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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Margaret Jay, Oona King
is shocked that there are not more women in Parliament. There are going
to be one or two fewer in the next Parliament if the election goes the
way we expect it to go. Are you shocked as well, not just because there
will be fewer women but because less will be done for women as a result
of it?
BARONESS JAY: I don't think that less will
be done for women and without starting to niggle about the figures it actually
is I think at the moment probably only going to be one less woman on the
safe seats but we don't of course know when the election will be called
and we don't know what the result will be.
HUMPHRYS: You wanted more afterall,
not fewer,
JAY: Certainly, but there
are about fifty women in Labour seats, in Labour constituencies, who if
the polls are anything like they were last week might indeed win seats.
So I don't think we need to be too pessimistic. We're not talking about
a huge cull of women MPs, but you are right there may well be fewer and
that is a bad thing.
HUMPHRYS: And why haven't you done
something to make sure that there are more not fewer.
JAY: Well I can announce
today, confirm today because there has been speculation about it, that
we will make a manifesto commitment to change the law if we win the next
election, to allow political parties to make a change which will enable
them to be positive in their selection of women.
HUMPHRYS: Now, that means you did
try at one stage to have all women shortlists, you couldn't go ahead with
it because the law said you couldn't discriminate in that way. What you
are talking about is passing legislation that would make that possible
- all women shortlists, or something like that.
JAY: That's right because
the problem was with the previous arrangement is that it ran foul of the
employment law. This would be a change, we hope, in the electoral law,
which would, as I say, allow parties to make that choice, to take positive
action to have more women candidates. That's something which happens across
Europe in a great many political parties, so we feel much more confident
that that wouldn't be subject to a successful legal challenge.
HUMPHRYS: So why haven't you done
it already?
JAY: Because frankly it's
taken some time to sort this out. The Home Office has been working on this
in its election law, part of its operation, for some time and we are now
pretty convinced that we can do it and personally I am very keen that we
do work on that procedure early in the new Parliament, if we are the Government
in the new Parliament, so that it will be possible to have a new system
before the next round of selections is made.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so it's going
to be in the manifesto and you believe that it will happen early in the
new Parliament?
JAY: Well I would very
much hope so because I think as we heard in the film, the thing that's
frustrating people is the process of selection and as we know selection
goes on throughout a Parliament so I would hope it would be possible to
make a change in time for there to be future selections made on a new basis.
And of course this would apply right across the board. It wouldn't just
be for the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, there are quite a number
interestingly, of prominent Conservative women who believe that the system
needs to be changed and so it would be up to the individual political parties
to make that choice and in the Labour Party's case it would go to the National
Executive Committee and they would make a recommendation to the Party Conference
about how they thought it most sensible to go ahead but all women shortlists
might well be the way.
HUMPHRYS: Would you like to get
it done in time for the elections in Scotland and Wales which I think are
next year aren't they?
JAY: Well as I say, I won't
be in the next government if it is a Labour government, as I have already
said that I am stepping down but my personal view is that we should try
to push ahead with this as quickly as we can.
HUMPHRYS: So that will help in
future, presumably. But
what you could have done, even though you didn't have the law to enable
you to do it this time, what you could have done, was you could when, you
are as they say, parachuting candidates in, that's to say you have a seat
where the Labour candidate is standing down, a safe seat perhaps, you have
to replace him with somebody, you could have said, as a party, we are going
to parachute in lots of women. You didn't do that, you're not doing
that from what we hear, what you're doing is you're going to parachute
in a lot of men.
JAY: Well parachuting is
a particular issue which happens in a very tight little window in the context
of an election having been called probably, so we're talking about a speculative
period...
HUMPHRYS: ...we've had all sorts
of names drifting across the radar and none of them is women.
JAY: Well one of the problems
I think has been and I think we should be absolutely frank about this,
I think that we had hoped was that given the success of the all women shortlists
procedure before the '97 election, that somehow the culture of selection
might change, it might buy a process of just changing attitudes, you heard
Glenys Kinnock talking about that in the film and also John Edmonds, so
there might be a slight change of approach. It hasn't frankly happened
as quickly as we'd hoped and that's why we went back to look at the law,
we were concerned about the problems of the employment law and the Sex
Discrimination Act and that's why we've taken the different approach of
trying to get into this through the election law in a way which we are
pretty sure will be foolproof even at the European level.
HUMPHRYS: So what you are saying
is that you are having to railroad this through a reluctant party, at least
not a reluctant party at your level perhaps but a reluctant party at constituency
level. I mean if you say that the culture hasn't changed, which it manifestly
hasn't, then you are going to have to push this through, that's really
what's happening isn't it.
JAY: Well I think, as I
said, that this will be up to the Party Conference to make the decision
about whether or not it wants this change. As I said,
this is all about choice, this is all about political parties having the
ability to make these decisions, this is not about railroading or imposing,
it's not about the Labour Party imposing a system on its self or indeed
on other parties. But the law will be changed so that the parties can make
the choice to take that positive action and I think that's the change that
I certainly want to see happen as quickly as possible.
HUMPHRYS: You could send quite
a strong signal couldn't you by parachuting in - to use that silly phrase
- a few women over the next few weeks, few days and weeks maybe if we are
going to get the election called on Tuesday. Aren't you going to be seeing
Mr Blair, presumably tomorrow, when he has his emergency special Cabinet..
JAY: ...emergency political...
HUMPHRYS: ..political Cabinet meeting
- quite so. Are you going to tell him that, are you going to say why don't
we do this then Tony?
JAY: I expect that what
we are going to be doing at that Cabinet is talking about a number of the
issues which do effect women. I mean they effect the whole of the electorate
but they will be the ones that are about the economy, they will be the
ones about the way in which we are going to improve public services still
faster because I thought it was interesting in the film, that you were
noting that some women were dissatisfied with the rate of progress and
I think we are absolutely clear that we do need to make faster progress
on public services and certainly I know from my experience that women are
the ones who tend to be the ones with the children at the school gate,
or taking the kids to the GP or whatever, they are the ones that see progress
or you know, not as fast as they might wish on the ground and that's certainly
something that I am sure the focus of the political Cabinet will be. The
strength of the economy and then the ability to improve the public services.
HUMPHRYS: But you might raise this
question of parachuting in some women - on top of all that.
JAY: I think the question
of parachuting people in is something which the party always decides. I
don't like that expression myself, I think what we need to do is to change
the system so that we build on the strengths that we've got in Parliament,
of the numbers of women that we have there and don't let's get too depressed
I think on the latest calculation it was only one fewer likely in the next
Parliament, not a good state but not a devastating result.
HUMPHRYS: But you wanted more rather
than fewer.
JAY: Yes exactly.
HUMPHRYS: Let's look at the other
issue that was raised in Paul Wilenius's film and that's the reform of
Parliament.
JAY: Yes.
HUMPHRYS: And the reform of the
House of Commons in particular.
JAY: I feel very strongly
about that but of course I'm in the House of Lords...
HUMPHRYS: ...you're in the House
of Lords where things are no better, if not worse, apparently...
JAY: ...well I would certainly
say they weren't better, no indeed and we've had some debates and discussions
in the House of Lords about whether you could make it more family friendly,
as the jargon goes, you know, have changes in the rules and regulations,
maybe even we suggested, you could have some form of child care because
although people think of the House of Lords as being exclusively elderly
men, there are actually quite a few women there, mainly on the Labour side
who've got school-age children, for example. I have to say for me, the
discussion was characterised by one quite young Tory MP..Peer sorry, not
MP, one young Tory Peer who got up and said he thought it would actually
make life simpler if instead of having child care, we had a kennel.
HUMPHRYS: Yes, I think the word
unreconstructive comes to mind there, unless he was joking of course...
JAY: ...well he may well
have been joking, but it was quite interesting...
HUMPHRYS: ...give him the benefit
of the doubt. But let's go back to the House of Commons which is where
this really matters. I mean, you promised reforms to make the House of
Commons more friendly for women, it hasn't happened. I mean there had
been some changes certainly, but not enough to satisfy the women who are
there.
JAY: I think that's right.
You heard the women in the House of Commons expressing that very clearly
and of course I wouldn't want to speak for them, but I was actually last
week at the Scottish Parliament, where they have made enormous changes,
they've got these days for working between nine-thirty and sixish in the
evening, you know, talking to David Steel, for example who's the equivalent
of the Speaker there, he said, they very rarely have sittings after seven
o'clock in the evening, how sensible and also they do
mark their vacations, the sessions that they have, by very closely relating
them to school holidays. I don't think anybody's complaining that they're
less serious, or less active in scrutinising their legislation than we
are.
Of course in the House
of Lords we do have an additional twist to this, which is that a lot of
people, because it isn't a paid house, it's still a part-time house in
that sense, do have jobs, so we would have to think about that a bit but
there's no reason why the overall hours shouldn't be altered in some way.
HUMPHRYS: So, as far as the House
of Commons is concerned you would like to see them copy what's done in
Scotland?
JAY: Well, I, it's not
for me as a non-member of the House of Commons to speak about their rules
and regulations...
HUMPHRYS: ...sure, but I mean as
a ...
JAY: ...I think listening
to those women MPs and listening to colleagues that I've talked to a great
deal, there is a lot to be said for the Scottish way of doing things.
The Scottish Parliament has sorted it for themselves and as I said, when
I visited there last week, it didn't seem that the end of the world had
come because they met at civilised hours. And I tell you one thing that
is rather peculiar, you know, as a Women's Minister and my colleague, Tessa
Jowell, who's in the Commons, and is the other Women's minister, and I
do this a lot, we go around the country talking to businesses, talking
to employers, about making work time more flexible for their women employees,
making it more family friendly, and you know, we then look at our watches
and say, oh, so sorry, I've got to go back and vote now, nine o'clock in
the evening, or whatever it is, and they raise their eyebrows and think,
well what's she talking about? And of course, you do feel on slightly
strange ground.
HUMPHRYS: What about the Women's
Minister, you talk about yourself as Women's Minister of course, we were
promised, the nation was promised, in your manifestos in 1983, 1987, 1992,
that there would be a Women's Minister, a women's ministry, the minister
would be in the Cabinet. Now that disappeared from the '97 manifesto.
The Women's Minister, not in the cabinet, now even that...
JAY: ...I'm in the Cabinet...
HUMPHRYS: ...yes, yes but Tessa
Jowell isn't in the Cabinet. She's in the House of Commons...
JAY: Ah, no but that's
as I say, we're a good job-share, we share the job very effectively.
HUMPHRYS: Well, true, but it isn't
quite what people had in mind was it? And we now understand, tell me if
this is true or not, the whole thing is now going to be watered down, the
Women's Unit is going to go the way...
JAY: Well, the Women's
Unit is, I think, very effective, precisely because it is a cross-government
body. It isn't shut off in one ministry and I think this is where the
thinking changed in the eighties and the nineties, quite rightly in my
view, that if you have a Cabinet Office unit in the way that we have at
the moment, we can operate right across government and we can represent
views on every single committee because we sit on half a dozen of them
each, and make those representations, and it's been pretty effective when
you look at the changes that have been made, in things like maternity pay
and parental leave, those kind of things. But there is an issue, I think,
about whether or not, that particular form of doing things needs to be
set in concrete, and certainly I believe that you have to look at things
as they evolve, but the Prime Minister of course it's up to him how he
decides to dispose people and units and so on after the election if we
win the election. But
of course he has been on record quite recently in correspondence with
the Women's National Commission, saying that a women's..or unit which specifically
represents the interests of women across government will be still there.
HUMPHRYS: Ah, as a women's unit,
not just as some sort of equality unit.
JAY: Well, I think as I
say, that these things are not fixed in concrete, but he has, as I say,
committed himself firmly to the idea that a unit representing women's interests
across government will be still there. I really can't speak further than
that because again, I have to plead that as I will not be in the government
myself...
HUMPHRYS: Yeah, sure.
JAY: ...it is up to the
Prime Minister to decide precisely how this happens. But in my view, women's
interests will continue to be extremely well represented. I mean, after
all, if you think there are twenty-nine, or is it thirty now, women ministers
in every significant department who do carry all that message forward,
that the Women's Minister chairs a sub-committee of the Cabinet which looks
after these issues specifically, I don't think anybody can say that those
issues have not been well represented and it's my view they will continue
to be, right across government.
HUMPHRYS: Well, I don't know, Gwyneth
Dunwoody had a different view on that, didn't she? But I mean, the point
is that there was meant to be, originally, there was meant to be a Women's
Minister, specifically a Women's Minister on the Cabinet, I mean you're
on the Cabinet as you say, but you're there as Leader of the House of Lords
and that is slightly different, and you happen also to be Women's Minister
in the Lords. But that is different, isn't it? Do we take it that that's
gone forever that, we're not going, that promise is never going to be...
JAY: ...I would be surprised,
again, I have to say, I'm obviously not going to be person making the decision,
but I would be surprised, if a ministry specifically devoted to women was
created, and I do think that thinking has moved on, I do think it is that
we have seen work very effectively this cross-government representation,
it has meant for example that I can pull together all these women who are
ministers, whether and it's like my colleague Liz Symons in the Department
of Defence, or Patricia Hewitt in the Department of Trade and Industry,
and we work very effectively. You only have to look
at the results John, I mean, look at the results, you know, you've got
improvements in, enormous improvements in things like maternity pay, and
maternity leave, you've got enormous improvements, record increases in
Child Benefit, you've got the minimum wage. All of these things are a
result of the influence of the women ministers...
HUMPHRYS: So Glenys Kinnock, when
she talked about dreaming in the dark days of Thatcherism, those dreams
are not going to be delivered upon.
JAY: Well, I think, you
didn't ask Glenys the question whether she thought the dream would come
true but I'm pretty sure that she would say....
HUMPHRYS: I think we're got a fairly
clear idea that they hadn't, but there we are.
JAY: Well, maybe she has
a different view about the system, but I think the point is that we've
got all these issues which are important to women firmly on the agenda
and not just on the agenda, we've had action which has produced good results
HUMPHRYS: Barbara Jay, thanks very
much indeed.
JAY: Thank you.
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