A Brighter Future for the Next Generation — House of Commons, 2021-05-13
Topic: Mixed Topics
Maria Frances Lewis Miller (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker After 12 months of challenge, this Queen’s Speech needed to do two things: tackle the aftermath of the pandemic and lay firm foundations for a brighter future. It does exactly that. Bills tackling investment in our health service and social care sit alongside town deals, the higher education Bill and the Environment Bill. This clear vision for optimism is based on the Government’s levelling up agenda for the whole country. It is really about unleashing the full potential of the whole country. That was the message that ignited the electorate in the elections last week. From Hartlepool to the west midlands and to Basingstoke, voters profoundly rejected negative campaigning and embraced the positive message that we, as a Conservative party, had to give—nowhere more so than in my own constituency of Basingstoke, where we took back control of the council with a resounding majority This Queen’s Speech is all about levelling up and unleashing that potential, and it is an optimistic message for the country. It is about investing in our towns and in the infrastructure in the midlands, the north-east, the north-west and, indeed, around the whole of the United Kingdom. It means that reaching one’s full potential does not mean moving away from one’s home town. That has a personal resonance for me, because in the late 1960s, when my family left the Black Country where I had been born and bred, they did so to seek a better job and to be able to move from council accommodation to a private house. I would like to see a change in the need to do that, and I welcome the focus of this Queen’s Speech in allowing that to happen. That message is also important for places such as my own constituency of Basingstoke, because growth has been concentrated in the south-east for too long at the expense of other parts of the United Kingdom, causing extraordinary pressure on housing, transport and the local environment. Making sure that we level up across the country is important for every single citizen in the United Kingdom The Queen’s Speech is also about levelling up for those groups everywhere who are still not achieving their full potential, particularly through education and work opportunities. The education and skills Bill will be an essential ingredient in this, as lifelong training is the reality for all of us wherever we work When it comes to work, the past 12 months have been an enormous challenge for employers. They have been tested more than ever before, and the overwhelming majority have worked with their employees to find new ways to work and support their families, and to support staff suffering from the mental health challenges of the pandemic. If we are to enable everyone in this country to reach their full potential, we need to be actively levelling up in the workplace, too. Within the Government’s legislative programme, we need to tackle some of the issues that we encountered with working practices during the pandemic. We must be optimistic about ensuring that everybody—every woman, in particular, and every parent—in this country can reach their potential Since 2010, this Government have made it an important priority to help women to level up in the workplace. There has been progress in recording and cutting the gender pay gap for women under 35, in increasing childcare and in extending the right to request flexible working, but a truly bright future for the next generation will take these steps further. Ensuring that everyone in this country can reach their full potential in work is important not only because it is fair, but because it is essential for the prosperity of our entire nation. Making all jobs flexible by default has become the reality for the past 12 months, so let us not slip back into the old ways of working. Let us use the challenges of the past 12 months as a platform for a more positive, flexible way to work from now on. And let us level up for pregnant women at work, too, because too many of them have suffered from their employers’ lack of understanding of the law during the pandemic, being put on sick leave when they should not have been. The Government already know that 50,000 women a year leave their jobs when they are pregnant because of discrimination, often covered up by the use of non-disclosure agreements, many forced out of work at a time when they cannot get another job. Too many women still see a lack of a level playing field at work, so let us level up for them too, and let us have within the Government legislative programme plans to stop pregnant women being made redundant and stop the use of non-disclosure agreements covering up unlawful activity, particularly sexual harassment and discrimination at work. Let us have proper shared care for dads, too, because it is better for everyone. All jobs as flexible by default unless there is a good reason not to—that is what levelling up has to look like for everyone in the future Finally, I welcome the online harms Bill included in the Gracious Speech, published yesterday for scrutiny before being formally debated in this place. A ground- breaking piece of legislation—the UK truly leading the world in tackling online harms. An important part of a bright future for the next generation needs to be an internet that benefits, not detracts from, our lives. As well as regulating that industry to ensure that it does not create harm, we need laws to give victims protections, too. So either within or alongside the Online Safety Bill, the Government need to tackle the deficits in the law, especially on sharing intimate sexual images without consent. The Law Commission review is now finished and will be complete before the Bill comes to the House, and I hope the Government will undertake to insert into the Online Safety Bill important changes in criminal law to protect victims of that heinous crime of intimate image abuse The Bills in the Queen’s Speech start to rebuild our country after the challenges of the pandemic. Its optimism and vision to level up are exactly what our country needs.