International Development (Gender Equality) Bill
Debate between Gavin Shuker and William Cash(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful that we have got to this stage in the passage of the Bill. We had a positive, lively and celebratory Committee stage and it is good to get to Third Reading. It goes without saying that the Opposition fully endorse and support the Bill. I acknowledge the changes that were made in Committee to ensure that it would be workable in practice.
Gavin Shuker
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We welcome the approach of the Government on violence against women and girls in particular and on gender equality more broadly. I believe that the measures in the Bill will be extremely helpful.
Before I turn to the substance of the Bill, I thought it might be helpful to the House if I clarified a couple of points that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) put to the Minister that are central to the argument over why the Bill is necessary. The Bill speaks to two scenarios. The first is where there is a broader programme of poverty reduction and the second is where there is humanitarian assistance. Humanitarian assistance relates not just to the period immediately following a disaster, such as that in the Philippines, but to the weeks and months that follow because such operations have a long time lag.
The consideration of gender equality can literally be a matter of life or death. In the light of recent conflicts and humanitarian disasters, for example, we have seen alarming reports of women finding themselves at extreme risk of exploitation and of serious and sexual violence. It is right for the Department to give due consideration to that point. The basis of all successful humanitarian interventions is effective planning, and DFID has also been doing good work in that regard. I believe that is why we have been a successful partner in work around the world. Awareness of gender issues is required, and we know that women, much more than men, are at risk of violence in lawless conditions. It is therefore right to have the dual provisions in the Bill.
We know that gender inequality is one of the defining issues of our time. It is core to development now and will be as we go through the post-2015 process. As the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) rightly pointed out, we live in a world in which women shoulder 66% of the burden of work but own only 1% of the property. It is a world in which women account for two thirds of the 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty and the 774 million people struggling with illiteracy; in which, tragically, an estimated 1.6 million daughters each year are not born because of a deep-seated preference for sons; in which one in five adolescent girls continue to be denied an education by the daily realities of poverty, conflict and discrimination; and in which one in three women are subject to violence, whether at a time of armed conflict or behind closed doors. We know the disproportionate impact of conflict on women, yet less than 3% of signatories to peace agreements are female. The House should also remember that only one in five national parliamentarians are female.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the women who had helped him in the preparation of the Bill. The Opposition should draw attention to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who I know was intensely involved in helping the Bill come to fruition, not least in Committee.
The fact that we live in the world that I have described places a moral duty on all of us to do more. Manifestations of inequality, brutality and cruelty still occur on a daily basis, which is why we welcome the Bill. In government, Labour started the journey of prioritising gender equality in development work—from DFID’s first ever gender policy document in 2000, which highlighted the importance of women’s empowerment beyond just regarding them as instruments of poverty reduction, to the three-year gender equality plan launched in 2007, which imposed specific responsibilities and embedded expertise across DFID’s delivery of programmes. In fact, one reason why we welcome the Government’s approach to the Bill is that at that time, there was concern about that action plan coming to an end. I believe that the Department has a genuine commitment to gender equality, from the Secretary of State downwards, and we support it in its work.
Some of the biggest global challenges that we face will require the empowerment, participation and achievement of all global citizens, both men and women. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that equalising access to productive resources between men and women could raise output in developing countries by as much as 4%, which is critical considering that more than 800 million people worldwide do not have adequate access to safe and nutritious food.
Reports documenting the impact of Typhoon Haiyan have emphasised the links between gender inequality and heightened vulnerability in the aftermath of environmental disasters, yet analysis last year by Development Finance International and Oxfam found that gender-related spending had fallen behind investment in other millennium development goals. That goes to the heart of why the Bill is important—it will set a standard for the rest of the world to meet.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Gavin Shuker and William Cash(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this important debate about the future of this place and our place in society. It is a pleasure to listen to so many speeches about various aspects of the Bill and to follow the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who spoke for eight minutes about aspects of the Bill, but by the end I could not understand many of the things that were praiseworthy about it.
The Bill, which is one of a series of major constitutional measures to be introduced by the Tory-Lib Dem Government, represents a short-term compromise to hold together two coalition partners, but with a long-term hangover, or a series of hangovers, as the Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged today. Our constitutional settlement has emerged and endured. Over the generations, the wash of constitutional change has flowed over the rock that is Parliament, sometimes gently eroding and reshaping. At other times in violent squalls our settlement has been remodelled. The Bill, alongside the Bill that we discussed previously, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, places high explosives under that rock, and the Tory Government, propped up by Liberals, are perfectly happy to light the fuse. Perhaps there are legitimate arguments for doing so. Perhaps the Conservatives are true revolutionaries. I would like everyone’s voices to be heard first and to proceed by consensus.
The previous Government took the view that constitutional change reflects the fact that we are custodians of that consensus, not masters of it. In other words, they sought to proceed by consultation, even at the cost of measures such as House of Lords reform failing to go forward. The present Government are content fundamentally to redesign major aspects of our constitution with limited consultation and scrutiny, at a time when our constitution is evolving by convention as a result of events, and largely for their own short-term gain. That cannot be right.
I cannot support the Bill in its current form. Even if the case can be made for fixed-term Parliaments, safeguards in the Bill serve to take power from Parliament, rather than give it back to this body. Without a Green Paper, a White Paper, a draft Bill or pre-legislative scrutiny, we are being asked to agree a big practical change to the way that our Government and Parliament act. That cannot be right, either.
Gavin Shuker
I am happy to clarify that. If there is a Division on Second Reading, I will vote with my conscience. I do not believe that this is the right Bill and I shall explain why in more detail.
The Bill is the wrong prescription for a problem of the Government’s own making. If they were truly committed to giving power back to Parliament, they would give us a free vote on the length of the term. They would consult prior to the publication of the Bill. They would seek to bring the Opposition parties with them, but they have not done so.
As we heard earlier, when a five-year parliamentary term was introduced by the then Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, he believed that that would
“probably amount in practice to an actual legislative working term of four years”—[Official Report, 21 February 1911; Vol. 21, c. 1749.]
One hundred years on, I find no fault in his analysis and no credit in the Deputy Prime Minister’s interpretation of his words earlier today. I was tempted to intervene and point out that I had known H. H. Asquith, and that he was no H. H. Asquith.
If the Bill is passed in its current form, we will see four-year Parliaments, followed by one-year election campaigns. The mood of the British people is not for that. Most European countries have four-year cycles, and I believe that the disinterested consensus in the House would be for four years. Four years is surely better than five. Even so, I accept that under the amendment to be moved tonight, which would introduce a four-year term, the risk of a lame duck Parliament looms large. It is an inevitable cost of having a fixed term for our Parliament, and it deserves far greater discussion than it will receive today.