EQUAL PAY (Hansard, 23 June 1965)

§ Dr. Shirley Summerskill (Halifax)
I welcome this opportunity to raise the subject of equal pay for women, in other words the rate for the job, or equal remuneration for work of equal value. It is a subject which receives rare attention in the House but is of great interest to people outside as is shown in tonight's Evening News which bears the headline, "Women's Pay: New Union Drive." It is unusual to have the opportunity of raising this subject in the House.
I would remind the House of the long history of this matter. As long ago as 1944 to 1946 a Royal Commission looked into the question of equal pay and in the end produced a long report which was a detailed analysis of the whole subject. Every type of profession and industry was examined. Equal pay in other countries was examined. The social and economic consequences of equal pay were examined. Yet here we are, twenty years after the Royal Commission's Report was published, with the Government still saying that they are now examining the social and economic consequences of equal pay.
It is true that since the Report women in the professions have achieved equal pay in Government jobs and in nationalised industries, but the fact remains that there are 8½ million women workers doing the same work as men and only 10 per cent. of these women have equal pay. May I give some examples of these industries? In agriculture women drive tractors and work with men in haymaking 1905 and harvesting, yet a Ministry of Labour report for September, 1964, shows that women receive approximately 76 per cent. of the rate for men. Bank clerks at the age of 31 receive—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey)
Order. We cannot discuss bank clerks. The Government have no responsibility for them.

§ Dr. Summerskill
I am sorry. I will leave bank clerks. I have plenty of other examples, but I should like hon. Members to bear bank clerks in mind and perhaps look up the details about them after this debate. In engineering—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Order. The hon. Lady must confine her remarks to those matters for which the Government have responsibility.

§ Dr. Summerskill
I understand that it will be in order for me to refer to engineers in ordnance factories. Half a million women are employed in this occupation and the rate of pay is 30s. less for the adult woman worker than for a man. There are situations in which women adult workers doing skilled and semi-skilled work at machines are receiving 30s. a week less than the man who sweeps the floor. Sir William Carron, speaking to his union about equal pay, said recently that we ought to be ashamed as a nation at the way in which we have been or are now being overhauled by other nations in this respect. In the catering trade—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Order. The Government are not responsible for the catering trade. The hon. Lady must deal with persons employed by the Government and for whom the Government have responsibility.

§ Dr. Summerskill
I should like to point out that I wish the Government to initiate measures to cover all these sections of the community.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Order. The hon. Lady cannot advocate that on the Adjournment. It would involve legislation.

§ Dr. Summerskill
I will confine my remarks, then, to the question of the basic, right and just measures which should be taken to achieve equal pay for women.

§ Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin)
On a point of order. The hon. Lady would be in order, would she not, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if she confined her remarks to equal pay for those in Government service or who are generally connected with or in some way receive State aid or funds? Under the National Assistance and other laws, many of the people to whom the hon. Lady is referring receive aid from the State.

§ Mr. Maurice Edelman (Coventry, North)
Further to that point of order. Would not my hon. Friend be in order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in drawing attention to certain broad principles and then illustrating those broad principles by individual examples? Is that not in order on the Adjournment?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker
The hon. Lady can refer only to those for whom the Government are responsible. She is perfectly in order to deal with problems arising where the persons she is talking about are employed by Her Majesty's Government.

§ Dr. Summerskill
I wish to see the Government taking responsibility for the pay of these sections of the community—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker
The hon. Lady cannot continue with that. It would involve legislation. We cannot deal with legislation on the Adjournment.

§ Dr. Summerskill
Then I shall try to confine myself to the broad aspects of the issue.
The question of equal pay should not be receiving discussion in this way but is a basic right of every woman who is working. Equal pay should not be regarded as a privilege or as something which has to be requested or asked for. Members of Parliament receive equal pay. We are the legislators, and we should see to it that everybody else in the country has the right that we have seen that we have for ourselves.
The incomes policy which the Government have recently introduced is neither fair nor just if it does not include, as it has not included, equal pay within its context. The news to which I drew attention earlier, which has appeared 1907 today on the front page of the Evening News, was the result of the annual conference of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, comprising 31 unions. Mrs. Marie Patterson pointed out that it took only just over six months to establish a prices and incomes policy and all the machinery that went with it, which was a huge undertaking, and yet there was no mention in the incomes policy of equal pay.
It is 14 years since, in 1951, the International Labour Organisation adopted a convention that favoured the equal remuneration of women. Forty-four countries have ratified the convention, but the United Kingdom has not. The Common Market countries, under the Treaty of Rome, are bound to ensure and maintain the adoption of equal pay conditions for women. In these ways, it is a disgrace that Britain is lagging behind other industrial countries.
Looked at from the economic point of view, women make up one-third of our total labour force and the number of women working outside the home is increasing all the time. One-third of married women work outside the home. We wish to encourage women to go into industry, engineering, nursing, teaching and any form of labour, and yet women will obviously tend to go to jobs where they receive equal pay with men and to keep away from the other jobs in which they are treated as second-grade workers.
Perhaps women are not sufficiently strike-minded or sufficiently trade union-minded. If they were, we would have had equal pay far quicker than this.
Employers are using women as cheap labour in many cases. Incidentally, this causes men to be undercut by women, especially when automation is increased. Employers say that they cannot afford to pay women full salaries. This will lead to costs going up and prices going up.
I ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether it is true that Britain's economy can only be maintained by employing a large proportion of cut-price labour. Is the employer within his rights in taking on more staff than he can properly afford to pay? If a company employs 50 men and 50 women and cannot afford to pay a 1908 100 standard wages, how does it choose which 50 it can afford to pay?

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Everybody is sensible to the hon. Lady's difficulty, but we suffer the disadvantage of the rules of the House on this point. When she asks the Minister questions, I have to protect him, because he will not be able to reply. By her good fortune, the hon. Lady has an opportunity under the Ten Minute Rule on 6th July that will leave her with the widest possible scope to deal with this subject. We cannot enter on this question on matters that require legislation for remedy.

§ Dr. Summerskill
I think I have made my case in the short time that I have spoken and I would just ask the Parliamentary Secretary if he could give the House some facts about the position as it stands at the moment from the Government's point of view. I do not wish the Government to appear to the public, as I think they do at present, as being evasive or procrastinating on this. I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to take the opportunity of telling the House when the Government will take measures to introduce equal pay for women. Is it to be this year, next year, or is it some time? Does the Parliamentary Secretary feel that the incomes policy can be just or fair when it does not include equal pay in its programme?
If I could get the answer to those questions I would feel that the evening had been worth while. Women in Britain are very patient. But I think their patience is running out and they would like to see the Government practising equality as well as preaching it.

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Thornton)
I welcome the opportunity to discuss this proposition and I sympathise with my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) over her difficulties because of the rules of the House. I hope, however, that the rules of the House will permit me to give her some indication of what the Government feel and of what we are doing on this particular subject.
I was, as I think she knows, for 35 years a full-time trade union secretary in the textile industry, an industry which employs a substantial majority of women. 1909 There is in that industry a principle of equal pay for work of equal value. I say that only to let her see that I am speaking from experience as well as from conviction. It has always been my trade union purpose to insist upon, and to fight for, the principle of equal pay. Critics and cynics would say that in those cases where there is equal pay it often results in low or medium wages for men and relatively high wages for women. I do not of necessity accept this criticism. In industry at large the payment of low wages to women is often sheer discrimination, tolerated only because it is a familiar injustice of long standing and perhaps because it appeals to some men's vanity that they should be accorded a higher value in the labour market.
I do not, of course, mean that all work should be rewarded equally, regardless of the amount of effort or skill or responsibility which it requires. Differentials based on this type of consideration are not discrimination. But I think that we all agree that existing distinctions go well beyond this and have resulted over a wide area in women receiving less pay than they otherwise would, simply because of their sex.
It would be wrong, however, to speak as if the equal pay movement in this country has hitherto been a failure and that nothing has happened. It may well be that we are behind other advanced industrial countries in this respect, but there has been some progress. In the non-industrial Civil Service equal pay was achieved by seven annual stages, at the beginning of 1961. Similarly, there is equal pay in the clerical grades in local government, electricity supply, gas, the coal industry and the Health Service. Women teachers achieved it in April, 1961, and at the end of 1961 it applied in all administrative, technical and clerical grades in the then British Transport Commission.
As we all know, equal pay does not generally apply in manual employment, whether it be Government or public service or private industry. There are, however, a number of collective agreements relating to manual workers which incorporate the principle. In general, they relate to cases in which women replace men or do men's work. There are many examples, which I need not enumerate.
1910 As my hon. Friend indicated, the movement for equal pay has a long history behind it. Interest in the subject and the problem has been greater at some periods than at others. I think it true to say that the last war created considerable interest in the possibilities of further progress. The Royal Commission of 1944 sat for two years and produced a detailed Report.
In spite of this, and the developments in later years, it is still the case that in this country—where there are about 8 million women in employment—only about 2¼ million of them are in sectors in which equal pay is the general rule. There is still a long way to go. My Party accordingly gave a pledge in 1963 that, if returned to power, they would seek at an early appropriate stage in their first term of office to consider ways and means of implementing equal pay. This is the process in which we are now engaged. As the House knows, we set up an inter-Departmental Working Party to consider some of the issues involved in implementing the principle of equal pay. As I told the House on 14th June, my right hon. Friend expects this Committee to be reporting within a few weeks. I believe that on 14th June I said that it would be in two or three weeks, but in fact it may be a little longer than this. When we have this Report we shall have to examine and consider in the light of the Report what should be the next step. At the moment I am not in a position to say more than that we are pressing on as quickly as we can with these matters and we will continue to do so.
There are, however, one or two points which I think it would be appropriate for me to touch on now. The first is the important aspect of how much equal pay would cost. This, I would point out to my hon. Friend, is not an easy calculation to make. There are differing interpretations of the meaning of equal pay and there is a lot of uncertainty about the practical effect of introducing it. But the cost is something that we are bound to consider very seriously because it may well have implications for our incomes policy. It is also very relevant when we are considering what priority should be given to equal pay, as compared with other desirable objectives. This question of cost is one that we will have to keep very much in mind.

§ Mrs. Lena Jeger (Holborn and St. Pancras, South)
Is my hon. Friend suggesting that there is a cost argument against equal pay, and is he arguing that the women workers of this country should subsidise the present wages system? Is this not an intolerable and socially unjust conception?

§ Mr. Thornton
We have to estimate the cost before we would be justified in devising ways and means of attempting its implementation. It would be quite unrealistic to ignore the cost element involved.
There is another point that I would like to make about this complex question. Deciding on the best means of making progress is by no means easy. Some preliminary thought has been given to it by the working party and we will have to consider it after we have their report. There is a danger of oversimplifying a complex problem.
I am glad that my hon. Frend was able to raise this matter and I know how strongly she feels on it. I have taken careful note of the points which she has made and these I will certainly discuss with my right hon. Friend. I assure her that we will certainly take them into account in our future consideration of these matters.

§ Mr. William Yates
I am certain that not only the House but the whole country will be grateful to the hon. Lady the Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) for bringing this matter to the attention of the House tonight. We on these benches appreciate the difficulty in which she felt obliged to make her speech and, 1912 because of that, we are even more sympathetic. We know, too, that we have heard great things about policies and general discussions about social justice from those who sit on the benches opposite. Let the hon. Lady and the Government be assured that we all share the same anxieties as the hon. Lady. If she is looking for support from the back benches of the House, I am certain that she will get it.
I am grateful for what the Parliamentary Secretary said in outlining the general policy and his attitude towards equal pay in the Departments of State and the nationalised industries for which he is responsible. The Government are also responsible for the social welfare of the whole country and therefore it is very important that we all do what we can to support the hon. Lady. There must be social justice right through the economy, the economic policy and the wage structure, and one section of the community should not have to support or sustain the wages or economy of another part of it.
Let the hon. Lady be assured that her Bill will be received with interest when in due course it comes before the House. We on this side are deeply grateful to the hon. Lady at this late hour and after the 700th anniversary celebrations, for doing us the kindness of having this Adjournment debate and giving us the opportunity of saying that we will support her.