Topic Archives: Communities and families

Kinder, Kuche, Kirche

Baroness Deech 04/04/2013 – 12:23 pm

Since the very welcome announcement by the Chancellor that there is to be a little tax relief on childcare for working mothers, the Daily Telegraph seems to be running a campaign against them.  Day after day, stories and letters about discrmination against stay-at-home mums, as they call them, and nothing presenting the other side.  Giving a tax break on expenditure is hardly discrimination aga […]

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Baroness Deech 26/03/2013 – 12:51 pm

The Good is the wonderful news that finally, after a century or so of women's liberation, after decades of legislation to ensure women's full place in the employment market and in higher education - we have got some tax relief on childcare costs.  Very little and coming rather late, but it is an important recognition that the strides that women made are to be maintained.  There have been lots o […]

The woman question

Baroness Deech 11/03/2013 – 9:07 pm

The last few days have seen a number of women's issues raised, as International Women's Day and Mothering Sunday were marked.  It has all been rather gloomy.  In the Lords on Thursday last, there were three questions about women.  The first was about women and sport, where it seemed that sport for women was either diminishingly popular, or, when about to flourish was being frustrated.  For e […]

Myth-busting about child poverty

Baroness Lister of Burtersett 15/02/2013 – 11:39 am

Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, invariably gives the example of drug or alcohol addiction when arguing that poverty is not just about low incomes.  The other week, the Department for Work and Pensions published the findings of public polling , carried out as part of a consultation on the measurement of child poverty (criticised in a letter in today's Guardian to […]

Parliamentary Pancake Race

Lord Rennard 13/02/2013 – 6:47 pm

On Tuesday, I took part in the Rehab Parliamentary Pancake Race. The annual contest, now in its sixteenth year, involves teams of MPs, Peers and members of the Press Gallery racing (and flipping) their way around Victoria Tower Gardens in aid of the disability charity, Rehab. Despite allegations of some unparliamentary behaviour, the MPs’ team managed to hold on to the title they won last ye […]