Early evening summary
Kemi Badenoch, the minister for women and equalities, has dismissed a call for the government to pilot menopause leave for women, complaining it was being proposed from “a leftwing perspective”. (See 5.45pm.)
Keir Starmer has urged Rishi Sunak to give the Covid inquiry the resources it needs to be able to publish its findings by the end of the year. (See 12.12pm.) Replying to Starmer at PMQs, Sunak said the inquiry had the powers it needed and should be left to get on with its job.
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Badenoch dismisses call for government to pilot menopause leave, saying it was proposed 'from leftwing perspective'
Kemi Badenoch, the minister for women and equalities, has dismissed suggestions that the government should pilot menopause leave for women, complaining it was being proposed from “a leftwing perspective”.
She made the comment during bad-tempered exchanges when she was giving evidence to the Commons women and equalities committee, where Labour’s Carolyn Harris asked about a recommendation in a report the committee published last year.
The committee urged the government to trial “specific menopause leave so that women are not forced out of work by insensitive and rigid sickness policies”.
Badenoch said anyone could carry out a pilot; it did not have not have to be the government. She went on:
We spend so much time creating new work for government to do, we spread our attention so thinly, that we miss things.
Harris said the government had accepted the committee’s call in the same report for a menopause ambassador to be appointed. She asked why, if a menopause ambassador was not a waste of time, piloting menopause leave was.
Badenoch replied:
That is something which would require far more resources than encouraging employees in terms of changing their work culture.
Arguing that it was a matter of philosophical perspective, she told Harris:
You’re speaking from a leftwing perspective on creating something. I’m speaking from centre-right perspective. I think that influences the approach that you take. I do not think that creating another pilot on more leave is what is going to help women who have the menopause.
Badenoch, who clashed with Caroline Nokes, the Conservative chair of the committee as well during the hearing, also dismissed the idea that the menopause should be given protected status under equality law. She said:
We have so many things that people ask for protected characteristics – carers, single people, having ginger hair, being short, all sorts of things that people ask for as protected characteristics.
Creating a new special characteristic for the menopause is a complete misunderstanding of what protected characteristics are, they are immutable characteristics, we have nine of them that cover everyone.
The menopause can be dealt with, alongside three existing ones: age, sex, and disability, because it is a health condition and many disabilities are health conditions.
This is from the Scotsman’s Alexander Brown.
Quite the clash at the Women and Equalities Committee where Kemi Badenoch accused Carolyn Harris of "speaking from a left wing perspective" after calling for a pilot on menopause leave pic.twitter.com/iCIycz5e62
— Alexander Brown (@AlexofBrown) March 1, 2023
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