A message from Harriet Harman - Minister for Women and Equality - how is the credit crunch/recession is affecting you and how do you think Government can help?

[JustineMumsnet]

Harriet Harman writes:
We want to protect families from the credit crunch with real help. And we want to hear what Mumsnet are concerned about during this recession; what you want us to be doing about it; and what you want to see changed for the future. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is hosting an international Economic Summit in London (which President Obama will be coming to) in April to agree with other countries how we work together to get the global economy back on its feet and growing again. I want to hear from you and feed your views in to this summit.

Opinion polls tell us that women are more concerned about the impact of the recession than men, is that your view?
Is the recession affecting your family life and if so how?
Are you getting the advice and information you need if you ask for help?
What do you want to see government doing to help with that?
What do you think about bonuses?
How can we help women who want to start their own businesses?

By giving families more financial help with mum's who want to stay at home and look after their children, rather than pumping money into getting mum's back to work and recognising that this is the best way for young children to grow up with their mothers at home to be there for them.

Dear Ms Harman. Thank you for responding to our comments. I am glad to see that you will be considering both those who may be in hardship at the moment and also those who have savings.
If you want to encourage people (women or otherwise) to start their own businesses then for goodness sake lighten up on the Red Tape. In fact that applies to all forms of work ? we should be doing, not being so busy recording that it takes time away from the actual job (and I speak as one who makes her living from filling in Govt forms on behalf of companies!).

Is that it? Is HH's post on 18 February all that she's got to say? She's coming back to us. Yes, right. I'll believe it when I see it.

I find the whole thing just a cyncial PR exercise.

Another call for tax deductible childcare per household/family unit.

A large barrier to women re-entering the workforce is the cost of childcare between 0 and 3 years before the surestart grant kicks in. Not only is quality childcare prohibitively expensive for this age group, the only financial support offered by the government is in the form of childcare vouchers, which is open only to certain forms of childcare, employees (not self-employed) of companies that offer vouchers as a benefit. For a paltry £243.

No need for all that faffing around and administration costs - just make childcare deductible, up to a cap if necessary.

It could be all the difference between making it economic for a sandwich mother (ie earning too much to qualify for tax credits but too little to afford good quality childcare) to go back to work, allowing her to keep her skills up-to-date and not falling by the employment wayside and finding it difficult to get back on to the same level when the children are in school.

With the credit crunch resulting in more people being stuck at home, may I ask you look into whether our social and child protection services are geared up to cope with the likely increase in domestic violence and child abuse cases.

In the area of child protection and social services, please HarrietHarman can you and your colleagues look at UK's poor record in this area and the need to take very real and concrete steps to improve the funding and workings of these services and the family justice system. John Hemming MP has done a lot of research and campaigning in this area. I thank you.

Are we just being used?

Harriet has an agenda of her very own in all this.

I'm sure this has been said before but definitely the biggest problem for working women is the lack of affordable childcare - especially for under 3s. I am due to go back to work when my baby is nine months but will be working for less than minimum wage once nursery costs and afterschool care for my eldest is taken into account. I don't want to lose my career - I've worked hard to get where I am, so am choosing to keep it ticking over for the next few years even though it is not really financially viable. Also, I think more could be done to make organisations provide flexible working for parents - my husband won't even ask his employers for any flexibility eg working from home one day a week - as for men it is 'not the done thing'. I would like to get promotion, but doubt I will because I would want to do some of my work in the evenings and at weekends and the culture of most workplaces is still that you should be seen in the office mon-fri 9-5 or more. Even though there is legislation for flexible working when it comes to reality - the managers (men, or women without dependent children) don't think that mothers can successfully combine a career and motherhood.

I'm expecting my first baby later this year, so haven't got the direct experience that many other contributors have of what it's really like to bring up a family.

But I would just like to comment on maternity leave as this is obviously a pressing issue for me. I've heard a lot about my rights as a pregnant woman and new mother, but there's very little help and support on how to combine this with my responsibilities. I have a senior role in the organisation that I work for and it will be difficult for the company to manage without me if I choose to take a whole year off. I would like the option to combine maternity leave with some paid work so that I could meet my responsibilities to both work and family. Or to be able to swap some of my maternity leave with my husband, so that he could take some time off to be with the baby if I go back to work.

This might not seem relevant to the original questions asked, but the current maternity package encourages employers to see women as a burden and a nuisance, and a structure that enables them to work with their employers to find the best way of negotiating both work and home will help women to keep their jobs and companies to avoid costly obligations. News reports suggest that this recession will fall most heavily on women, so these are issues that need to be addressed.

And they can only be addressed by government because it is statute that currently gets in the way of enabling parents to find more flexible solutions.

Hold the front page! Female politician in ambition shocker!! The big question on Andrew Marr this week - Why isn't she just baking cakes and doing after luncheon speeches with the WI? Is she a waste of taxpayers money or just a waste of space? Andrew Pierce thinks so.

That Geordi, is I think what they call, being 'lobbied against' and it only really happens if people sense you are a threat to them. Go Harriet!

Oh I think she's a threat alright. A threeat to the security and wellbeing of this country, like the rest of the Labour government.

I forgot of course, a woman politician can't actually be crap at her job, if anyone is having a go at her, they're just being sexist.

and

and

[not bloody likely emoticon]

MitochondrialEve, if you've read Andrew Pierce's article, what do you say to Pierce's remarks about how Harriet cut benefits to lone parents against opposition from her own side?

Isn't she a hypocrite for wanting public bodies to take social class into account when allocating jobs when she is the niece of a countess and went to probably the poshest girls' school in the country, St. Paul's.

Also, when she was a councillor in Southwark, there was a nasty case of residents being abused in a council run home. She was too busy ranting about private homes to investigate how her own council was treating residents.

more subsidised childcare,
married women's tax allowance (or similar) to be reinstated.

Start a new thread about it then

I don't understand why that's hypocritical at all, Villette. Actually, I think she should be applauded for seeing beyond her own upbringing to try and understand the problems others have faced.

There's nothing hypocriticala bout that,not unless she can revert to a newborn and crawl into the uterus of a passing underclasser in order to get the right 'creds'.

Actually I ampleased Harriet has done this: agenda (um they all have one,it's called being re-elected) or not it'sthe damnedest close I'm going tocome as a nearly houseboun mum to having my views heard.

at your course MT, I refused social policy at Bristol in favour of this teaching dream and then they moved the PGCEa way from me. Damdit.

The Credit Crunch is a harsh reality for us. My husband has being redundant and our concerns about the future financials are growing every day. My Q is what the government can offer to people who entering tough times? We have mortgage so it won't be possible to pay on my single wage and have necessaries... The utilities bills, council tax, food costs all are rising...
And according to media, the worst yet to come...
May I ask what kind of HELP is available at this situation?

Finally somene who talks some sense about banks paying bonuses!! I work for a high street bank and over the years have worked my way up to branch manager from cashier (whilst paying extortionate amounts for half decent childcare). It makes my blood boil when many people take what Gordon Brown says as gospel (hello?! who was the chancellor when all this mess was created?!!) and jump on the bandwagon blaming the banks! Yes banks have played their part but so has the government and more importantly so have consumers...supply and demand ring any bells?! Every member of my team deserves their bonus for last year, they have done the work and delivered the targets in extreme conditions. They are not massive bonuses but when you earn £13000 pa it means you can have a holiday/pay your council tax off or just be a bit more comfortable! The customer service staff and anyne on the frontline does not deserve your rants about YOUR taxes (we are not tax exempt) we do not make the decisions-just there to do our jobs.

Oh Peachy - but it's never too late. You are a good taskmaster for me on here.

And I am actually doing an MSc via the OU - it's just that I have had such fantastic and patient mentors in Helena Cronin and Daniel Nettle who have helped me really focus my ideas into a coherant post grad programme that I can actually plot at least a five year plan with all this and have some wonderful prospective phd sups.

I meant to add to my previous post - what on earth does bank bonuses have to do with helping women and families during the recession?? It makes very little difference to us whether these bonuses get paid or not - the money isn't going to come to us if the bankers don't get it - it's just a lot of hot air.

The people who ARE affected are those like Kezad who've worked hard for their bonuses and are now being deprived of their precious cash for political reasons.

I would very much like to believe that HH is sincere in wanting to canvas our views - and personally I'm more pro-HH than anti-, but I'm suspicious that by asking for our views on bank bonuses, she just wants to collect some quotable ammunition from "hardworking families" to use against bankers. The whole kerfuffle about bank bonuses is just distracting attention from the mess we're in and the government's lack of options in tackling it......

MT Imight look at something like that in a a year- i'm intreested in socialpolicy and religion and the world religion degree cannot hurt even if it takes a bit of a top up on the tohe stuff to get there.

Why on earth should I start a separate thread about it? Or is Harriet Harman, because she's a woman, beyond reproach and must not be questioned on this thread?

Cause your just blowing hot air GM. IMHO.

Is the recession affecting my family life? Only tangentially at the moment - we would like to have a second child and were planning to move from our very small flat so there would be room for it, but we've put our plans on hold. I still have my job but my pay has been frozen this year, while my daughter's nursery costs have gone up (along with utility bills etc).

A friend of mine is trying to conceive and has just been made redundant, therefore when she gets pregnant all the maternity benefits she will have accrued over the years will have disappeared - is there something that can be done about that?

BUt of cousre do what you want Georgi. Its a free country. Fire away