Parliament as a Workplace

Maria Miller Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on securing this important debate, and I look forward to hearing the other contributions. I commend the work that has already been done, particularly, as she says, by the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), Mr Speaker and many others, including the former Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). I am sure that the new Leader of the House will be a valiant champion of the need to ensure that this is a good place to work in future.

We have to start this debate with some cold, hard facts. We know that we are a group of people who are hugely committed to our communities, and that we are professional, sensible people, but all too often this place can be portrayed as chaotic because of the way that we do, or do not, organise ourselves. That is not only down to the Government’s motions and the Order Paper. We have to start to look at how this place looks from the outside if we really are to resolve the problems that we face in respect of this place, not only as a workplace for Members of Parliament, but as somewhere that represents our constituents.

Winston Churchill once said that

“we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

Never a truer word has been said of this place. I love this place and would never want to see Parliament move out of it, but we have to take it into account when we try to understand why it currently does not work as a workplace for so many people. The building was built for a time when this country was a very different place and very different people became Members of Parliament. How many people were wheelchair users back when this place was first built, or rebuilt after the fire? How many people were women? We know the answer to that one: absolutely none. This building was built and our procedures were set out when women and disabled people were not considered, and when dads had few responsibilities compared with those they have today. We have to take all these things into consideration as we move forward.

[Mr Sheerman]

The right hon. Lady is making an excellent point, as did the previous speaker, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), but both are MPs quite close to London. The Speaker once came to Huddersfield and spent a lovely day with me. When he got off the train, he said, “This is a long way, isn’t it?”. It is 192 miles. In some senses, the perspectives of those of who come to work here from a long distance away are qualitatively different from the perspectives of people who represent London and south-east England.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman has brought up an important point. Part of the problem we have is that each one of us is very different. I am a commuting MP, and my journey to and from this place takes an hour and 40 minutes. I am sure it does not take the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge an hour and 40 minutes to get home—I hope it does not; otherwise, she needs to have a chat with her Mayor of London. It is wrong to sweep us all into a “London and the south-east” bag and assume that we all have the same challenges. It is different for each of us.

[Mr Sheerman]

It is fundamental, though, is it not? We start at 2.30 pm on a Monday because people have to get here from Scotland and the north of England, flying, using rail and so on, and these days we finish early on a Thursday because people have to get back to their constituencies. We are moulded a bit by the distances that many of us are from Parliament.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that those are factors to consider. In fact, one reason why I was not going to talk about start and finish times was that it is a specific discussion. If he will allow me to take issue slightly with what he said, I feel that certainty is far more important. We can all cope with a lot of things in life as long as we know what is going on. All too often, the chaos that I mentioned feels very real, not just to us and staff in our parliamentary offices, but to members of staff here. I have been asked a number of times in the Tea Room, “Ms Miller, do you know when the vote might come?”. People want to be able to plan their days. The way in which this place is organised, and particularly the use of urgent questions, is a real problem for us, but I will come on to that in more detail in a moment.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

rose—

[Mrs Miller]

Of course I give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that Madam Deputy Speaker will not take a dim view of my allowing interventions.

[Tom Brake]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that another factor that must be taken into account is whether the Government of the day have a majority? She was elected in 2005, and I suspect that between 2005 and 2015, there was a degree of stability in people’s ability to plan work, because successive Governments had a majority. When that is not the case, things become much more unpredictable.

[Mrs Miller]

I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but it is not the point that I am making. He is right that there is an unpredictability when we have to deal with enormous issues such as Brexit. I suppose that I am talking about the things that we can control that we are not controlling, and that, I think, is part of a modern workplace. I will come on to that in a bit more detail.

We all agree that being a Member of this place is an immense honour, but that does not mean that we have to keep it in a time warp. Sometimes we feel the great pressure of the history of this place. We may not want to challenge what has gone before for fear of being seen to be disrespectful of it. We must acknowledge that that is a pressure on each of us as Members, perhaps in different ways.

Modernisation would help us to attract new and different people to being Members of Parliament. Yes, perhaps it would attract more women, more disabled people or people with younger children, but it would be people who want a less chaotic and more certain place in which to work—a place to which they feel they can contribute.

There is a much more fundamental issue here for all of us, regardless of our gender, sexuality or ethnicity. If we thought about this place in a more focused way, it would help us to retain Members of Parliament. This place is at its best when we have Members who have been here for many years as well as Members who are brand new, because that gives a perspective on procedure, debate and the history of this place. We need to work far harder at retaining MPs. Women in particular move away from this place far too soon. It would also help us to support better our staff in our parliamentary offices, and those parliamentary staff who support us so freely and so well. We have a responsibility to act to make sure that this is a modern workplace.

Another more fundamental issue that I will place on the table for others to comment on is trust in Parliament. We can take this debate today at a very superficial level—as being about women with children, childcare and nurseries—but it is also about how much trust people have in a workplace that looks more akin to the 18th century than the 21st.

The Brexit process has challenged people’s trust not just in parliamentarians, but in the nature of Parliament. We need to keep that in mind as we move forward and think very carefully about the challenge that the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge has put on the table today. We cannot continually kick into the long grass the need to modernise this place and to get to grips with some of the issues set out by her, me, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake).

Some of the groundwork has been done with “The Good Parliament” guide, and I think that all of us would want to put on record our sincere thanks to Professor Sarah Childs for what she has done. Some of those changes, as the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge said, have come into play. The nursery is very important, not just for us, but for our staff. My staff use that nursery, and I can keep great staff, which I might not otherwise have been able to do, because we have that nursery.

Proxy voting is long overdue, but being modern is not just about people who have small babies. My very small babies are now very large babies; in fact, the youngest is 17. It is actually even more difficult—you might have some sympathy with this, Madam Deputy Speaker—to look after a 12-year-old, if you have no childcare, when you are trying to go and vote or have been called in for a meeting during a recess. On more than one occasion, my children were parked with a policeman at the back of the Speaker’s Chair—thank goodness for those policemen providing that help and support—because nothing else was available. As we think of modernisation, we must think more roundly about the pressures on our lives at times other than those very important times when we have small children, and that we think about buildings and procedures hand in hand.

I hope that this debate will make us feel that we need a clear plan for moving forward. I pay tribute to Sarah Childs for her report. I pay tribute to the work that the Speaker has done, the work done by the Commons reference group on representation and inclusion, and all the other elements of work that has been going on, including, obviously, around the Cox report. Many, many different things are happening, but to me it all feels very fragmented. As somebody who is incredibly interested in this issue, I have found it very difficult to keep up with what is really going on. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, who is on the Commission, will of course know far more than I do, and will be on top of it all, but it can be very difficult for many of us to know the long-term vision for this House as a modern workplace.

It feels very much as though—this is meant not as a criticism, but as an observation of fact—modernisation is being considered in quite a piecemeal way. We need to think about the risks that that poses to our being able to hold people to account for delivery of modernisation. We need to have clear managerial responsibility for modernisation. At the end of this debate, who will be responsible for making sure that the things we have talked about actually happen? I do not think it should be the Leader of the House, because he is also part of Government—it should be wider than that. We need to think about the procedures and the processes in play.

One immediate and very deep concern that I have is for the mental health of our parliamentary and constituency staff, and of Members of Parliament, because the chaotic approach and uncertainty that I mentioned are well-known triggers for mental health problems. If we do not act quite swiftly on this, we are at risk of being widely criticised for not acting. Constant uncertainty has an impact. We do not know when debates will start every day, because we do not know how many urgent questions there will be. We think, “Does that mean I will have to cancel or move meetings?” Of course, it is not just us who do that—it is also our parliamentary staff. Some Members who do not have parliamentary staff here have to do it themselves. It is a very inefficient use of time.

The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge highlighted inefficiencies around voting, but I would say that the issue is much more widespread than that. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington talked about Brexit. Yes, that has certainly brought a lot more unpredictability into the system, but we could take control of a great deal of that unpredictability and that chaotic feel.

I call on those who are able to influence these matters to hold an urgent review of the House timetable. I would be interested in the Leader of the House’s comments. He is relatively new to the post, but I am sure that he already has well-formed views on these things. Could we, for instance, put urgent questions before questions and debates? If these questions are so urgent, let us have them before we start the day. As the hon. Member for Huddersfield said, most Members of Parliament are here in London. The vast majority are not like me, commuting on the train. We could therefore perhaps have urgent questions at 8.30 am, before the day starts, so that they do not disrupt the flow of Members’ days—or perhaps from 9.30 am to 10.30 am, to help people with caring responsibilities. That would be a way forward. It seems straightforward to me; I am not sure why we do not do it.

When I joined this place, I had three children, the youngest of whom was three. I have a husband, and I care for two elderly parents who live with me. I am a living and breathing sandwich generation person, and I do not think we speak up enough for sandwich generation people. We often hear people with young children talk, but we do not hear those with caring responsibilities talk enough. I believe greatly that we should all do more to look after our elderly and ailing parents. As well as talking about nurseries, we need to talk about elder care issues, for not only ourselves but our members of staff.

We need a Parliament to be proud of, that attracts the best to stand for election and to be members of staff here, regardless of their age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or caring responsibilities. Our building, procedures, culture and philosophy here are hugely important—they shape our Parliament, but what should also shape our Parliament is the people we represent. How does a young woman who comes here to visit me feel when I take her into Committee Room 14, which I love, and she sees no women on the wall, just a group of extremely old men? How does any person from a black and minority ethnic background feel about how representative this Parliament is of them when they see nobody of any minority ethnic background on the walls? I will probably now be corrected; there will be someone somewhere. How does a wheelchair user feel when they have to use the service lift to get around?

We need to take all those issues into account when we talk about restoration and renewal. How do people feel when their meetings with their MP are cancelled at a moment’s notice because three urgent questions are granted on the day, with little notice, causing the sort of chaos that we now see daily?

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I apologise for not having been here for the beginning of the debate; I hope I am not being discourteous. I am listening carefully to my right hon. Friend, and I agree strongly with most of what she says. However, I am concerned about her suggestion of having urgent questions at some other time than when the House is sitting. Surely the whole point of an urgent question is that a Member of Parliament —a Back Bencher—can raise an urgent matter, and the Speaker may or may not allow that to occur. If there is a special slot for UQs at some time other than when the House is sitting, surely they would lose their entire purpose.

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is right. I suppose I am suggesting that we would sit from half-past 9. Moving towards a more nine-to-five approach to our day here would not only be better for people who live in London; this place would then look a little bit more like everybody else’s workplace. I do not know whether the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington experiences the same thing, but when I am on the train in the morning, my constituents say, “Why were you on the train at 20 minutes past 10 on Monday night? That can’t be a very effective use of your time.” I am not particularly suggesting that we should have urgent questions when the House is not sitting. I am just suggesting that we need to think about organising them into the day, so that they do not continually create a sense of chaos, with no one knowing when debates will start or finish.

[Mr Sheerman]

I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way again; she is being very kind. She has paid a lot of tributes, but I hope she does not mind me saying that she has missed one. Having been in this place a long time, I know that it became civilised because women came here. I do not want to use the “B” word too often, because I will get a bad reputation, but Tony Blair made a hell of a difference to this place. He helped to increase the number of women in this place, and women have changed it a lot since 1997. There is much more to do, but we should put it on the record that women have already civilised this place almost unrecognisably from when I was a young MP.

[Mrs Miller]

That is an interesting reflection. Having a broader range of people in Parliament, regardless of gender, would also have a civilising effect, but I tend to agree. It is nice to have a Parliament that resembles the constituencies we represent.

This is such an important debate—perhaps even more so than the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge intimated. It is about trust in this place, because if this place does not look like anything else and does not act in an apparently professional and organised manner, we undermine our constituents’ trust in a place that is there to represent them and their views. Parliament enables us to serve our constituents, and we need to ensure, in planning for the future, that this is a place they can relate to and is accessible for them. Right now, we can make real change quite quickly and create far more certainty in our days by stopping the use of UQs at the beginning of the day to delay, amend or sometimes even obliterate debate completely because of the number that have been granted.

I will close my remarks there, but reflecting what the hon. Member for Huddersfield said a few moments ago, let me say that when I first met you, Madam Deputy Speaker, you said: “Women in this place have to work twice as hard as men, because we are still not 50% of the people here.” You are absolutely right, and hon. Ladies will know that. Part of my contribution to the debate was really to reflect on the comment you made to me all those years ago. We do need far more women here to have the civilising influence that the hon. Gentleman was talking about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on this excellent debate. It is sad that it is not more broadly attended because it is an important topic. As a Member of Parliament who has to spend anywhere between 10 and 15 hours a week travelling to and from my constituency, I was grateful to hear of the great experiences that others have who travel shorter distances.

Members have made important contributions. The late and much-missed Jo Cox said that we in Westminster

“are behind the curve compared with working practice in much of industry, and the charitable and public sectors, and that is a problem… if we act differently and change the culture and working practices here, we can change how others operate. We should do that, because we are here to change and improve the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, 10 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 46WH.]

I could not agree more. If we are to make laws and policies that are forward thinking and progressive, we must get our own house in order.

When I came to this place, I could not help thinking it was a cross between Downton Abbey and Hogwarts. I know people have great affection for the Houses of Parliament, but there is no doubt it is stuck in the past. It is steeped in great history, but it is not forward looking enough. It has a rich history of failing to be a workplace that is anywhere near as functional or inclusive as it should be. The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) spoke of his shock and surprise when he arrived here to see how many pubs there were. I shared that experience.

Of the many places I have ever worked—the corporate industry, the energy sector, other MPs’ offices, foreign Governments—the only place I have seen something similar is the media. I started at Good Morning Television the year after the last pub in the building had been closed, and it was closed for a very good reason. People often visit us here in our workplace—for example, we bring constituents into this place—and it is still a mystery to me that there are so many pubs and places to buy alcohol and that alcohol is served during the day at receptions.

None the less, progress has been made. When we introduced proxy voting, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief. It has been interesting to hear from male colleagues whose partners have recently had babies or are about to have them and who have missed out on proxy voting but who will now benefit from it. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) has just introduced a proposal for extended parental leave for those who have premature babies. That is a sensible proposal that I hope the Minister will consider.

Dame Laura Cox’s report last October concluded that a

“culture of deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence”

was enabling abuses of power and the mistreatment of colleagues to go unchecked. It should not have taken one of our colleagues having to come here in a wheelchair on the day she was due to give birth to force proxy voting through. She was incredibly brave in what she did—she stood by her principles—and it is because of her that we have finally taken that step forward.

We have heard many stories about an endemic culture that normalises bullying and harassment, which continue to permeate our politics. That is the sad reality of decades and centuries of ancient tradition in this place. We have plans to refurbish this place. It is predicted to cost between £4 billion and £6 billion of taxpayers’ money just to bring this place and the other place up to standard. The Scottish Parliament, which will shortly celebrate its 20th anniversary, cost a little under half a billion pounds. We could build between eight and 10 Scottish Parliaments for the cost of the refurbishment. Some argue that this place would be better turned into a museum and that we could build a new Parliament in another part of the UK.

[Mrs Miller]

I did not want to stop the hon. Lady’s flow, but she referred earlier to the Cox report and the grievance procedures. I hope that she will have noted that we have secured a short debate on the Floor of the House next Tuesday to press for progress in those areas. I hope that she will be able to support that debate.

[Hannah Bardell]

The right hon. Lady has read my mind, because I was coming to that. I am glad to see that among the threadbare business for next week there will be an update on that important piece of work. It is very important that we move that forward. I commend her on the important work that she and the Women and Equalities Committee, which she chairs, have done on this. She said that the Brexit process had challenged people’s trust in politics and in this place. I agree with that and would go further: it has exposed the crumbling relic of a democratic institution that this place is. We face the prospect of having a candidate for Prime Minister who wants to prorogue Parliament and have a no-deal Brexit, which will have a devastating impact. How will we get public trust if we cannot even have proper business and legislation in this place?

The right hon. Lady talked about the built environment and the paintings around this place. I have had the good fortune to sit on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, and it has been a privilege to do so and particularly to see the work that has been done on the 209 Women project. I commend all those involved in that project, but during that period, I learned that 25 times more money had been spent over the past 20 years on buying pictures of men for this place than had been spent on buying pictures of women. Let us not forget that the photographs of the female parliamentarians who took part in the 209 Women project were taken by female photographers, who were not paid, which is a really important point. When we are trying to support women and their work, we must remember that they should be properly recognised. Without radical changes to this place to make it more inclusive, we will not properly reflect society.

We have made significant strides. We are the gayest Parliament in the world, or one of the gayest, and I am proud to be a woman who is gay in this place. When I stood for election and for selection, I stood against four men. I looked at the line-up and thought, “Why do I want to do this? Why do I want to go up against four men to go to a place that is very male dominated?” I did it because I wanted to be part of the change that I know many young women cannot see.

In Scotland, we have also made significant strides. We have a gender-balanced Cabinet. When Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister, she was one of only a handful of leaders in the world to do that. It is really important that we have politicians who are hard-working, relatable and can bring their personal experiences to this place. We saw that in the most recent election. There are Members across this House with a vast array of life experiences, but we have to make sure that we have that not just in Parliament and its elected representatives, but in our media. I often look up at the Press Gallery, at the press who are looking down at us, and I do not see many female faces or people of colour. It is really important that we have people reporting on our politics who are as diverse as possible.

We have had contributions from Members who have spoken about access to this place. If this building was being built from scratch today, there is absolutely no way in which it would meet health and safety standards. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge talked about the voting system. We have proxy voting, but electronic voting would save us a huge amount of time. On the last count that I did, which was in March, I calculated that we had spent 205 hours—five and a half working weeks—just voting. Given that Parliament sits for only 35 or 36 weeks a year, a huge amount of time is being wasted just on voting. Nobody is arguing that we should not be here debating and voting. That is extremely important, but, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said, perhaps we could have an allotted time for urgent questions and have predictability in our business, particularly when we have people travelling from our constituencies, businesses and other organisations to come to see us in Parliament. Having to cancel meetings at the last minute and not being able to get back for children’s events and caring responsibilities is a ridiculous situation. There is no other such employment anywhere. We do our constituents an injustice, and in my view we cannot properly represent them and their issues when there is such a lack of predictability, progress and activity from a legislative perspective. Brexit has dominated so much of the legislative timetable that it has created and exposed the inadequacies of the system.

I understand that people like the banter and to have a wee chat in the voting Lobbies, but for goodness’ sake, we live in a modern world. We should be able to have those meetings and engage with one another. It just exposes the inaccessibility of the Government and the inability to get answers from them that people feel the need to use the time in the voting Lobbies just to corner other people, because they cannot get the proper responses, meetings and time that they feel they need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Valerie Vaz]

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I congratulate Sir Simon Woolley on his elevation in the Queen’s birthday honours. It is well deserved. I mentored someone from Operation Black Vote last year. It has an incredibly good set of people who come from different backgrounds; the person whom I mentored worked in social care. That is the kind of organisation that we need to have.

I do not know if you are aware of this, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the Commissions of both Houses have responded to the UK gender-sensitive parliament audit, the first ever such audit produced in the UK. The Commissions are monitoring and publishing annual progress against four of the audit’s priority recommendations. The kind of recommendations that they are prioritising are

“Developing a parliamentary policy for children and families”,

informed by good practice in other Parliaments;

“responding to the Cox report, and…forthcoming inquiries”

on bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct; awareness of the support available to MPs, peers and staff

“to address abuse and threats via social media”;

and making information

“more readily available on the different groups or organisations in Parliament with specialist knowledge…and clearly signposted”

in order to

“support parliamentarians to take account of gender impacts in their work”.

We are pleased that the monitoring will continue.

Many Members have mentioned restoration and renewal, which gives us an opportunity to focus on the physical aspects. We need to make life much easier for people with disabilities or hearing difficulties. In new buildings such as Portcullis House, it is much easier for those with hearing difficulties to hear people. Everything possible has to be done to make Parliament accessible.

The right hon. Member for Basingstoke is right: a number of reports are coming out and we must make sure we do not lose sight of any of them. They need to be pulled together; the House authorities are aware of that, and certainly the Clerk of the House has his eye on how they will all pull together.

[Mrs Miller]

I have a genuine question: the Clerk of the House is not responsible to Members here; how do we solve that problem? It is very difficult for Members to know who is responsible for these things, because the Clerk cannot come to the Floor of the House.

[Valerie Vaz]

I did not mean that they were responsible; ultimately it is a matter for the Commission to pull those reports together. Reports will come to the Commission and will then be disseminated. I do not know whether the right hon. Lady is aware of this, but many of the responses given to the Commission are disseminated; if she checks her inbox and the parliamentary intranet she will see that everything that goes on in the Commission is published, as are any reports that need to be brought to people’s attention.

There is political will on this. It is not just a matter for the Leader of the House and the Opposition parties. We will work together, but certainly the Commission is the governing body at this stage, until things change—if they do; and if people want a more accountable Commission, that is what will happen. At present, however, these matters are for the parties nominated to the Commission, and the Clerk of the House. It is not for individual MPs to take it on themselves to do these things, although I have to say that when individual MPs have good ideas and take them to various places such as the Commission, they come to fruition. The right hon. Lady sat on the Speaker’s reference Committee; I know she is not on it currently, but that shows that there are good things that people can pull together. Things can and do happen.

[Mrs Miller]

Does the hon. Lady think the current House of Commons Commission is accountable, and if not would she support change?

[Valerie Vaz]

Well, we are all elected, and we are all appointed by our parties; we also have two non-executives who sit—[Interruption.] The right hon. Lady says we are appointed, but the Leader of the House and I are on it by virtue of our parties through the usual channels; that is the way it works. I am sure she is not casting any aspersions on the previous or current Leader of the House. It is an interesting way of working. The Clerks—the House authorities—have to be responsible for the way the House operates, and then things are done through the Commission. the fact that we have a Commission is very good. I sat on the House of Commons Governance Committee; we heard evidence on how things it works, and things changed as a result of that. There is an opportunity, if Members wish, to have another House of Commons Governance Committee—whether the Leader of the House and I would be on it, I do not know. The work is disseminated, however, as the right hon. Lady will see if she checks the intranet.

Of course we also have the Cox report, and Alison Stanley has now reported on whether the independent complaints and grievance scheme works. Her report makes for interesting reading. A unit has been tasked with implementing some work. We have a newly appointed independent director of cultural transformation, Julie Harding, who is doing town hall meetings with staff and trying to understand what goes on in order to get cultural change, and that will continue.

In a previous debate, I said I did not know what was happening to Professor Sarah Childs’ recommendations, and suggested that we do what is normally done to keep track of projects: have a Gantt chart, on which we collect all the recommendations. As the right hon. Lady is Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, I wonder if she might look at the report three years on, and commission a further inquiry on where we are on Professor Sarah Childs’ report and how many recommendations have been actioned. People thought the proxy voting was going to be difficult, but it has been as smooth as possible and works really well.

The right hon. Lady’s Committee produced a report on women in the House in January 2017, and I notice that the Government rejected all six of the recommendations in their response in September. One recommendation was that all the parties should aim for 45% of their Members of Parliament to be women. Her Committee also said that section 106 of the Equality Act 2010 should be implemented. The Government responded that they did not want to do that, and that they would rather just talk to the political parties, but I wonder if the Leader of the House could take that away and look at it, and perhaps report back at a later date. Many hon. Members have touched on the fact that we are becoming a diverse Parliament. I have to say that 31 of the 52 minority ethnic Members are from the Labour party; 19 are from the Conservatives, one is from the Lib Dems and one from the Independent Group. Exactly half are women, so we are getting it right on that score.

Another important report, “Race in the workplace” by Baroness McGregor-Smith, was published on 28 February 2017. It found that people are still being held back in the workplace because of the “colour of their skin”, which is costing the UK economy the equivalent of 1.3% of GDP a year. She said that if black and minority ethnic people progressed in the workplace at the same rate as their white counterparts, the UK economy could be boosted by £24 billion. The McGregor-Smith review made 26 recommendations. One urged the Government to create a free online unconscious bias training resource that would be available to everyone in the UK, and to develop a simple guide on how to discuss race in the workplace. Two years on from that review, I ask the Government and the Leader of House to assess where we are on that. As Baroness McGregor-Smith said:

“The time for talking is over. Now is the time to act.”

More importantly, on 28 February2017, the Government launched a business, diversity and inclusion group to bring together business leaders and organisations to develop ways of removing barriers in the workplace and monitoring employees’ progress. The then Business Minister, the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), chaired the group. She immediately wrote to the FTSE 350 companies, asking them to drive increased diversity in the workplace and to take up the McGregor-Smith review, but sadly there are still just six women chief executive officers in the FTSE 100 companies. More needs to be done. According to a recent report by Green Park, there are only five BAME CEOs in FTSE 100 companies, and 48 FTSE 100 companies had no ethnic minority presence on their boards in 2018.

Hon. Members will know that we always talk about the gender pay gap, and that is important because this Parliament not only looks at itself but also looks outside. A key figure shows that in 2018 women worked for free for 51 days of the year because of the gender pay gap. We must close that gap as soon as possible. We Labour Members feel that we have a proud record on progressing women’s rights. We brought in the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Equality Act 2010 and the minimum wage, and we introduced Sure Start. Our shadow Cabinet is nearly 50% women, and we hope that that will continue. The important thing is that many people outside this place perhaps cannot afford the things that we can, such as their own workplace nursery. If we were to implement our policies, the extension of the 30 hours of free childcare would make an important difference to women in the workplace generally, whether or not they ended up in here, and families on the lowest incomes would be eligible for additional subsidised hours on top of the 30 hours.

It is vital that we make this place fit for the 21st century for everyone who works here, who visits and who wants to come here. We all want our Parliament and our democracy to thrive, so we should be continuously looking for opportunities to improve it, and I know that all Members, whether new or old, are constantly doing that. As we look for opportunities here, we must recognise that changes can be made through legislation, and that as we change ourselves, we can also change society to make it more equal.