My Lords, I want to assure the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that he is not alone. I support the powerful speeches made by my noble friends Lady Gale and Lady Wilcox, without detracting in any way from what the noble Lord had to say.
I want to raise with the Minister the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made about the Government’s desire for this to be a gender-neutral Bill. The Minister spoke on this very carefully and said within the forthcoming strategy there would be gender-specific elements. The question I want to put back to her is: if it is okay to have gender-specific elements in a strategy, why on earth can that not be covered in the legislation?
This is prompted by the publication of the Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill that is being debated in the Commons tomorrow. That Bill excludes the words “women” or “mothers”, instead referring to a “person” who is pregnant and a “person” who
“has given birth to a child.”
My question to the Minister is about whether the Government have decided not to use the term “woman” in future legislation. Does she share my concern that there is a risk of delegitimising specific concerns about women, and that women’s hard-won rights over the past six decades are in danger of dissipation as a result?