The leader of the Women’s Equality Party today called for major reform of the tax system to support work whether it was “paid or unpaid, visible or invisible”.
Sophie Walker said the Government must create an economy which addressed historic inequalities which so often penalised women.
Millions of women around the country combine caring responsibilities — for children and elderly parents — with work and many struggle to make ends meet. London parents face the highest childcare costs in the country.
At the party’s first conference, Ms Walker claimed that benefit cuts had overwhelmingly impacted on women, while raising the threshold at which tax is paid benefited men most.
“It is a gender-blind economy that prioritises raising the personal allowance on income tax, benefiting a very small group of people, most of whom are men,” she said.
“And for the handful of women that do stand to gain, their momentary freedom is tempered by a lifetime of reduced benefits, lost pension contributions and shrinking public services.”
Chancellor Philip Hammond announced in his Autumn Statement that the income tax-free personal allowance will go up from £11,000 to £12,000 over the course of this Parliament. Ms Walker called for a single flat rate of 25p for pension tax relief — there is currently a second, higher rate — which she said would provide a boost for up to 95 per cent of working women.
She also criticised the Government’s handling of changes to the state pension age to bring women into line with men, which have left some in financial limbo on the verge of retirement.
The new party has called for an enormous cash injection into Scandinavian-style universal childcare, its main policy pledge, which experts claim could boost economic growth.
However, it faced some criticism that it represented primarily white, middle-class women, who made up the majority of 1,500 delegates. Ms Walker admitted that some women of other backgrounds might feel the party “was not for them” and pledged to make increasing diversity a “litmus [test]” of her leadership.
