Women paying highest price for Tory failure

In a thread of Tweets yesterday afternoon, Hannah Bardell, SNP candidate in Livingston, announced that as women have paid the highest price for Tory failure, the SNP had committed to a mini-manifesto of key pledges specifically for women.

Women, she Tweeted, have been consistently short-changed and harmed by successive Westminster governments on pensions, maternity leave, social security, gender equality, and human rights.

In the last Westminster parliament, SNP MPs had forced the Tories to sign up to key measures to protect women from domestic violence, exposed the unfair treatment of WASPI women whose pension age had been increased without many even knowing, and defended women’s social security payments.

The new package of measures is aimed at boosting gender equality, by working to end austerity, opposing rises in the state pension age, and increasing the provision of paid leave for parents.

SNP candidates returned to Westminster on 12th December will work to –

• oppose any rise in the state pensions age, fighting to secure fairness for the women affected by the accelerated timetable for increases in the women’s State Pension Age.
• increase maternity leave to one-year, set maternity pay at 100% of average weekly earnings for the first 12 weeks, increase the provision of paid leave for both parents, and promote shared parental leave
• demand an end to the two-child benefit cap and abhorrent rape clause, and a halt to the migration of people onto Universal Credit until it can be made fit for purpose
• demand an end to the punitive benefits sanctions regime enacted by the Tory government, and to the benefit freeze, press for the statutory living wage to rise to at least the level of the real living wage, and for an end to age discrimination
• oppose any attempts by the UK government to scrap the Human Rights Act