HC Deb 03 November 1992 vol 213 cc139-40
10. Ms. Mowlam

To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what estimate she has made of the likely effect on wage levels for women working in jobs covered by wages councils when considering if wages councils should be abolished.

Mr. Michael Forsyth

As wages councils are a barrier to employment, their abolition would improve job prospects for women.

Ms. Mowlam

In an earlier answer on wages councils, the Minister said that the Secretary of State had not written to the Equal Opportunities Commission saying that women covered by wages councils worked for pin money. I have that letter in my hand, which states very clearly that women covered by wages councils bring only a secondary income into the family—in other words, it is not crucial, it is pin money. Will the hon. Gentleman be honest with the House and acknowledge that women's work is not marginal and should be paid a decent wage?

Mr. Forsyth

I am grateful for the hon. Lady's help in correcting her hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) who said that in the letter, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had talked about pin money. Only the Opposition would be patronising enough to describe people who work for a second income in the home as working for pin money. My right hon. Friend did not suggest that phrase.

I also stand by my statement to the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden that 80 per cent. of wages council workers are in households with two or more wage earners. The biggest source of poverty is not low pay; it is having no job. Wages councils destroy employment.

Mrs. Gorman

Does my hon. Friend agree that wages councils, which were originally set up to protect work forces, have lived long enough to become oppressive? Not only do they tend to promote a low-wage culture, but they are often extremely rigid in their work practices, when modern women want a more flexible way to work. Is not it also true that in industries and jobs in which women predominate and in which they are not covered by wages councils, such as nursing, word processing and information technology, women do very much better and have more flexible ways in which to work?

Mr. Forsyth

My hon. Friend is a doughty spokesman for modern women and I agree with everything she says. Wages councils may have been relevant in 1909, but they are certainly not relevant to the 1990s.

Mr. Dobson

How can the Minister be confident that women on wages council pay are only secondary sources of income to their families when his hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. McLoughlin), the Under-Secretary of State, in answer to questions from me yesterday, said that the Department did not know how many women who depend on wages council pay were the principal source of income? Is not it a fact that the Secretary of State's letter was based on prejudice and has not an ounce of data behind it?

Mr. Forsyth

I do not think that my right hon. Friend will take lectures about prejudice from the hon. Gentleman. According to The Independent, at the Labour party conference the hon. Gentleman described business people who paid their workers low wages as "thieving scum". The sooner the hon. Gentleman realises that the key to employment is creating the conditions in which businesses can make profits and generate opportunities for the work force, the better. The hon. Gentleman may describe those business people as "thieving scum". Conservatives describe them as job creators.

Miss Emma Nicholson

Will my hon. Friend offer his congratulations and thanks to Joanna Foster, the chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission as she reaches the end of her five-year term of office? Will he confirm that Conservatives are committed to equality of opportunity and not to the fictitious equality of achievement which the Opposition promote?

Mr. Forsyth

I certainly join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Joanna Foster's remarkable period as chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission and to its work.