International Women’s Day

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I start by referring to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is great to see the Chairman of Ways and Means—a woman—in the Chair, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this important debate. When I left this morning, I told my husband that I was speaking in an International Women’s Day debate. He said, “But that was on Monday”, and I said, “Unfortunately we didn’t get time to debate it on Monday,” so I am pleased we are debating it today.

Time is short, so I will touch on just two issues. First is the UK’s leadership and role in combating the abuse of women globally. I was a Home Office Minister with responsibility for preventing abuse, exploitation and crime, and I saw some of the most grotesque and horrific crimes that can be inflicted. All too often they were inflicted on women. Breast ironing, female genital mutilation, forced marriage—things that are done to and forced on women around the world; things that should never happen to any woman.

The UK has had global leadership in this area, and I am enormously worried, given the mood music coming from the Government around our commitment to overseas aid, that we are not committed to those areas in the way that once we were. It is the UK’s leadership that has meant that we have seen reductions in these horrific crimes.

The UK’s leadership has also led to the focus on 12 years’ education for girls, which the Prime Minister championed when he was Foreign Secretary. The UK has led on modern slavery, which affects men and women, but predominantly women. Let us be clear: our overseas aid stopped Ebola becoming a pandemic. Those are real achievements that our aid budget has helped to deliver and I am desperately worried that we may see that as a nice-to-have rather than an essential. I call on the Government to ensure that we have a debate on the matter and a vote, so that parliamentarians can have a say on that manifesto commitment.

I want quickly to consider Parliament and this place. In my role as Chair of the Procedure Committee, I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee. It has been fantastic to see the way in which Parliament has adapted. We did not want to be in this situation in Parliament. We did not want to sit 2 metres apart, but we have to. We have adapted and women have benefited. Evidence to the Committee shows that more women have used virtual participation than men. More women have been able to enjoy the benefits of perhaps an even more family-friendly House. We are following the road map and are coming to the point where we end lockdown. We should look carefully at the things we have done in the past 12 months and consider what would work for the future.