CIVIL SERVICE (MARRIAGE BAR) (Hansard, 25 July 1946)

§ Mr. John Freeman (Watford)
I will detain the House for the shortest possible time in considering a matter which is of very considerable importance to many thousands of people, for whom this House has a peculiar responsibility, namely, civil servants. I wish to start by saying I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary for coming down and sitting here at this late hour to give a reply to the Debate. After all, this is vital to the welfare of a very large number of civil servants, and they too will be grateful to him for paying attention to this matter.
We are concerned with the operation of what is usually known as a "marriage bar" in the Civil Service. Because it is an extremely complicated subject with which to deal in the very limited time at our disposal on an Adjournment Motion, I will assume that the Financial Secretary and, indeed, the rest of the House are roughly aware of the background story to this question of the marriage bar. The reason it becomes particularly opportune to raise it at this moment is because during 382 the last Parliament the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir John Anderson), the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, appointed a sub-committee of the Civil Service National Whitley Council to examine the operation of the marriage bar, and to report on the implications of removing it. The right hon. Gentleman is a master of stonewalling tactics, and he, of course, took very good care to see that the terms of reference of that committee precluded it from expressing an opinion one way or the other as to the desirability of removing the marriage bar. He allowed it only to report on the implications. That report has recently been presented to the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it has been privately published by the National Whitley Council. It has not, I understand, been published yet as a Government paper.
The first question which I wish to address to the Financial Secretary is this: Will he undertake to see that this exceedingly important report is published by H.M. Stationery Office in order that civil servants and, indeed, the rest of the country, can consider the very considerable implications contained in it? If, as I hope, he gives a favourable reply to that question, then it is not necessary to argue the case in so much detail here tonight, because it is obvious, I think, to anybody reading that report that, while it does not in effect recommend one way or the other, the overwhelming balance of argument is in favour of abolishing the marriage bar; and I doubt whether anybody reading it with any degree of impartiality could form a different impression. Now it is perfectly true that the Treasury has certain discretionary powers in individual cases in order to allow married women to retain their positions as established civil servants, and I want to put on record a sentiment with which I do not think the Financial Secretary will disagree, that these discretionary powers are totally inadequate to deal with the problem as it now presents itself. I have never heard it suggested by anybody that those powers were adequate, and they are certainly resented to the highest degree by the great majority of women civil servants.
The reason they are inadequate is, I think, threefold. In the first place civil servants are entitled to expect some degree of uniformity of treatment, and it is quite 383 impossible to achieve that if the discretionary power can only be operated in respect of individual cases; because there is a degree of imponderability, both as between individuals and as between the different Departments, which makes it impossible for anybody on entering the Service to be sure whether the marriage bar will, in fact, be operated against her or not.
The second objection to the discretionary power is that it is on certain occasions, or at any rate it is very generally thought on certain occasions, to have been used as an instrument of victimisation. Those are serious words and I do not say them irresponsibly. There are one or two cases in the history of the use of these discretionary powers which at any rate are almost universally believed by the Civil Service to have been instances of victimisation, and perhaps of political victimisation. Even if that charge cannot be fully substantiated, it is extraordinarily undesirable that in a case of this kind, where the State is the employer, any such possibility should exist at all.
The third objection to the discretionary powers as they exist is that they are supposed to be operated by consultation and agreement between the Department concerned and the Treasury. There is ample evidence that in a good many cases the application for retention of a married woman in the Civil Service never gets to the Treasury at all. There is one very striking case, which I will not weary the House with quoting at length, where a medical officer of health employed in the Ministry of Health repeatedly applied for retention in the Civil Service after marriage, was refused such retention, could not marry, and as recently as last year, when the right hon. Member for the Scottish Universities was asked by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Dar-wen (Mr. Prescott) about this case, the reply was that in the right hon. Gentleman's knowledge, there had never been a case of a doctor being refused. That, I think, is conclusive evidence that that case at least had never been referred to the Treasury. For those reasons, the discretionary powers as they exist at the moment, even though we are aware that there has been some redrafting of them in June of last year, are not adequate to deal with the situation.
384 Now it is not necessary to go into the arguments of principle for or against a marriage bar, because they are set out very clearly in the report of the National Whitley Council, but I would make this general observation on the arguments. They fall into two classes. There are some arguments which are really directed against the employment of married women in any capacity at all inside or outside the Civil Service. Those, of course, have nothing to do with the Civil Service as such, and whatever else one may have to say about them, they are abundantly answered by the fact that it is the considered policy of H M. Government to encourage married women to remain in industry and in employment wherever possible. We have the most extraordinary situation, therefore, of the Chancellor of the Exchequer tramping round the country, making appeals to women to stay in industry, giving them Income Tax reliefs to make it possible for them to do so, and then the hon. Gentleman—his assistant—refusing to allow them to remain in the Civil Service Here is a case of a Jekyll and Hyde Department, if I ever saw one. I hope that my hon. Friend will appreciate that argument. The other category of argument is that there are certain factors connected with Civil Service employment which makes it desirable to have a high wastage of employees at a certain level up the ladder. This argument may have some validity, but it is absurd to suppose that the marriage bar is necessarily the way to achieve it. In conclusion, the stock argument against the removal of the marriage bar is that the Civil Service itself is by no means unanimous about the desirability of removing it.
Certain figures are published by the National Whitley Council in their recent report which are of great significance. They show, in fact, that there is a slight majority over all the Civil Service unions in favour of removing the bar, but not the necessary two-thirds majority to make their opinion effective. I would point out to the Financial Secretary that if these figures are analysed, one or two things become apparent. One is that among the higher grades of Civil Servants there is an overwhelming majority in favour of removing the bar completely. The second is that among some of the lower grades the figures are, I suggest, a trifle mis- 385 leading. I see the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. John Edwards) is here, and I had rather hoped that my hon. Friend the Member for Heston and Isle-worth (Mr. W. R. Williams) might have been here also, because the Post Office workers are a particular stumbling block at this point. It is very understandable that Post Office workers, the majority of whom are uniformed workers in the lowest grade should vote, from ordinary motives of safeguarding male employment, against the removal of the marriage bar. But I have it on the very best authority that even inside that union the majority opinion among the higher grades, regardless of whether they are men or women, is in favour of removing the bar. Be that as it may, there comes a time when the Treasury must refuse to be obstructed, even by a trade union, if it behaves in a reactionary way.

§ Mr. John Edwards (Blackburn)
I would like my hon. Friend to know that whatever the Union of Post Office Workers may have voted about the marriage bar, the Post Office Engineering Union is wholly in favour of the abolition of the bar. I think he was rather conveying a false impression.

§ Mr. Freeman
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I thought he represented the Union of Post Office Workers. I beg his pardon. There are two courses open to the Financial Secretary. One is to abolish the bar completely, which is obviously the desirable course. The other is to consider whether it is necessary, to meet the views of some of the lower grade workers as expressed through their unions, to make any distinguishing line inside the Civil Service above which the bar could be removed. It would be easy to make the distinction if it were desirable, but that would be infinitely less desirable than abolishing the bar completely. My hon. Friend is expected by many thousands of civil servants to take this matter seriously, and I know he will do so. He is well known inside this House as being a generous and gallant friend to all his Parliamentary colleagues. He has a good chance now to stand in the same relation to these thousands of women, whose employer he is. I hope that he will take it.

§ The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Glenvil Hall)
Although the hour is late, I think the House is indebted to 386 my hon. Friend for having raised this matter tonight. If, in reply, I do not speak for long, it does not mean that I fail to realise the importance of the case he has put to us, or the fact—and it is a fact—that thousands of women in the Civil Service and others who are hoping to go into the Civil Service, and who, at some time in their lives, hope to be married, look upon this as a serious matter, and one that should be dealt with at the earliest possible moment. My hon. Friend was quite right when he said that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the early part of 1945, received a deputation of hon. Members from all sides of the House. The views then expressed were not confined to any one party; all parties apparently joined in expressing to him the view that the marriage bar in the Civil Service should now be abolished. What the right hon. Gentleman did was to promise that the matter should be considered by a committee of the National Whitley Council, and that committee was duly set up. All he promised was to review the matter and not that the marriage bar should be changed, or that the present rule should be changed, even if the result of the committee's findings was in that direction. He promised a review only, and of course, the Government are not bound by what the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer in another Government said. It is true, and I make this point for what it is worth, that the House as a House, and even the late Government, were not bound to accept the report of the committee which was set up.
I realise, as the hon. Member very properly said, that opinion is divided on this matter, even inside the Civil Service —he mentioned, in particular, the Post Office. Of course we are all familiar with what many people inside the Post Office think of this proposed change, all I can say to him, is that the Government propose to publish this report as a White Paper. It will be published quite soon, so that Members in all quarters of the House, and the public outside, will be able to consider it in the Recess. I will give him this assurance, that quite early in the autumn when we reassemble the Government will announce their decision. He and the other hon. Members will be able to study the report in the meantime, and when we assemble they will be able to come here, with all the arguments— and he has put many cogent ones to us 387 tonight. May I express the private hope that he will not be disappointed with the result.

§ Miss Jennie Lee (Cannock)
If there are a few moments at my disposal, I would impress upon the Financial Secretary that there is a grave responsibility on his Department to consider certain issues of national importance involved in the matter now before the House. I ask him to remember, that we as a nation cannot afford to lose the services of highly skilled married women who might wish to continue in their employment. We in this House ought to have a complete understanding of why there are certain difficulties in the broad acceptance of this proposition, because our country is still haunted by memories of the period before the war when there was not enough work to go round. In an economic situation in which there is mass unemployment, naturally, there will be a very strong prejudice against women who are married occupying certain jobs, but if Great Britain is to survive and flourish economically, then this country has to be a quality country, and every young woman should have the maximum of encouragement and the opportunity of specialised training. Our country will lose great and essential service from many young women if they are to be discouraged from study and specialised training because even the State, as an employer, is going to make an arbitrary distinction as to whether they should do outside work or not.
388 I also ask our Government Departments to remember this, that we are concerned, as a Socialist Government, not simply in making the individual a creature of the State, but in considering both the interests of the State and of the individual. We want happy human beings, both men and women. We want happy homes. The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a dictatorship mere is no choice; an arbitrary division is laid down for the people. I want to impress on our Government Departments that the economic considerations of this country and the private needs of men and women are, on this issue, walking hand-in-hand. Our problem in Great Britain today is not that we have too many workers, but that we have too few, and it is completely ridiculous, either on economic or on human grounds, that we should maintain these arbitrary difficulties against women who want to give specialist or any other kind of service. We want the women of the country, as well as the men, to have the choice before them, of giving their energies entirely in the home or devoting themselves to work outside the home, or perhaps building up a happier home, by dividing their energies. I hope when we come to discuss this subject in the autumn that there will be no doubt in the Government's mind as to the decisions they must make in the interests of the individual citizen, and of the country.