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Jobs for the Girls: Two Years On

That is good news. I turn to the meat of the Committee's findings on whether the women and work commission recommendations have been implemented. We were rather disappointed with the Government's one-year-on report, and we were a little fearsome with some of the witnesses because of the lack of a timetable and committed funding in the Government's initial response to the commission's report. However, the inquiry and the report extended over quite a period, and there have been a number of developments since then. Later progress reports were much more encouraging, and we were heartened by the commitment shown by those Ministers who appeared before the Committee: the Minister for Women and Equality; and the then Under-Secretary of State, now the Minister of State, Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy). We also took written evidence from the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden). It was clear that there had been considerable development, even over the period since the initial response, which was not long after the women and work commission reported. It is a developing area and even after we had received the Government's response—our report was published in February—there were a number of developments. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about further progress. Among other matters, we wanted to consider the structure of Government and the perennial problem of how easy it is to embed the equality recommendations in all Departments to ensure that action is taken. We strongly recommended all Departments and public bodies to take the issue on board. To that end, we call on other Select Committees to include it as part of their remit. I have been on several Select Committees, and there is great variation in whether they take note of the matter. Most of those Committees have been dealing with economic matters, and they vary greatly in whether they regard it as necessary to ask questions about progress on equality in their inquiries, even if it is directly relevant to their work. It is important that other Select Committees should realise the importance of monitoring Departments in order to ensure that they take such matters on board. The Committee undertook a survey of Departments. Their replies are included in the report, and they make interesting reading. We asked what Departments were doing to promote gender equality, what changes they had made in their processes and what they had done about public procurement. We received replies from 12 Departments; they did not all reply and, as one would expect, the depth of their responses varied. It might be enlightening for people to see which Departments have been making more progress. I turn to some of our specific proposals. I cannot go through them all, as there are too many. The first was the fact that the causes of occupational segregation start with the assumptions that are made by families and schools, as was said by the Chairman of our Committee, the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire. I reiterate the importance of giving careers advice and work experience more support and funding. All too often, they are seen as extra duties, and teachers do not want to take them on. I have had people doing work experience in my offices, both here and in my constituency, and there is great variation. Some monitor their pupils, telling them what to do and what they are expected to achieve in their placements; and others simply turn up to ensure that the pupils are there—it is clearly a bore and a chore. There is a great difference in how work experience is treated. Placements can be invaluable—for example, in breaking down barriers, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor). If students go to only one work placement, in one area—a placement that fits into a traditional area of work—they will not have any experience of what else might be open to them. Often, it depends on who their parents or their friends know, and they have to sort it out for themselves. They do not necessarily have the opportunity to break down any of those barriers or to think about other sorts of placements. We heard some interesting evidence from the YWCA, which has considered the matter closely and is talking about the need to have varied work placements and the possibility of opening people up to a different range of experiences. That is obviously one of the ways in which we can start to break down some of the assumptions about what jobs girls and boys should take up. There are also assumptions about what jobs boys should do and what they are able to do, so it is an issue only for girls. It would be wrong to say so; however, people can be channelled into the areas that are expected of them. That is true in relation to expectations about educational aspirations as much as to expectations about where they will be in the labour market. Given the gender divide, those expectations result in boys and girls, and men and women, tending to go into separate areas of work. I would like to hear more from the Minister on another matter. We were told in evidence that Ofsted is reviewing practices in order to ensure flexibility in adult education. We recommended that there should be additional funding, so that colleges would find it easier to run projects to enable older women who may want to change their work direction, as well as younger women with family commitments, to be able to do undertake such education—and a little pot of money to enable them to take that road might be a good idea. Such a review is important. Adult education can allow people to start again, to try something new and to have the opportunity to move on. We understood that that report would be available in April, but it has not yet appeared. The Minister may not know why; if not, I hope that she can find the answer. Thirdly, we considered apprenticeships—another important area. We recommended that the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Low Pay Commission should consider the gender pay gap for apprentices. Girls and boys tend to go into different apprenticeships. Again, the YWCA found in a survey that the lowest paid apprenticeship was for hairdressing, which as expected is more than 90 per cent. female; and the highest paid electro-technical trades paid twice the average, and is 100 per cent. male dominated. That will come as no surprise. One development that has taken place since we reported was the Government's commitment to a massive expansion in apprenticeships. When I first saw one of our internal party political briefings, I threw up my hands in horror because it made no mention of equality. Ministers were upset and referred me to the proper document on apprenticeships, which included an entire paragraph on equality. I was heartened also at the announcement made at the TUC by the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham): he announced an increase in the minimum pay for apprenticeships. We had asked that the Low Pay Commission should consider the agenda pay gap. It was asked also to consider whether apprenticeships should be excluded from the minimum wage. However, the Government have announced that, pending the work of the Low Pay Commission, there would be an increase in the minimum pay for apprenticeships from £80 to £95 a week. What pleased me was that the Department has it in its consciousness sufficiently that the Secretary of State pointed out in his speech at the TUC that young women—apprentices such as those in hairdressing and care—would benefit most. Clearly, there is concern, but that does not mean that it will be easy, if we have a massive expansion of apprenticeships, to begin to break down some of those barriers and get girls a broader range of choices of what they want to do. That is important. We were disappointed, as was the women and work commission, with the Government response on quality part-time work. There has been an excellent quality part-time work initiative to create projects to get women into quality part-time work. When we asked Baroness Prosser at the first meeting what she thought was the most important issue, the first thing that she mentioned was that quality part-time jobs are essential. It is, or can be, easy to get part-time work, but it is hard to get part-time work of quality; all too often, women, even those in good career jobs, who go back to work after having a child, say, if they are able to go back part-time, find that they are demoted or that they have slipped down the career ladder. It is hard in general in a whole range of occupations to get decent quality part-time work. That also means that some of the experience and skills of older women is lost. In their response the Government said that they will be reviewing the matter and deciding what to do, but we said that the amount of money available to the programme should be increased. That is still important. It raises the general point, which is relevant to other things, that we can do good projects and pilots, and get a range of employers as exemplars, as we have, that try to do positive work, but the difficulty is extending it. I do not think that the Committee had an answer to that, but we need to be conscious of moving beyond saying, ““We did jolly well. We had some pilots””, to working out how we extend them. One of our main recommendations—we were rather bold in this—was that the Government consider a gradual extension of the right to request flexible working to the whole work force. We thought that we would be bold but, obviously, we understand that the commitments of people with young children and carers are paramount. However, at the end of the day, there is no reason why we should not be able to offer more flexible working patterns to the population. We know that that is a long-term aspiration, but it was important for us to consider it. Obviously, there has been an extension to the right to claim flexible working since then.