- Conference
- 2016 National Women's Conference
- Date
- 26 January 2016
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes with concern that the 2015 Comprehensive Spending Review, published on 25 November 2015, does nothing to improve the financial stability and position of women, who have so far borne the brunt of the government’s austerity measures.
A detailed assessment by the Women’s Budget Group, which was critical of the government’s failure to conduct a meaningful gender impact assessment, found that “lone mothers and single female pensioners are set to lose most from the Spending Review decisions over this Parliament, having already lost most from cuts announced in the previous Parliament. In total, their living standards will be down by 10% in 2020 due to real term cuts in public services, compared to just over 2% for couples without children.”
Cuts to social care funding, which will not be matched by the ability to raise local funding, will force women to step in as unpaid caregivers when services fail through a lack of proper investment in the social services infrastructure.
And whilst the government makes much of the creation of jobs in the private sector to replace those lost in the public sector, many of these jobs are low paid, involuntarily part time and insecure. Further, many low paid workers are artificially represented as self-employed, when they are in fact exploited by unscrupulous employers who are unwilling to offer employment contracts.
To add insult to injury, the scrapping of student nurse bursaries at a time when the NHS is struggling to cope with the nursing shortage is irresponsible at best, and can only exacerbate the shortages.
There is little for women to welcome in the statement – even help with home buying will fail to benefit those most in need, as cuts to housing benefit and reductions in grants to housing associations are more likely to impact on women who are more reliant on rented housing.
The final straw is the so called “tampon tax”. Whilst additional funding for violence against women services is welcome, tackling domestic violence and other forms of violence against women are the responsibility of all of society, not just women. The loss of central funding for women’s services, and successive government cuts, will not be offset by this gesture.
Conference calls upon the national women’s committee to continue to work with the NEC, labour Link and partner organisations to raise awareness of the real damage that this government is doing to women’s lives; and to campaign and lobby for public investment in a social security system and public services that can deliver a better future for all.
