Marie Tidball MP: speeches

Speeches

• 29 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you. That is extremely helpful. Clause 2(3)(a) and 2(3)(b) cover the point that you made about those groups, stating: “For the avoidance of doubt, a person is not to be considered to be terminally ill” just by those statuses. I am very interested to hear about the implementation taskforce. I am personally keen that if the Bill passes into law, we monitor the impact on disabled people on an ongoing basis. Do you have any recommendations for how we can ensure that disabled people have a strong voice in that process, to keep the provisions in check and understand the impact, if any, on the culture within the NHS and other services? Dr Mewett: Only that if there is an implementation taskforce—most legislation requires an implementation period; in our case, it was 18 months—a strong disability advocate is involved in it. Dr McLaren: It would be to plant the seed of funding for research throughout the implementation and early stages of voluntary assisted dying legislation. Conducting qualitative research particularly in this area would be very revealing, to understand not only everyone’s reasons for applying for voluntary assisted dying but also those of marginalised groups and whether there are any other factors influencing their decisions. That also extends to research conducted in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. We have a concern about health awareness, and particularly that what we affectionately call our gag clause—whereby our medical practitioners are not able to initiate conversations with patients about voluntary assisted dying—unfairly disadvantages people from culturally and linguistically diverse populations and those who have lower levels of health literacy in accessing information about the care available to them and their health options. We feel that that comes mainly from discussions with general practitioners. Not allowing those general practitioners to discuss the options with them certainly does not do them any favours. Dr Fellingham: Both my colleagues have made excellent points that I was going to make. I think they have covered it very well.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I absolutely do. Furthermore, in response to my hon. Friend’s important point, the report specifically stated: “To the extent that the courts’ pro-contact culture operates as a barrier to addressing domestic abuse, it serves to reinforce that culture.” Indeed, section 6 of the report laid bare that children’s voices are being “muted or unheard” in domestic abuse cases because of the pro-contact culture.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Mundell. I have fought to break down barriers to equal justice, opportunity and dignity without discrimination for women and disabled people at every stage of my personal, professional and political life. I know that our Labour Government’s work on our missions for 10 years of national renewal has the purpose of changing lives across our country. This clause will be an important part of achieving that change for women in the workplace, ensuring that no matter what their background or where they live, women can thrive in the workplace. I am standing here because of the difference that world-class public services made to my life chances. This Bill creates a culture for world-class employers to break down barriers for women employees. The requirement to develop and publish equality action plans showing the steps that employers will need to take in relation to gender equality will be a significant move forward to improve equality, alongside collecting and publishing figures on the gender pay gap. In an evidence session for the Bill Committee, Jemima Olchawski from the Fawcett Society said: “We have a gender pay gap of just under 14%. On average, women take home just over £630 a month less than men. It also has a detrimental impact on our economy, because it is a marker of the ways in which women are not fully participating or contributing to the economy at their full potential. Estimates indicate that that means we are missing out on tens of billions of pounds of GDP. We strongly support the measures as an important step towards redressing that balance. In particular, we are pleased to see the inclusion of equalities action plans as an important way to get employers to drive forward progress on the gender pay gap.” –– [ Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 81, Q76.] This is helpful. The clause makes an important contribution to advancing gender equality by including the requirement to develop and publish equality action plans, which address the gender pay gap and support employees going through the menopause. I am pleased to be a member of the Committee seeing this go through today.

• 26 Nov 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Jemima, you described the Bill as a “win for women”. Why do you feel the measures in the Bill are so transformative, and how will they benefit working families, women and disabled women? Jemima Olchawski: We know that women are currently more likely to miss out on statutory sick pay because they do not earn enough to meet the threshold or have not been in their roles as long; you heard evidence earlier about the impact on people who have to try to work when they are not well enough, and the impact on incomes through people not being able to work. Women are more likely to be juggling work and care, so they are more likely to need the flexibility and protections in this Bill. That is why getting the piece around flexibility is so important, whether it is because you are caring for children, for disabled children or for elderly relatives. We also know that one in 10 women we surveyed in our research who had been experiencing the menopause had left their workplace as a result of their symptoms, and flexible work and support in the workplace is really important to enable them to continue to participate when they are at the peak of their careers and skill levels. They should be allowed to thrive and be in their prime. We know that the majority of households in poverty have at least one adult in work, but at the moment we do not have a system that properly supports either lone parent families, which are predominantly women, or households where both parents want to work. We also know that 40% of women who are not working would work more hours, or would work paid hours, if they had access to flexible working, so these measures are also really important as a part of overall efforts to address poverty and prevent child poverty. Joeli Brearley: Adding to what Jemima has said, particularly on flexible working, the current law is that you have a day one right to request flexible working, and that has obviously moved from having had six months in a job. A right to request is still a right to decline, and we strongly feel that it does not go far enough in changing the dial on flexible working. I know that the RPC opinion on flexible working has said that there is no evidence that we need to change the law on this. There will never be enough official evidence because those who want flexible working tend either to ask for what they think that they can get—or, if they know that it will not be granted, they do not ask for it at all. TUC research found that a third of people who want flexible working do not ask for it, despite needing it, because they think it will be rejected, and a further third ask for what they think that they can get, rather than what they actually need to manage their personal and professional obligations. To really change the dial on flexible working, you have got to switch this on its head, and an advertising duty would do that. It is a hugely ambitious change; it is not a slight tweak to the current legislation, which is a much easier thing to do. An advertising duty would ensure that employers design jobs as flexible from the outset. It would mean that, in a job advert, employers would have to stipulate the types of flexible working available, and the candidate they chose would have a legal right to take up employment on whatever arrangement was stipulated in that job advert. The pushback on this has been, “Well, not all jobs can be flexible.” That is of course true, so if you do not believe that a job can be done flexibly, you could stipulate that and set out the reasons why. The duty would particularly impact the women we work with. They would not be in a situation where they are having to move job. At the moment, they need to go to a new job and then ask for the flexibility they need to fulfil their personal and professional obligations. If at that point they find out that that is not possible, they have to leave that job—and both employer and employee lose out. We are currently trying to shoehorn flexibility into a very rigid structure, and we need to really change the culture. We believe that an advertising duty is the way in which you do that. If we are not going to be that ambitious, and an advertising duty is off the table, we really need to reduce the number of reasons that you can decline a flexible working request—we believe that it can be reduced to three. We need to make it a legal right to be able to request flexible working from the point at which a job is offered rather than the first day of employment. That makes complete sense for everybody. Finally, we need to have the ability to appeal decisions to a third body, perhaps the single enforcement body. We also want employers to have to publish their flexible working policies online so that employees can see them. It would be a game changer and would really shift the way in which our employment market works, and it certainly would be a game changer for women. The other thing in the Bill that I would really like to talk about is parental leave—the fact that it is not remunerated and that you are moving it to the first day of employment. We know that the take-up will be very low. We did some research with the Centre for Progressive Policy that found that if you increase paternity leave to six weeks and pay it at 90% of salary, you reduce the gender pay gap by 4% and you increase labour force participation, particularly by women. We really need to keep up with our European counterparts and increase paternity leave. Two weeks at £182 a week is not good enough, and we know that one in four dads are not even taking their two weeks because they cannot afford to do so. Families are losing out as a result. It is really bad for kids if dads and second parents are not enabled to spend time with their children. It is really bad for women, and it is a big cause of the gender pay gap, so we would really like to see the parental leave review happen as quickly as possible, and paternity leave increased, ringfenced and paid properly. Jemima Olchawski: To come back on flexible working, Fawcett has been campaigning for that advertising duty and agrees that it is really important to make these measures meaningful. It is also important to recognise that this is good for employers because it increases the pool of talent that they have access to, rather than being able to get applications only from people who meet a rigid but not relevant set of criteria. It broadens it out to everyone who genuinely can do the job, which benefits everyone and is hugely important for enabling women to succeed at work.

• 21 Oct 2024 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a proud member of the GMB, Unison, and Community trade unions. When I was born, the room in Barnsley hospital was filled with flowers. No one knew how long I would live for or what operations I might need. Our communities in Penistone and Stocksbridge nurtured me growing up, and world-class NHS care at Barnsley and Sheffield children’s hospitals enabled me to walk and follow my ambitions. My local state education in Penistone helped me to catch up, and to go on to study law at university and fulfil my potential. My inimitable parents taught me that there was no such word as “can’t”, as well as the values of fairness, equality and justice—values at the heart of this Bill. I will use my skills and experiences, as the MP for our constituency, to give back to the communities that gave me so much, including incredible teachers and teaching assistants who helped to make education a way to overcome people’s assumptions about my disability, and to feel free. Achieving health and education equality is a huge asset to our country and critical to the health of our economy. I am proud to be the first Member of Parliament for Penistone and Stocksbridge in over 100 years to have grown up there. Our rich agricultural heritage has put food on the country’s table, and the grit and determination of local miners, the steelworks in Stocksbridge and ironworks in Thorncliffe powered the industrial revolution, with the latter also producing Churchill tanks, which defended our country in world war two. Those sites remain economically important today, with the specialist LIBERTY Steel now producing steel that powers our UK aerospace industry. The landscape of our very special constituency has helped to shape our laws before. Poignantly, the day of the general election marked 186 years since the Huskar pit disaster on 4 July 1838, when flooding caused the pit to collapse, killing 26 children. That tragedy led to the Mines and Collieries Act 1842, which banned women and girls, and boys under 10, from being employed in underground work. I learned about that tragedy at school and I knew then, as I know now, that law and politics have the power to improve people’s lives. The past we inherit; the future we build. This Bill makes the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation, with the driving purpose to change the lives of people across our country and make them better off. Ensuring that the very special people of the place that made me continue to innovate to change the world will be central to the work I do here. Like the blooming heather that sweeps down the moors past the crystal waters of our rivers and reservoirs, towards our towns and villages, talent bursts forth in our constituency out of the dramatic landscape, gruelling weather, and lives hard-worked and hard-won. People in my constituency literally shoot for the stars: Grenoside’s Helen Sharman was the first British citizen to go into space in 1991; Thurlstone-born Nicholas Saunderson was a blind 17th-century Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge university; and England international footballer, John Stones, also hails from that village, and follows a long and proud history of footballers who have gone through Penistone Church FC. This summer also saw Olympians made in our constituency. Gunthwaite’s Becky Moody won bronze in dressage with her horse Jagerbomb. Caden Cunningham, who won silver, was trained in Oxspring at Quest Taekwondo. Musicians abound, too. Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys makes sure that High Green is resolutely on the map. We can also boast stellar folk singers like the talented Rachael McShane of Bellowhead and Cawthorne’s award-winning Kate Rusby, whose elegiac music of home has healed many a heart and inspired the mind. Ecclesfield produced Barry Hines, the author of “A Kestrel for a Knave”, which was turned into the acclaimed film “Kes”. He documented working-class lives for more than 40 years. Local author Matt Coyne’s “Frank and Red” was the literary comedic mug of hot chocolate that kept me going through the general election. While our beliefs start from a different place, I share my predecessor Miriam Cates’s passion for education; I hope her new role gives her the chance for leadership on changing the safety of social media for young people. Angela Smith’s legacy as a good constituency MP is something that I aspire to. Helen Jackson’s work on community building in Northern Ireland, as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Mo Mowlam, provides lessons of hope that resonate in the times of hate that we must combat today. I am also grateful for Mick Clapham’s support; I know we will see his legacy on the mineworkers’ pension scheme continue under this Government. Love, tolerance and doing things for other people are values knitted across the place I call home like the blankets woven from the yarn of Penistone sheep. To the people across Penistone and Stocksbridge: it is the privilege of my life to serve you. As your MP, I will work hard every day to be a strong voice for our communities and ensure that people growing up and growing old in our constituency can fulfil their potential. I will do what it takes to get things right and to get things done. We are a Government who will restore hope across our communities and bring people together. I cannot wait to work with Members across this House to make that change happen.