Margot James Joins Advisory Committee To Shadow Chancellor

Businesswomen meet with Oliver Letwin, Theresa May and Eleanor Laing to discuss the ‘Work Life Balance’

Women from the city, media, financial and consulting sectors shared their experience of their own company’s human resources strategies.  It was agreed that the Work Life balance was a difficult area for government.  At best government should play a facilitating role, promoting best practice rather than legislating and regulating.

Although childcare is pivotal to policy in this area it is not the only aspect of policy.  The Conservative Party’s new proposals in this area, freeing up the £150.00 per month childcare allowance to enable parents to utilise family members and friends, not just registered childminders, and was welcomed.  People also felt strongly that we need to develop policies that support the carers of older relatives.

There then followed discussion about tax credits for people employing carers to help elderly relatives.  Oliver Letwin made the very valid point that as you would have to cap the earnings that this idea would apply to in reality this would yield very little extra income.  Worse it would have the effect of benefiting those who can afford to pay for help at the expense of tax benefits aimed at those who could not.

Around the table it was clear that the ‘long hours culture’ affected different sectors in different ways.  You could not legislate or even regulate something that was so sector dependent.  The television industry revolved around tough deadlines and tight margins, programming would come to a halt if strict guidelines that gave employees maximum working weeks were adhered to.

Theresa May suggested that rather than regulating everyone else government should assess the Work Life balance issues facing it’s own staff, be their civil servants or NHS employees.  Everyone agreed this was a very good idea.

Margot proposed that Government steer clear of regulation and instead thought through how policy areas which were the legitimate responsibility of government, like funding vocational training, should be assessed for their likely impact on the Work Life balance.  The better trained young people were the more sought after their skills would be, and the more control they will ultimately have over the hours they work versus the hours they spend with their families.

Picture caption:

Margot James with left Eleanor Laing (Shadow Minister for Women) and right Emma Winsor-Cundell of the Federation of Small Business