Many were left behind by Rishi Sunak’s Budget ... especially women

The budget turned out to be a bit of a damp squib because so much of it had been trailed already. The Secretary of State for Business, Kwasi Kwarteng, managed to put his foot in it with the PM by admitting that Indyref2 should be up to the Scots, then, not content with that he also blew the gaffe on the furlough extension. Much of the rest of Dishi Rishi’s plans including the “revolutionary” rise in corporation tax were carefully and deliberately leaked. 

The Chancellor should be judged by his deeds not his words or his hype. Some of his deeds may yet come back to haunt him. When the post-pandemic public inquiry takes place one key area of focus will be why the UK Government decided not to go for a circuit breaker last Autumn. I understand that Sunak was highly influential in persuading Johnson not to do so. 

For all the fanfare what is singularly missing from this budget is the sort of economic boost that President Biden is going for in the states in order to generate an investment led recovery. 

But by far the worst aspect of this budget is that it does little to address the inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic. This is particularly true where women are concerned. The respected think tank, the Women’s’ Budget Group have said that “Far from putting us in a better position to deal with Covid-19, as the Chancellor claimed, the austerity policies of the last ten years have made us less able to cope. Years of cuts and underspending on health, education, local government and public services left our social infrastructure weakened and made us more vulnerable to the impacts of the pandemic. The Budget did little to address this.” 

They are right. Although what they say needs to be caveated for Scotland where the SNP Scottish Government have used its limited powers to blunt the impact of austerity policies on health and other public services and to take steps such as the ‘game-changing’ Scottish Child Payment to boost household incomes and tackle poverty.  

However, there are many aspects of the economy which are reserved and therefore firmly within the control of the Westminster Government. Regrettably, none of the SNP keys asks in these areas were answered in the budget. We wanted the UK Government to U-turn on the public sector pay freeze; to make the £20 uplift to Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit permanent and to extend it to legacy benefits; to introduce a Real Living Wage (RLW); to raise statutory sick pay to a least the level of the RLW and to ensure that everyone is eligible. We also challenged the UK Government to match the Scottish Child Payment. 

All these policies have the potential to transform lives and women’s lives in particular. Instead, we got warm words but no action. 

Back in January Sunak was upbraided for patronising women when he talked about the debt owed to “mums’ during the pandemic. Women took to Twitter to challenge his patronising sexism. Channel 4 news anchor, Cathy Freeman, pointed out that it sounded like he was ‘perpetuating the lazy assumption that women do the dishes and the childcare – while also contributing a few scrappy pennies to the family finances – leaving the guys free to focus on more lucrative, manly things like mastering the universe instead.” She added that such a paradigm not only entrenches inequality but is unfair to the men who are also performing juggling acts at home during the pandemic. 

It seems that, despite his contrition at the time, Rishi really wasn’t listening as his budget does little to address the inequalities suffered by women in our economy and society and which the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated. 

Women are more likely to work in industries which have been shut down by the pandemic, such as hospitality, retail, leisure, tourism, and the arts. From the start of lockdown, women were more likely to be furloughed than men, taking a 20% pay cut. Women were the majority of furloughed workers in every UK region except the West Midlands.  
 
As in every recession, workers’ rights are under threat with the trade unions noting the need for a strengthening of maternity rights but recent legislation designed to give maternity rights to the Attorney General (and quite right too) did not take the opportunity to strengthen the rights of ordinary women. 

Gender pay gap reporting - which has only been in place for a couple of years for companies with more than 250 employees - was completely cancelled in 2020, and has been delayed again in 2021, with the Equality and Human Rights Commission announcing it will not start enforcement action against companies until October. Women are more likely to be self-employed than men and many self-employed workers are still excluded from support. Meanwhile, at home, the closure of schools and nurseries has seen a huge increase in the amount of unpaid work women need to do, meaning they have less time for paid work. Many women work in sectors such as the care sector thus putting them in the front line and increasing the stress on them when there are children at home to be looked after, entertained and home-schooled. Yet, despite his warm words for mums, the UK Chancellor has done nothing to address any of these concerns.  

The reality is that for so long as we are still tied to Westminster Scotland will wait in vain for the rebuilding of the social safety net, upon which women depend. To take just one important example, statutory sick pay and minimum wage rates cannot be fixed in Scotland until employment law is devolved. But the Tories aren’t interested in devolution any longer and when the devolution of employment law was under discussion, Labour said no. 

This budget makes it quite clear that the UK Government lacks the long-term vision which our country so badly needs as we face an uncertain future post-Covid and post-Brexit. Whether you favour a Biden style boost or the sort of Green New Deal and an economy based on resilience for which the Common Weal advocate, there is nothing of this sort in Rishi’s budget.  The bottom line is that the UK Government’s direction of travel is far removed from what people living in Scotland want.  

Only with independence can we rebuild our economy and create the sort of egalitarian society that will benefit both women and men.