Equal Pay and Flexible Working Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am most grateful to everybody for taking part. It has been a wonderful debate and I look forward to reading all your Lordships’ contributions in Hansard, because they merit it. I thank the Minister for her comments. I, too, applaud, all that the Government have done for women and for families—I think that we can now take that as a given. I thank her also for alerting us to the fact that the equality Bill will be published in the spring. We had been led to believe that it would not be before the summer, so it is welcome that we will see it sooner rather than later. I look forward to working alongside my noble friend Lady Warsi on it. The Minister went into great detail, for which I am most grateful. As this is a complex area, as many noble Lords have said, I look forward to reading exactly what she said. Although we may not agree on the detail of my Bill, I found myself agreeing with much of what the Minister said. I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral for his fulsome support for the Bill. I am grateful to him for pointing out that equal pay and fairness have long been part of the lexicon of the Conservative Party, even though there seems to be collective amnesia in some areas. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lester, that these issues should not be partisan. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lester, for his support for the aims of the Bill and take on board his comments about it being fundamentally flawed—although I am not quite sure how he accommodates both those sentiments so well. I am not a lawyer; I am simply married to one, although he had nothing whatever to do with the Bill—being a judge, he has to be very much above party politics. I look forward to the assistance of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, in later stages, especially with regard to light-touch audits. That is an interesting area that we could explore. On reasonableness, I can say only that various lawyers have helped on the drafting, which I am told is used in countless legal situations and arguments, including the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 and other parts of employment law. I would be most grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Lester, did not intervene on those points, because I would not have an answer to give him, but I am told that reasonableness is expected there. I take on board the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, however, that the test of reasonableness could be a lawyers’ paradise, although I do not think it would be half as much a legal paradise as the proposals to place a burden on employers regarding social mobility will be. My proposals will encourage future parents, because they will enable parents to be in work that they can afford to do. When the noble Lord, Lord Morris, said that he agreed with everything, I thought of how, in these difficult times, people sometimes seem to be on different sides of the argument. We had a wonderful supper together the other night, when as a good Tory I bemoaned the fact that I banked with the RBS, which is now almost entirely owned by the Government, and that my mortgage is with the Britannia, which has now merged with the Co-operative society. The noble Lord, Lord Morris, said that for all his life he had been campaigning for a mixed economy, but he never thought that it would be the banks that were legalised and the Post Office that was privatised. It just goes to show that, in these times, arguments really are all over the place. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, on the tremendous work that she undertook with the Women and Work Commission, culminating in the excellent report, Shaping a Fairer Future. It is a brilliant document and I recommend it to anyone who has not read it. I agree with her that flexibility is welcomed by many employers; small companies are the original flexible employers. Often they are ahead of legislation. My parents had a small cake shop in Farnworth where they employed eight people and, if they had not operated flexible working practices, they simply would not have had a business. I agree, too, on enhancing the skills of women. I shall read again with care her views on the Equal Pay Act possibly needing to be ripped up and started again. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, had reservations about the details of the Bill but no reservations regarding the principles, and I thank her for that. Along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Prosser and Lady Morgan of Huyton, she mentioned the Walsh review, which we will welcome as a step in the right direction. Anyone with a child of 17 or 18 knows that they have their own needs. In today’s world, strengthening and supporting families should be one of our key concerns. I remind your Lordships that the Government are introducing a duty on young people of 17 or 18 to stay in education or training. They are still legally regarded as children until the age of 18. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, that legislation is only part of the process and that the issue of women at work is complex, but at least this Bill is an attempt to address it. The majority of women’s groups that we spoke to thought that the way in the Bill was the best way forward. The noble Baroness had a catalogue of why maybe in the past we had not agreed with things—but we need to work on this in a collaborative way, which is exactly what I am trying to do. I rather liked the idea of a redhead from Bolton following in the footsteps of a redhead from Blackburn. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, with her vast experience in this area, who said that the Bill may not be perfect—and I am getting that message loud and clear now—but it does try to address the issues. It has found genuine support in its aims around your Lordships' House. Again, I agree with her that women’s potential remains so underdeveloped. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark for taking part and for mentioning the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Nottingham and Southwell, with whom I have enjoyed debating the issue of flexible working on numerous occasions. The remarks of the right reverend Prelate about benefit families bring up one of my main concerns in this area. The pay gap is a silent but far reaching problem. As the CBI said, discrimination is inexcusable. I leave noble Lords with a simple request—to think about the issues that I have raised here today and which I hope this Bill goes some way to addressing, beyond the confines of party allegiance. These are pressing concerns which affect countless women in the country. Rather than wait for a big government Bill to go through—although I look forward to it—with all the delays that Bills and false starts may entail, in this Bill we have an opportunity to make changes that will strengthen our families and promote fairness. Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.