Budget: Gender Equality

8. If he will make an assessment with Cabinet colleagues of the potential impact of the spring Budget on gender equality.

The Government remain committed to full genuine gender equality and to supporting women. In particular, we are supporting women into work through our new childcare package, which I just mentioned, allowing people to return to work sooner; encouraging business investment through schemes such as the community investment tax relief; and creating new job opportunities with our labour market package. In developing proposals for the spring Budget, the Treasury takes care to consider the equality impacts on those sharing protected characteristics, including gender, in line with our legal obligations and the Government’s strong commitment to promoting fairness.

I thank the Minister for his response. Let me help him out. If he had made an adequate assessment, he would have found that the spring Budget failed women. It failed young women, women in work and pensioners. Women are more likely to rely on and work in public services, and this Budget made their lives worse, not better. Most of the UK’s poorest pensioners are single women, and the gender pensions gap needs to be addressed. Will he agree to urgently put forward a compensation package to deal with the injustice faced by 1950s women—the WASPI women?

I do not accept that. I think the WASPI issue has been covered many times, by Ministers from the Department for Work and Pensions and elsewhere. We are putting in £4.1 billion by 2027-28 to expand free childcare. This Government have a record to be proud of: we have increased the number of women in full-time work; we introduced shared parental leave; we introduced the Domestic Abuse Act 2021; and we made a range of interventions last week that many women up and down the country will be very pleased with.