I will do so afterwards. Time is not on my side today, that is for sure.

My noble friend Lord Farmer made a really good point about somebody—I cannot say her name, so I will not embarrass myself. She is a sign and we should make sure that we give our support in that way. My noble friend also spoke about sport. It is something that everyone in the country should feel able to take part in. It is for sporting bodies to set the guidelines about trans people in sporting competitions.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy—I nearly called her a noble friend, as that is what often comes out; we are friends—talked about violence against women, women not being able to walk down the street for fear of what might happen and the terrible verbal and physical abuse women experience. I will take back the point she made about what is going on in Scotland. I am advised that we will be publishing a new hate crime strategy in due course, which will take the Law Commission’s recommendations into account. Let us be under no illusion: it is serious stuff and needs to be dealt with.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who I agree is an inspiration on international issues, asked about support for Burma. Myanmar is a focus country for the UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, as well as the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative. The UK has sought to integrate support for GBV survivors across its humanitarian and development programme and has provided flexible funding to women and LGBT-led organisations. The UK is also supporting the UN LIFT Fund to reduce the risk of trafficking and support survivors. The term “deaf ears” was mentioned, so we will turn the volume up on that and do our best.

My noble friend Lord Sandhurst and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady Thornton, raised the issue of sexual harassment. It is just not on: every woman should be able to live without fear of harassment or violence in the workplace as much as anywhere else. As the debate about the future of the workplace proceeds, the Government are committed to making sure that people feel safe and supported to thrive.

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, made a very important point about freedom of speech. I fully support him, and I know that I can count on all noble Lords to be respectful of each other’s views. If we do not show respect, we will not get the debate that we need. We might not agree with each other on certain things, but we have to have an open and honest debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, was delighted that he was working with Rotary International and Rotary in this country. It is a great organisation, and sometimes the things it does do not get the credit they deserve, so perhaps he will go back and thank them from me for what they are doing with his efforts to make money for this important appeal.

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, raised the issue of South Sudan. On Sudan, Her Majesty’s Government are committed to continuing to support sexual and reproductive health rights for 2022 and 2023, and our female genital mutilation funding will continue until next year. On South Sudan, as part of our humanitarian assistance and resilience-building, we have a programme called HARISS. We fund a six-year, £25 million UK-funded programme. International medical corporations work with communities and local authorities to raise awareness of gender-based violence to improve safety for women in their communities, and to provide confidential and survivor-centred case management and psycho-social support.

I am out of time, and I am feeling that I have failed noble Lords miserably in answering their questions, but I have the answers, so, as I said, I will write to noble Lords and make sure that all their questions are answered—so my officials will have homework to do. They will not be passing me notes but writing letters. If I may bring the debate to a conclusion, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I stand ready to do my bit as much as I am able to on this particular issue and, especially, to stand up for women. With that, I beg to move.

Motion agreed.