Equality Bill

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, which demonstrates that we need to take further action with regard to local authorities. Other measures that I wish specifically to mention are those banning age discrimination outside the workplace and, importantly, those removing discrimination against carers. I cannot understand why the Conservative party is going to vote against the Bill, because it is so important that we continue to support carers and to remove discrimination against them. I had to re-read the first sentence of the Conservatives' reasoned amendment a few times, because I thought that they had missed something. Obviously the Bill seeks to address""the root causes of the reduction in social mobility"." The Bill does attempt to address the root causes of social inequality. If the socio-economic duty been provided for at the back end of clause 194, I might have understood the Conservatives' missing it, but of course the duty falls within the first clause. Labour Members may find it interesting to be given further explanation by the Conservative party as to why it is not supporting the Bill this evening. Other key features of the Bill are equally important, and for some of us they have, as I said, been a long time coming. They include the further action to promote equal pay. As we know, public sector bodies will have to produce a gender pay report—the Government are going to consult the public bodies on how they might do that—and for private sector companies with more than 250 employees this will not be compulsory until after 2015. That is an important step forward in gaining a fuller understanding of why we still have the gender pay gap. There are two areas that we might wish to examine further, however, and discuss in Committee. The first is what we need to do to get rid of occupational segregation. It remains a problem and it is one of the reasons why women continue to have lower earnings than men. We must examine our education policies and our learning and skills policies across the board to see what more we can do to attract both men and women into a wider range of occupations. The second issue, which the Bill goes some way towards addressing, is the need to get rid of secrecy in respect of people's pay. Unless we have a full understanding of what people are paid, we will not be fully able to develop policies to address the issue. I know that there are key areas that we could cite—I hate to say it, but academia is one—where it is not always clear what people are earning. We know that in private sector companies it is also not clear and transparent what people are earning. We need to take further action on this matter. Other hon. Members have mentioned the importance of measures to protect women who are breastfeeding from being removed from places such as restaurants and public galleries. The measures in the Bill are greatly to be welcomed. It is disgraceful that in the 21st century we have to legislate to ensure that women will not be discriminated against because they are breastfeeding. Hon. Friends stressed earlier how important breastfeeding is in reducing inequalities right from day one of a child's life. We know that it is women from socially disadvantaged backgrounds who are less likely to breastfeed their children. I have experience of working in a project for Save the Children many years ago in Sunderland, where a community health project was working with local women and desperately trying to support them in breastfeeding. It was very difficult. We had many cultural hurdles to overcome, and years of work were undone in an instant by somebody going into one of the shops in the city centre and being asked to leave. That spread around the local community and rendered useless much of the work that had been done. We know that Sure Start projects are doing a great deal of work to encourage breastfeeding and we do not want that work to be undermined by women being excluded or made to feel uncomfortable. As was said earlier, most women who breastfeed in public manage to do it discreetly and should be encouraged. I turn to public sector procurement. Public sector contracts account for about £175 billion-worth of expenditure. It is important that when contracts are awarded by the public sector, they are given to companies that are exemplars of good industrial relations across the board and have excellent equal opportunities policies. I also want to make sure that public sector procurement is used to support the green agenda, and I am sure it is possible to marry the two.