Equal Opportunities Commission (Hansard, 10 January 1995)

§ 12. Mrs. Mahon
To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the future of the Equal Opportunities Commission.

§ Miss Widdecombe
As I said earlier when the question was somewhat pre-empted, the Government have no plans to seek changes to the legislation which defines the Equal Opportunities Commission's responsibilities and duties.

§ Mrs. Mahon
Will the Minister congratulate the Equal Opportunities Commission on its support of part-time workers and of minimum standards? Will he comment on the leaked memo which implies that the Equal Opportunities Commission is a rent-a-quote organisation and that it could be merged with other equality agencies? Does not she realise that if that downgrading were to happen, the Minister and the Government would be seen as being malicious and spiteful towards an independent organisation which supports Labour's minimum wage and Labour's fight for decent standards for all workers?

§ Miss Widdecombe
Having made it very clear that those changes are not going to take place, I do not think that it is a question of whether the Government are malicious and spiteful, but that there is rather a lot of malice and spite in deliberately trying to muddy waters which have been made quite clear—there are no such changes. If the hon. Lady relied on statements, questions and good homework, instead of merely on leaked, stolen documents, she might do rather better.

§ Mr. John Townend
Will my hon. Friend consider that if we really are the Government of deregulation, it is about time that we abolished the Equal Opportunities Commission? It has done any work which was necessary; it is now a waste of taxpayers' money.

§ Miss Widdecombe
I can only refer my hon. Friend to the answer that I gave earlier. We have no plans to change the terms on which the EOC carries out its statutory responsibilities. Despite some of the actions of the EOC and some of its rulings, it is still a fact that the United Kingdom is the only European Union country which has a lower unemployment rate for women than for men.
That is a solid achievement and is worth all the rhetoric in the world about minimum wages and good standards. The real standard that matters is opportunity. We are the Government of opportunity for women; the Labour party is not. All that the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) could talk about on the subject of the Equal Opportunities Commission was simply a load of speculation. That means that the Labour party does not have any policies for women either.