Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-22
Topic: Civil Rights
Ralph Matthew Palmer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. Indeed, it is a great pleasure to be part of something that happens occasionally but is always wonderful when it does, which is people around the House, with their various experiences, intelligences and insights, joining together to urge on the Government a really sensible change in legislation. To the suggestion that this cannot be done in time, I am sure there are others around the House who, as I have, have spent time in the City or in similarly pressured situations and have turned wording around overnight and got it right. Indeed, I know there are people like that in government or we would not have managed Brexit. This is merely an application of the skills that the Government have to this particular instance, and I urge my noble friend to get his friends to sort this out rather than thinking that this is something that can be shuffled through as an oversight In the matter of women’s equality, little things matter. Yes, there are big things and big occasions and, yes, there have been through history and are now women who have given their lives for this, particularly now in Iran, but generally progress has been made in little things. Getting the MCC to admit women did not count for nothing. It is a grain of sand but one that has landed on one side of the scales and will not come back. It is going to be a while—we have had about 150 years of progress and maybe it will be another 150 before we get where we want to go—but that does not mean we should flag, give up or let things like this Bill pass Motherhood is, I hope, something on which the next decade or so will see real progress. It is not an estate that we honour in this country in the way that we should. Yes, all of us are individually grateful for our birth and I think we all recognise that the estate of motherhood is good for society, but those who undertake it are treated miserably when they wish to come back into the world to take their place, having undertaken that duty for all of us. Are they accorded equality? Are they given the same chance and space as if they had stayed working? No. That will take a lot of change. It will not be easy and it will be argumentative, but it is an issue on which we must push The status of motherhood in the Bill, its denigration by the choice of the Bill’s wording, is not something that we should tolerate. As other speakers have said, the attempt to erase the word "women", to remove all its meaning except to be human, is something that we should not tolerate. We have to stand firm against this. I am hoping that the Minister will hear the call of Millicent Fawcett, "Courage calls to courage everywhere", gather his forces and get this Government to remedy the wrong that has been done. Indeed, I hope they will go further than that and get themselves into a position where they are happy to make it clear that women, women’s rights and single-sex rights have a place in society, and that that shall not be erased by the pressure group that must not be named.