 Felly, dweud y gwaith am gael, Creun scolindiad diogristiannau a Llywodraeth neu'r rhaid fawr, Harry Ahaarman MP. Felly i, ddod. Feidliadau cenedlawn am lighter i gyfasir y gwbladdig. Feidliadau cenedlawn am gyfasir o fwyaf. Ac yw eu 13th annol ffestifol o colleges ynghylch. Felly i, ddod i, bod yn ddod. Felly, mae nhw'n f Doncs participation event, felly ddim yn dweud i fyf. Yn gweld i'r gwaith o gyfer laviraidd. I will ask our audience on Facebook also to ask questions. In fact, I would just encourage you, if you wish to continue to throw your thoughts out, you can do so by using the hashtag FOP 2017, that's the festival of politics 2017. Hashtag FOP 2017, encourage you with these hashtags. I'm very pleased today to be joined by one of Britain's leading politicians, twice deputising as leader of the Labour Party, the country's longest serving female MP, the right honourable Harriet Harman QC MP, now officially the mother of the house, and served your constituency of Camberwell and Peckham since 1982. After studying politics at York University, Harriet and her sisters followed in their mother Anna's footsteps, with all three qualifying as solicitors. Harriet worked for the progressive Brent Law Centre in London in the 70s, where she dealt with high-profile trade union actions and the first cases under the Equal Pay and Sexual Discrimination Acts. Harriet met her husband, trade union leader and later the MP Jack Dromy in 1977, and they have two boys, Harriet and Joseph and a daughter, Amy. In fact, Harriet was the first ever candidate to be elected into the House of Commons while pregnant, at a time when the House of Commons was 97 per cent male, and I think we'll return to that issue. She's still campaigning for a comprehensive system of baby leave and cover for women and men who have a baby, and I think you've been making great progress on that in the last week or so, in fact. Appointed Secretary of State for Social Security in 1997 and the first ever Minister for Women, she has also been solicitor general, leader of the House of Commons, Lord Privy Seal and Minister of State in the Department of Constitutional Affairs, Ministry of Justice and the Government of Quality's Office. In addition to her ministerial positions, Harriet has held many other key political posts, including shadow ministerial posts in work and pensions, health and international development, as well as party chair. Throughout her political career, Harriet has fought for more female representation in Parliament. She championed the introduction of women-only short lists, which resulted in a record-breaking 101 female Labour MPs being elected in 1997, and remains one of politics' most prominent champions for women's rights, changing laws on childcare, domestic violence and maternity rights. Despite denouncing political memoirs, I believe, as male vanity projects, Harriet's autobiography, A Woman's Work, was published earlier this year, and the memoir gives a fascinating insight into the Labour Party, the way in which the country has been governed since the 1970s, and Harriet's efforts to bring women's issues to the heart of the Labour Party and the Government leaps off every single page. I am delighted to introduce you to Harriet Harman, QC MP. I am going to return to the book shortly and perhaps go through some of your career, but I wonder if I might just start with the issue that has been dominating the news for almost two weeks now, and that's Harvey Weinstein. Are you, I don't know, shocked, discouraged, amazed, depressed that such a story, which sounds the sort of story that would have been in the news when you entered politics in 1982, should still be leading the news today? Well, thanks very much for inviting me up here, and it's always fantastic to be up in Edinburgh, and great to see you all, and the sun is shining, and it's great to be here, and the first thing to mention about my memoirs is that I had to, it is true that the men's memoirs are male vanity projects, honestly, and I did used to think, oh, we're sitting in a meeting, we're in the shadow cabinet, we're trying to get rid of thatcher out of Government, and they're writing, I've just made such an important point, and I'm wearing my new suit today, and I'm thinking, shouldn't we be focusing on trying to, you know, rest power out of the hands of the Thatcherites, and then it carried on in Cabinet. I'd be sitting there and something would be happening on the NHS or the global financial crisis, and everybody agreed with this point that I made would be written, and I would be thinking this is really not what we're here there for. However, when my colleagues all wrote their memoirs, you know, Alistair, Alistair, Peter, Peter, Jack, you know, all of them would write their memoirs, and I would look at the photographs in the middle, in the bookshop that Wayburn does. There would be no pictures of women except if they were married to them or working for them, and actually that is not the story of women's politics over the last 30 years or women's lives, and I thought, well, if I don't write the story of the amazing transformative social and political change that has happened in women's lives, which has affected everything, well, it will be completely invisible. You know, Sheila Robotton did that book hidden from history, so really I felt it was my duty to write my memoirs, which is why I did, because it's all of your stories. I can see many of you who are my age. It is our story of being part of that great women's movement, which brought such an amazing progressive transformation. However, Harvey Weinstein, and actually, when I was a student at York University and I was in my third year, my tutor called me in, and he said, oh, you're very borderline. Two one, two two, but it will definitely be a two one if you sleep with me. He was absolutely repulsive, and I had no hesitation of exiting the room, and I thought, well, if it's got to be a two two, so be it. But what I later discovered a few years later was that another young woman who'd been on my course, who came from a working class background, she was the first in her family to go to university from a small town where her progression was very much watched by everybody. She felt she couldn't afford to have a two two, that she had to get a two one, and had to submit to him. And actually, we had no concept of the idea that you could complain. I mean, who would you complain to? All the other lecturers were his friends. They would all side with him. He would deny it. I would be regarded as a troublemaker. I mean, you didn't even go through the thought process of what to do about it. It was also, you felt it was disgusting, and you just not want to think about it. Or for her, feeling really conflicted because she did actually have sex with him, and therefore wanted to not think about it at all, let alone talk about it and complain about it. And I think that with the Harvey Weinstein thing, it is a classic thing of men abusing their power in a situation where women are wanting to go into this particular sphere of work, and there's a male hierarchy. And of course, the overwhelming majority of men wouldn't dream of sexually abusing a woman further down the system, but some will. And the power that they have gives them impunity, which means that they do it again and again and again. So what we've got at the moment is two things happening. Firstly, people thinking Harvey Weinstein is one evil person. No, he is not. It is absolutely endemic. And secondly, that there's nothing we can do about it except ring our hands. Or thirdly, it's somehow women's fault for not complaining, or even in Harvey Weinstein's case, somebody said it was Angelina Jolie's fault for heaven's sake. Well, actually we need to do more than blame women or ring our hands and think there's nothing we can do about it. And I think that the absolute key to it, when I think about my own experience and think about the Harvey Weinstein thing, is that we need a system of like whistleblowing, anonymous whistleblowing. Because if there had been that system in place at my university, I would have got on that whistleblowing line straight away. And that doesn't necessarily mean they can instantly hold the perpetrator to account, but it means it would like create a hotspot because there would be some where actually, you know, there'd be like a sort of hotspot round them. And if you think of like with Jimmy Savile, if people have been able to complain anonymously about Jimmy Savile to a kind of sex abuse helpline, loads of people would have done it. And he wouldn't have then been able to carry on for decades because the next time somebody complained and were prepared to go on the record, everybody would know that actually this was happening. So I think that so long as that individual victim who after all has been sexually abused because they're vulnerable because they're young because they're trying to find their way into the system, if it depends on the victim to sort this out, it will, publicly it will never be sorted out. We need a whistleblowing system. It needs to be anonymous so that those patterns can be seen because it is never only one woman. It is never only one. If he's going to do it with one woman, he's going to keep trying and once he's done it and succeeded, he'll just carry on. So it's never only one. We need to establish those patterns and it needs to be done anonymously. So I think we need to all work together to insist that that is what happens, that we have anonymous whistleblowing system for this. Thanks. I think all of us have been shocked by this story and as I say, perhaps we shouldn't be shocked when it's so endemic but the situation that you described and I mentioned it because this idea of for example sexually predatory men abusing their position of power, you talk about it clearly at university, you also refer to it in the legal profession, perhaps not with you but with other women that you came across. So we're talking about the brightest, most powerful women in these jobs, the most ambitious, strong women who are standing up for themselves in these professions and yet they were being taken advantage of. Do you think if you were with a 21 year old Harriet Harman today, would you have been one of the ones to speak up today because you found it difficult then? Well I think the thing about the Harvey Weinstein thing, if any woman would have been an accusation, an individual 21 year old woman, she would have been sued and driven out of her career. I mean it just wasn't possible. It's only because now that dam has been broken that those numbers are there. So it's just not possible when you've got somebody who is really powerful for somebody who is completely powerless to take them on. It's a question of power relations but one thing that can be done is for all regulators and all hierarchies to have policies and those policies to include the ability for people to report. I'm going to take you back then so I just wanted to start just because it's been so and it's one of the issues that runs through your books. But it's fair to say that women's rights generally, that was the issue that took you into politics. Now those women's rights came first through your work through the Brent Law Centre, your involvement with Equal Pay and sexual discrimination cases early on in your career. That was your into politics? Well my sort of into politics was because of the all the inequality and injustices which were the norm at the time and feeling that they were unfair and therefore we all needed to fight against them and there were a whole load of progressive movements which were going forward at the time challenging the status quo. I thought it was interesting, Obama talking about Trump yesterday saying that was what you're taking us back to what America was like 50 years ago because that is absolutely right and the things that some of you who are old enough will remember that were the conventional wisdom at the time, you know the rich man in the castle, the poor man at his gate, you know people had to know their place, you know the hierarchy was absolutely the status quo sort of imposed in a very unequal way. Racism and misogyny were absolutely the norm. When I was first in MP there was Guy's Hospital which was my local hospital had a rag week and they had a magazine in the rag week and it had a joke section, it was like medical students raising money for charity and hospital charities and in this joke section were two jokes, one was how do you stop a Pakistani spitting turn down the grill and the other was how do you get 100 dues in a mini one in the driving seat 99 in the ashtray now there was nothing unusual about this sort of banter as it was now I was part of these equality movements that was saying this is not all right this is totally unacceptable and I protested to the hospital to the DPP and everything like that and and the south London press that was my local newspaper did an editorial saying I had no sense of humour and that's what was going on at the time there was so much unfairness and so I wanted to be part of that great network of movements that there was at the time which obviously the Labour Party was the political expression of it of changing all of that and challenging all of that indeed and and you did that so you you you made networks or you you discovered others of like mind and that took you into politics itself well the women's the women's movement was all about changing everything and all those things that women couldn't do and being told they shouldn't be doing because really at that time the most important thing for a girl the summit of her aspirations really was to get a get a husband to get a good husband and then once she'd achieved that marvellous aspiration to be a good housewife and we the women's movement was saying no actually we can have husbands and you know look after homes but we can also do things outside the home so so really that was the kind of spirit of the time that we should change everything and challenge it and that meant being you know women trying to get into the law women trying to get into academia women trying to get into trade union activism but also into politics and into parliament in order to change the laws and change public policy so in a way there was women in every walk of life in every region throughout Scotland, England and Wales and in every sort of activity challenging all those barriers I was actually in Edinburgh not so long ago and I met a woman who was in her just in her early 80s and she said that she'd done her banking exams on leaving school and gone to work in the bank but when she was 24 she gave it up to get married and that's what women used to do the idea was you would give up to get married and but then her husband died and she became a widow and she went back to the bank when she was 50 when he died but then she was compulsorily retired at 54 so it's like her you know the idea that you could actually work outside the home make something of your work but also be a wife and a mother you know that was regarded as not possible and we were about changing all of that and saying all those things that we were told we couldn't do we were going to do you were very much dropped in at the deep end though because you as you joined the lay party and then began to prepare to become a candidate you found yourself standing as a candidate several months pregnant and and I was noticing at the time I was saying the house of commons was 97 percent male there were only 19 women 19 women in parliament when you it's funny because this is all our life well for me at 650 yeah but but actually I hadn't intended to stand for parliament pregnant and what what had happened is I've been selected to stand for what was you know safe labour seat um but the man that I was going to be taking over from sadly died so there was a by-election so I thought that I could be get pregnant have a baby and then the general election would be some way off um and so what happened was suddenly he died when I was like five months pregnant and it was likely elephant in the room I we were all thinking can it be possible for a a young woman to be a candidate let alone a young woman who's pregnant to be a candidate but we were all not taking no for an answer on everything so basically um I went ahead with it but it made me be even more of a kind of outgroup and I remember that moment when I was introduced into the house of commons which is a very unlike this lovely light airy building it's a very forbidding uh place um and packed on all sides of the house of commons um were these 97 percent men all in their dark suits um all making a sort of hell of a noise and I was standing at the end and you have to stand at the bar while the speaker calls for you to be introduced and then you have to walk down and then three steps bow then another three steps bow and everything with everybody looking at you which is fine except for all of them were men in dark suits and I was like in a red velvet maternity dress and I felt utterly out of place and they all thought what on earth is she doing here because their model of a woman was a wife and a mother not a colleague the colleagues were men and I think it was a bit disturbing for quite a lot of them because actually the idea that a woman could be doing that well it just didn't feel normal or comfortable and I had hoped that after that by-election that in 1983 where so many women had been selected in Labour seats as part of the whole drive of the women's movement that that we would then be a small but determined troop but Labour did so badly in the 1983 general election that they didn't get elected so I found myself continuing to be very much on my own and as far as Scotland was concerned out of 50 Labour MPs we had in the late 80s 90s one woman firstly Judith Hart who was wonderful to me actually really wonderful but just one the idea that all the women in Scotland could be spoken up for by just one woman so now you know things have really changed and we've got a critical mass but it was pretty tough some of the battles are still going on and you had your first child as you were being elected or just after being elected and you've had and three children since then but you're still fighting a battle today to get baby leave for women MPs that's going on right now. I mean I know here that you've got rules for in Holyrood for if an MP has a baby and of course in in times gone by the question of leave after a baby would have been irrelevant for two reasons firstly because there were hardly any women and those women who were there were older they'd had their families and then kind of advanced into Parliament the handful that there were the were older so it was irrelevant for them but also the idea that a man should show any interest in his baby was a completely foreign concept and I remember once being in a committee and a male colleague had his pager on and he jumped up and he said on a point of order Mr Chair I've just had a baby and everybody went oh here here here here and I thought God you know and then he sat down and carried on with the committee and I thought but now men expect and are expected to not Jacob Rees-Mogg but other men expect and are expected to take an interest in their children and share the responsibility of their children and there are loads of women who are younger women and it's a fact of life that they're actually having babies but there is no maternity provision at all so there is like a pretence the pretence is that the constituency has 24 seven cover from their MP and actually you cannot be looking out for your constituents interests when you're in labour and you shouldn't be looking out for your constituents interests if you've got a baby who's just a few weeks old we need an actual system and currently the system uh well it's doesn't it's not really a system but what actually happens is that you can go along to the whips office and they will then allow you some leave but it's but for a new young MP to have to go to the whips office is quite and to kind of then individually kind of sort of negotiate and then be beholden to the whips for having granted the favour of letting you have time off with your baby it's not the right way to do it um so we're we're proposing um a system of baby leave and um the SNP are backing it and uh as well as obviously labour strongly backing it and one of the the things that I've been wanting to emphasise very much with my little trip up here today is that we need to kind of rekindle the spirit of sisterhood across the border so I'm wanting the SNP to vote with me on some changes that need to happen in rape cases and I know there's a they take the constitutional view that they're not going to vote on issues which are purely devolved issues but we need their support to get this change on rape and I don't want constitutional niceties to mean that men continue to get away with rape because they're able to throw women's sexual history into the uh into the trial and then besmerch her name and then blacken her character and and then get off so so basically um we need to uh we need to be having that solidarity across the border that's in this case you're talking about a law that's the law doesn't apply the law's different here in scotland and but you have the same problem it's matching it is actually matching we still you have the same problem Scottish women's aid report that in something like 70 of cases uh rape cases that the defence will raise the issue of the previous sexual history of the complainant and this is based on the idea that it can make the jury think well if she's had sex with all these people before she's bound to have consented to have sex with him or if she's the sort of woman that's had sex with lots of people she's kind of sort of immoral so can't be believed and it's to build prejudice up and it's just prejudicial it doesn't give you any evidential value about what actually happened at the time so really here in Scotland you need to be making that change as well so you know we're very supportive of the change being made up in Scotland but we need Scotland to help us change the law in the in England and Wales as well the number of prosecutions for rape is is tiny here as well but you're not you're not setting up feminism against nationalism in that sense that's uh yes probably a little bit because basically I don't want feminism nationalism to trump feminism is that actually the the history of women's advance in scotland england and Wales is that we've all worked together and I remember in Edinburgh where the zero tolerance theory was like promulgated and that was very pioneering and we then borrowed that and built on that I remember I mean incidentally when I was a girl growing up the idea of a man hitting his wife well it was what she obviously bought it on herself or actually needed to hit her to keep her in order so basically the idea of zero tolerance was very very pioneering and we supported the women in Edinburgh and then borrowed from from the work they were doing in strathclyde regional council they pioneered the notion of universal childcare being part of the public services and we built on that and actually you know we shouldn't let the border weaken that that sense of solidarity of women and working together because we we're not strong enough to do it on our own we need to be able to work together to get change I'm going to continue just that theme but just at this stage if anyone wants to catch my eye and wants to ask a question themselves hopefully along the same themes but and as we continue we'll broaden out to other issues so just catch my eye and I'll bring you in in two seconds I'll use first up so but after after you had after you were elected and you're pregnant I mean I was quite shocked reading your book the letters you received basically saying that you were this you were going to be an unfit mother well basically when you get elected in a bi election which is a very high profile event you get a whole sack full of mail awaiting for you emails I suppose nowadays but when you arrive so you arrive at the house of commons and I had this huge sack full of mail and half of it was from women saying fantastic great you know right behind you get on with it and half was from women saying what are you doing you are going to ruin your children they will truant from school and the problem with that is that I couldn't be sure that that tru because my family circumstance had been my mother being at home and there wasn't any sense really that what would happen if you actually really pushed the envelope and was out in the public domain and actually one of the things that I do write about in the book and that has characterised my working life is a real sense of maternal anxiety and guilt as to whether or not you really can be going out to work committing yourself to your work putting in all the hours going that extra mile and whether or not that is ruinous for your children I think at such point when we have men taking an equal share of parenting at which point we are not at yet but when we're at that point then I think that women won't feel so guilty and anxious because they will at least have somebody doing the equal sharing with them and presumably they'll equally share the guilt and anxiety that inevitably comes with parenting but you know it was seen very much as the responsibility of the woman to to be there and care for the children and so when I got those letters and I do remember them in fact I still got them being a lawyer I keep every bit of paper I've ever had I look at them and think you know they like an icy hand gripped my heart at that moment supposing they're right you know that I have to say it's one of the most shocking things reading your book that comes across that sense still of of guilt which you know everyone you must recognise as as I think perhaps surprising as well given your achievements but perhaps we just bring in someone here first and I've got hands going up all the way to Syria hello I think it's very shocking the stuff about baby leave not being in present at the moment in parliament but and it's encouraging to hear that there's a critical level of female MPs and especially in Scottish leaders that there have been more females but on the ground there does still seem to be an issue the gender pay gap is wide it's almost 10% recently announced by a large public service broadcaster and yet it just goes away unremarked almost like they're doing quite well because it's not as big as elsewhere and childcare still falls on the females head majorly these things seem to just be continuing without much momentum being gathered did you see any improvement in that in the future is there more that female politicians should be doing to really focus people's minds on resetting the clock and saying this is not really acceptable well I think that you know we've spent an awful lot of energy and effort and with some success for getting into positions of decision making you know to get into different areas of work to break down those barriers to end all male decision making across the board but I think that what we've got to be thinking of now is actually upping our demands you know we're like now we're in the room um and I think that there's been a bit of a because every time we've made a demand it's been regarded as totally unreasonable and accompanied by a huge backlash together with helpings of personal abuse um it rather creates a self limiting self censorship thing and I think that one of the things that we've got to do is now really think we have made a lot of progress and we have got into a lot of fora and what are we going to do there in terms of what is not what is possible for us to do or we might be able to do but what we is necessary for us to do and be not asking but demanding and not sort of proposing but insisting because there is still a whole load more change that needs to happen I mean childcare women is still tearing their hair out about childcare and there is a still a natural order of progression at work whereby you're all on equal terms until the baby's come along then her eyes drop down and his increase to make up the income and then when she goes back to work you know she's regarded as less committed less experienced and so it's all entrenched so I do think that we have got to take stock of where we've got to and then up our demands and recognise that there's never been a demand that the women's movement have made that hasn't started off as being regarded as outrageous and unreasonable but like today's unreasonable demand is tomorrow's conventional wisdom so we've got to like decide what is necessary and then really go for it and support each other when we do so. I've got two hands up here I'm not sure it's the same question though but can I take both of you? One after the other, Carol first. Harriet, I very much enjoyed your book but it seemed to me almost a book of two halves. I really related to the first half where you were a feist, the solicitor almost getting yourself struck off and taking on the world but it seems almost sometimes when you were then elected you did pull your punches and one example that struck me in the book was when Tony Blair turned up for the all-female photo shoot and you didn't tell me just jog on Tony this isn't your day because you and there are other examples in the book where you're concerned to be nice to people or you know that there just seems to be a compromise made where you did take no for an answer or the younger part of Harriet might not have done that and perhaps I wish that I don't know whether you've been worn down by it because as a strong woman it is very difficult and just lastly the Labour Party in feminism I think will get more sisterhood in Scotland when the Labour Party is finally honest about the record and equal pay in Scotland. Well I think you've made a really really sort of perspicacious point and I think that if you're a pioneer and all women who are in a minority and still women in politics are pioneering they're kind of new into territory which is customarily male is that you're always trying to make judgments about how far you can push things or whether or not it's right to be pushing things I mean I'll just give a couple of examples in addition to the photograph issue one was when I'd become deputy leader you know and I was succeeding John Prescott who'd been deputy leader elected deputy leader of the Labour Party and as a result of being deputy leader was deputy prime minister it sort of automatically went with the post but Gordon Brown didn't make me deputy prime minister and I should have actually you know banged the table marshalled the forces of the sisterhood of women and said you've got to do this but actually I didn't and the context was that Tony and Gordon had been having lots of well publicised rows the Labour Party generally felt quite uneasy about the idea of the two leading figures in the party arguing with each other it was very disturbing for the party to have that turbulence at the top plus also Gordon Brown was taking over as new prime minister I wanted him to succeed this was a Labour government after all and it's difficult to transition from one prime minister to another so I was busy thinking well it is outrageous but I the most important thing is that we have a good transition between Tony and Gordon and that Gordon doesn't become vulnerable to all the people who are Tony supporters that actually wanted to do Gordon in and I looked at the bigger picture and actually what I should have done is looked at the bigger picture which is it's downright wrong for when a woman gets to be elected as deputy leader she doesn't get made deputy prime minister another example was when we had the G20 there was the global financial crisis you know Obama was over Angela Merkel was over Barossa was over from the EU and you know everybody was gathering for the G20 which was the summit and it was in Downing Street and my office was saying oh we've just got the invite for the number 10 G20 summit dinner so I said oh that's great just put it in the diary and they said but it's not great so I said why they were looking all ash and face and they said because you've been invited to the wives dinner and it was like oh god so then a big ideological discussion had to happen in the office which is shall I just say I'm not going to go along to the wives dinner which seems to not express solidarity with women but I wasn't a wife or should I be saying I'm coming along to the man's dinner I mean it was just absolutely ridiculous but I thought I didn't want to like be looking as though I'm saying to the women I'm better than you um so there was that but also we were in the middle of a global financial crisis and where I ate my dinner didn't feel like I could make that and yet it was those things all add up to being important and therefore you've got to step back and look from the outside and think well it might be in some way a small thing but it is actually quite important and another example is like when I was first elected in 2007 as deputy leader and I'd been in the cabinet previously so I know that the deputy sits on one side of the prime minister on the other side sits the head of the civil service opposite sits the chancellor of the exchequer on one side the home secretary on the other side the foreign secretary the power is choreographed absolutely how near you sit to the prime minister whether you're in the prime minister's eye line and then all the people who are regarded as completely less important to write down the end of the table and they can't be seen or heard and they're almost like a you know on the terrace um so I came in expecting to be like and I just I was luring myself into the seat I realized they put name tags because it was a new cabinet and therefore lots of the people were first time in the cabinet wouldn't have known where the foreign secretary sits or the home secretary or you know wherever sits so and I realized the name on it was Jack Straw and it's like it should have been my name it's like a sort of Goldilocks moment that was my seat next to the prime minister and Flippinell Jack Straw was going to be sitting in it and I anxiously looked around all the name tags and mine was virtually outside the room right at the end and what I should have done is I should have actually um I thought to myself well it's the first um meeting of Gordon Brown's cabinet his new cabinet and I can't be saying before we discuss the new business of the government can we just discuss where I'm sitting you know it just seems like trivial and yet it's a message about power and authority and what I should have done is said afterwards by the way Jack buzz off out of that seat it's mine and actually you enjoyed it for one meeting but I'm going to be there next time and just told the civil service and told Gordon that's where I was going to be sitting and the thing is that you want to be teamly you want to make sure that the bigger picture is working but you've got to be vigilant all the time that you're not letting things go by which send out the signal that somehow you are prepared to be slighted in a way that men make difficulties if they are so therefore it happens less so when I look back over the long period I led with my chin on a whole load of issues and had like so many rows every single day some issues I didn't have rows about but that was not because I wasn't having rows about loads of others but I put those in the book to just show that we're all the time having to make a judgment because when you're in that sort of hostile climate make a wrong judgment and then you can mobilise everybody against you and then you can find you can do nothing because you're pushed out of the door completely being unreasonable it's easy to see how you could also your own reputation would be damaged because you'd be seen that you'd be displayed or portrayed as precious rather than actually fighting for self-seeking yeah you know somebody would brief to the newspapers that I've made a fuss about where I was sitting you know you're in a perilous situation always I should have done your colleague just neighbor thank you some of us here are involved with the Scottish commission on women which is trying to identify and address some of the institutional and the attitudinal barriers that get in the way of women trying to progress through the workforce particularly as we hit our 50s and 60s and we don't really have any resources but we have a partnership with them Edinburgh University and one of the things that came up in the most recent piece of research was that many women don't actually manage to get selected for interview for jobs at that stage in their career and some advice was given try taking 10 years off your CV trying to what take 10 years off your CV yeah and and that made made a big difference so that's just one of the practical examples of of some of the the situations women are finding themselves in and I'm aware that you set up a commission a number of years ago on women and I just wonder can you talk to us about where some of that's going or where it's where you hope it's going and and secondly can we make some links because I'm really struck with your reference to sisterhood across the border and I think that if we make if we talk together surely we have a much better chance of having more impact because these the barriers are some of the barriers we've been talking about earlier today and they're not going away they're more endemic than ever well I'm very supportive of and in admiration of the Scottish Convention on Women and in fact I've been to one of the meetings here which was absolutely packed of the Scottish Convention on Women one I was struck by the amazing diversity of there was like women from the Scottish Country Women's Association there was like refugee groups it was a fantastic example of solidarity and women working together and yes we are much stronger if we work together and I think you know without anybody having to think it defines where they are on the question of independence we should actually make a resolution to really work together irrespective of what people think on on the independence issue but the point you make about we set up a commission on older women Fiona McTaggart MP and I because I'm not sure actually taking 10 years off your CV really does the trick and this is why because I think that that as a woman in relation to work you are never in your prime as a man in relation to work you are always in your prime and I thought it's like this three ages of women and three ages of men so basically when you are a young man you are full of promise thrusting forward one to watch and you're sort of in your prime youthful and ambitious as a young woman you're distractingly pretty and regarded as a bit ditzy and just altogether too pretty and attractive and distracting then when you get a bit older he has got you know three children reassuringly virile a solid family man somebody who can be relied on at work she's got three children oh my god she's got far too much on her plate so he's in his prime again as a family man she's got too much on her plate and then when they're older you know 50s it's like 50s or 60s he is wise authoritative experience mature a bit George Clooney or David Dimbleby attractive in his prime again and we're past it and it's like god damn it they've had their prime three times when is ours and I think that I think that we have to challenge everything at all ages but the irony is that women who are older whose children have left home so they've got more time they've got more experience they know stuff it is absolutely incredible how discriminated the double discrimination against older women and we did a survey for the older women's commission which looked at women in the broadcasting industry and young women in front of the camera and young men are on equal terms 50 50 in terms of broadcasting but once women get over 50 they literally disappear it's almost like um the viewers have to be protected from the awful sight of an older woman in case something terrible happens to them if their eyes fall on an older woman and uh so we we raise this and we've pushed this with the broadcasters and some of the younger women broadcasters or at least women who would sort of in their 40s were going fantastic this might give me an extra 10 years of broadcasting because the other alternative is for women to try and make themselves look younger all the time you know we don't want to have to make ourselves look younger in order to be valuable you know our creases are our experience which counts for something so we shouldn't have to be pretending what we're not one company i mean they were all very good at giving the information one broadcasting company was late um giving in their information to me so my office chased them up and they said oh do you mind if we give our information next week and my assistant said why and they said well because we have got one woman and she's 49 but it's her birthday next week so we can fill in the form that we've got one so you know and then the bbc director general came on the radio and all this was being put to him as well as various other things and he said no no we know we've got to do um we've got to do some stuff on this we're going to go out looking for older women it's like they are there in your organisation growing older all you have to do is you don't have to go out and look for them you have to stop culling them when they actually get to be 50 so there's a lot of work to be done about older women including that we don't mind our age you know i am 67 there's nothing wrong with being me at 67 i am different than me at 37 but not better or worse so when people say oh and they're trying to be nice you look much younger than 67 i always abuse them and say and so what is wrong with looking 67 so we've got to be quite militant about it i think but i'm sure you already are we've we've got a couple of questions here just for a brilliant i just want to ask here about about journalism again because again in your book you talk about the misogyny in in your upbringing or in the law in in politics but you also talk about it in journalism and and just how difficult it was for you to get stories into the press through a through a battery of male political journalists and then if you bring us right up to date now despite the fact we've got far more female journalists we've got situations where someone like Laura Coonsburg actually has to supposedly get an escort to be safe at a Labour Party conference when that surely can't be right well i think there's two two issues there one is whether or not it's ever acceptable for a woman journalist or indeed any journalist to feel that when they're doing their job of reporting that they somehow need protecting for doing what is an important job and i think that is never acceptable um but the other is the question of how um women are reported and and the question of the public domain and when i was first an MP there was no television in parliament and there was no radio in parliament it was all about the reporting from the press lobby which was this elite core of political reporters who were allowed into this gallery in the house of commons and that was the only way that parliament was reported and they were 95% men and they were not interested in the agenda of the women's movement which i was putting forward they didn't think it was anything to do with politics you know domestic violence or childcare or maternity leave were not political issues you know if i'd have been talking about the mines or the money supplies or motorways or something then they would have reported it but now actually there is much more diversity and you can tweet and everything like that but with that then comes the ability for the backlash which there always is against any progressive progressive movement to find channels in to try and silence women who are speaking by vilification and misogyny and abuse in social media so i think that the work that Yvette Cooper is doing on the home affairs select committee putting pressure on the internet service providers is going to be very important indeed to stop misogyny on the internet and i think in the Labour party what i'd like to see in which i've proposed to Jeremy Corbyn is that we have a rule which is that you can either do you know misogynistic abuse of women in public office or you can be a member of the Labour party but you can't be both and that there should be a one strike and you're outrule because we can't have a situation where members of our own party are abusing women online and there's loads of men who i think will think more carefully before they tap that post icon if they think that as a result they'd be out of the Labour party and nobody needs to do their politics by misogyny and abuse so there's a whole range of issues there i've got another question just there yes i was really struck when we were talking about Harvey Weinstein because would you mind just moving mic for George a bit there sorry i was really struck by the fact that you sir said you were shocked by the Harvey Weinstein situation but i think any woman in this room especially who's worked in a male dominated professional society would say it's not shocking at all what i am shocked by are the number of women that i've spoken with who are blaming the victims for not speaking up and are saying that this is why it continues to happen what i would ask a view miss Harman is how do we work together to stop blaming women for being treated in this way because it is an endemic issue across multiple organizations and industries and just in life in general for women and but i think when women blame each other whether as feminist or saying they're not feminist we're making it so much harder and we're making it to continue to be a problem that grows so what do you suggest for us to stop blaming each other how do we get to that point because it's a really frustrating place to be to hear women blame for this well i think that's a very important point you made and really it's about women's solidarity with other women as being absolutely essential to being the only way that women will make progress and that was something very much at the heart of the women's movement as it started off it used to be the idea was that women were rivalrous with each other because they were in competition of course for the best husband so basically there was no sense of women's solidarity at all women were all like scratching each other's eyes out and there was a whole sort of language around the idea of women's rivalry and i remember actually when my my sister was applying for a job as a lawyer at a time when actually it was before the sex discrimination act you could decide not to interview women and advertise for for men only and she was applying for a job in the law and she rang up this firm because she knew that they'd had a women's solicitor in this firm and um she's they said no you can't come for an interview and she said why not and they said because you're a woman and she said but you've got a woman solicitor and they said yeah that's right because um we've already got one and if you come you you'd only fight and this was the idea that women were rivalrous and the whole point about the women's movement it introduced the notion of solidarity amongst women to make progress and we have to keep reminding ourselves and each other that actually women do have to stand together um and i have been absolutely dismayed by hearing the women on the radio who talk about the fact that it's women's fault and why don't women just stand up and speak out and the solution is women being stronger that is not the solution the solution is actually holding men to account and sadly you know i was not at all shocked by this Harvey Weinstein thing disgusted dismayed appalled sympathetic to the victims but i'm afraid not surprised and nor should we think it's anything other than endemic here and that's why we have to have the whistle blowing or something like that so female solidarity is what needs to happen and also the other thing is that you get to be quite popular with men if you criticize other women and it's what we used to call false consciousness and so therefore um if you speak out against other women you can immediately get on the radio or on television and get promoted at work and what used to happen in the early days in the house of commons is that it's like i was pushing for more women to be on the shadow cabinet um in the Labour party and the men were absolutely furious and felt that this was a you know a constitutional outrage and uh even though we were going to add to the shadow cabinet we weren't going to take any men's seats we were going to add some women's seats but this is regarded as absolutely dreadful and therefore when we came to the shadow cabinet elections the one woman they were all going to make sure did not get on the shadow cabinet was me because they wanted people who were not going to be pushing for change so you know we have got to think about our sister league credentials all the time and work to support each other can i just ask that does that not i mean you you want to show solidarity with other women but in politics you have to show solidarity across a range of issues particularly in the Labour party so for example how would your solidarity which side would you come down in your book you talked about on quite very funny actually shielding your hiding your baby from Thatcher's horrific me so there's this so we've got other women in parliament and Mrs Thatcher being you know one of the most notable um did you view her as a sister did you view her as part of the women's movement at all well absolutely not you know we'd we'd um uh and i'll mention about Theresa May as well because basically it's like you know we'd campaign for women's advance and horror of horror who should be the first woman prime minister for a conservative and not just any old conservative Margaret Thatcher so we immediately just marched in the streets the first lady puts women last and you know we were just in no doubt that although it is good for a woman to get into a very high position the issue is not just you symbolically being there the question is what you do for other women and the point that you mentioned in the book is that um is that which basically well shows two things how actually very very tribal we were rightly so against what Margaret Thatcher was doing which was ruining the country and making people's lives a misery but also how slightly bonkers i probably was after i'd had my first baby and indeed my subsequent babies so i was like walking down a corridor and it was a very late vote and very unusually i had quite newborn baby with me my first son and i saw Margaret Thatcher down a very very long end of the corridor sweeping down towards me with sort of two aides on either side sweeping along and i could see that she'd spotted the baby and i had this awful moment that i thought somehow that i had to protect this precious and beautiful baby from her gaze falling upon it almost like the baby would shrivel up if Margaret Thatcher's eyes were on it and that is so opposite from the normal notion normally when you've got an absolutely perfect baby which my baby was obviously you want people to admire the baby uh but actually are visceral loathing of Margaret Thatcher for all the awful things she was doing in the country not least to my constituents put her on you know exactly the other side so i literally pulled the blanket over his face and dived into a room off the corridor so so we were not in any way seeing Margaret Thatcher as a sister and actually Teresa May is of the Margaret Thatcher type of ilk she is not a daughter of the women's movement in any way shape or form and um she voted against the equality act and when we were pushing for more women in parliament and our own side the men were like poo pooing it and saying what matters is merit not you know whether you wear a skirt type of thing she would always be wheeled out by the Tory party to say this was political correctness gone mad and she sided with the men in her party and the men in our party to do us down and i'm afraid i can remember that she might have tried to reinvent herself as somebody who supports women but she she never actually did and she is in a parlous state now i cannot begin to describe to you the open hostility and contempt with which her own side are treating her at the moment and kind of common humanity would make you possibly feel really sympathetic to see somebody in such an awful position but i'm afraid i cannot monster any common humanity because of what she is actually doing now let alone what she's done in the past you know so i would feel easier to have sympathy with her if she'd ever shown any sympathy to the people who are absolutely struggling because they're not getting their universal credit payments to you know all the problems that there are so Do you think she's being harsher treated more harshly because she's a woman with a man in her situation being treated the same way i think the harshness of the situation takes a different tone but i think that all together she's just making an absolute mash-up of the whole thing and the price will be paid by the country but there are actually disturbingly for me and slightly bewilderingly there are some Tory women MPs who are daughters of the women's movement i would say who do believe in solidarity you are concerned about domestic violence who do push for childcare but what i think about them and they kind of like try and hang out with me and so i'm like walking down and i suddenly realise that somebody's coming to sit and chat to me and they're a Tory MP and but what i feel about them is that they are in the wrong party that is the problem with them um and it's very confusing for me because like you know if i chat to them and said to one woman you know what brought you into politics and you know how are you enjoying it here and how are you getting on here and what brought you into politics and then this woman said you did and i was like but i didn't mean to bring you in as a Tory MP it's like but actually there are and that's a really a sign of the women's movements progress that actually it's become more of a cultural norm i mean they're still you know regard regulation which is rights at work like maternity leave as a burden on business they're still cutting public services which women work in and particularly depend on so the policies are still all completely wrong but actually there are quite a few new younger women Tory MPs who there is nothing wrong with except for the fact that they're in the wrong party until very recently we had the leaders of the three main parties in scotland were all women and you've commented about nicholas sturgeon do you know Ruth Davidson well enough to talk about her as as a feminist i don't actually i i well i haven't actually met Ruth Davidson but she obviously you know puts forward the feminist argument but you know if you believe in a fair and equal society if you value public services and believe in tackling inequality why would you be in the conservative party this is what i would say to Ruth Davidson if i if i met her um she normally sits just oh right yeah can i ask actually just but i think a sign of the fact that the Labour party paradoxically and a rather you know in my bitter and twisted way is that the the Labour party um the more power there is the more fierce the fight for it is and therefore the more women get pushed out and there's a like a thicket of men competing on anything and therefore when a party is like in when the Labour party is in dire straits in scotland women have the opportunity to lead it and i thought to myself well we can tell the Labour party's on the way up now because we're going to have a male leader again but perhaps that's a bit too bitter and twisted and paradoxical and i'm sure they'll be absolutely marvellous but it is true that is it is easier for women to lead things which are absolutely embroiled in turmoil and having real difficulty than when things are all going swimmingly and going uphill then suddenly uh the women get pushed out of the way just before i bring that question around um well you're not disappointed when when generate carbon became leader and he announced his cabinet for example he got himself in big trouble on on women's issues in the sense that he was uh quoted as well his conversations were overheard the first announcements were all male and then he had to respond by appointing angela eagle or it seemed that way um he was then i think he had a policy about women only carriages and trains and such like it is not i mean for a party that's so committed to driving the equality agenda and jenom himself being clearly off the left do you think there's a problem there when he comes to women well there's an issue about um the left and the fight for gender equality um i i think that all inequality is bad all of it's unfair all discrimination is bad whether it's based on class which is obviously a huge issue whether it's based on race whether it's based on age or sexual orientation um and i think that we have to fight across the piece on inequality and not regard one sort of inequality as intrinsically more important than another so there might be somebody who would be campaigning for rights inequality for people with disabilities and i wouldn't like say to them well what about women or well actually what is far more important is inequality based on social class um you know you're somehow dealing with something which is less important i think we should have no hierarchy in relation to the fight on inequality all inequality is bad and anybody who's fighting inequality that is a good thing and we've got enough problems dealing with people who are in favour of inequality without we sort of demide amongst ourselves but on the left there had often been the view that arguing for equality in relation tackling inequality and gender was somehow a diversion and a distraction from the class struggle and the kind of traditional left view was that that was all that was mattered and somehow talking about women was a diversion and Jeremy Corbyn came from that and dwelt in the traditional left like the campaign group where issues of race discrimination or the environment or any of these new movements were not regarded well were regarded as a distraction now you know to his credit he is definitely you know moved into embracing all of these issues absolutely massively so um i think that any leader needs to know that they've got support for more progress and that will be um you know crawled up if they uh if they slip back um but i think that you know he's well on his way forward on these issues as you know as he is across the piece really much to my surprise i have to say because you know i i had thought before the 19 the 2017 election that um he would lead our party to having even fewer votes and i really overestimated Theresa May which she obviously did the same um and i underestimated Jeremy Corbyn and um and was really delighted to discover how wrong i was after we got that election results so um i think we're making good good progress that's why we won't have an election if the Tories can help it won't just there yes yes yeah there we go i just wanted to pick up on the point about the gender pay gap um i work with an organisation called women's enterprise scotland and we see the gender pay gap is a huge issue because in enterprise um the pay gap is much greater and it seems to be a growing trend an employment that the pay gap at the uk is 18 but i heard utterly shocking data just the other day which says that in self employment there are more women coming into self employment but the pay gap in self employment now stands at 33 percent that is almost double the gender pay gap in employment which is horrific and for us the research and information that we're gathering and picking up some of this has its roots in the benefits changes that adversely impact the proportions of women and also in the excellent point that was made earlier around women facing um agist issues in employment and also being first in the firing line when redundancy strikes so in an economic climate at the minute you know what we are seeing is a migration of women who have less opportunity to make an income coming into self employment and facing severe barriers and challenges in trying to work hard to make a decent income well i think that's a really really important point and i think a lot of women go to self employment because the the traditional workplace will not accommodate the flexibility they need for caring for their children or caring for older relatives or supporting a relative with disabilities so that a lot of women wanting to work but not being able to find a satisfactory situation end up in self employment and i think that one of the things that's really important is the transparency about the pay gap which is going to be workplace by workplace and here i think there is a massive job for the public authorities but there is also a job for the trade union movement because once it's like appears in a workplace where there is trade union recognition but it's shown that the pay gap is like 30 percent that is a real challenge to the negotiators to analyse what is lying behind that and tackle those obstacles which will often be about you know part-time workers being discriminated against and not being able to get the training or to get the promotion in an organisation and i think it's also very important that the equality and human rights commission and the equivalent bodies in scotland make the issue of really promulgating workplace by workplace pay gaps so that people are confronted with it and then are forced to to to have a plan of action to tackle it i think that that's very very very important indeed because the whole point of having this information is that it should enable us to have the power to challenge it because in the past everybody said pay gap's a terrible thing but it doesn't happen here well it actually does and so it's going to be the moment of truth but the main thing is to keep the data simple because the more people can produce 16 metrics of measuring inequality the more people can't quite get get to grips with it so it's like average hourly pay that is the key thing it has to be hourly because you've got to put part-time workers into the equation rather than just measure full-time workers against each other and measure part-time workers against each other because of course most women for at least some of the time are working part-time and there's another question just up there yes because of women's rights i think my accent might let you know that i'm from belfast in northern Ireland and women are really not progressing very far very fast back home but to declare an interest i am elected as well i'm a recently elected MLA to the northern island assembly that is dysfunctional at the minute as well but i'm also a long-term campaigner for abortion rights in northern Ireland and i'd maybe want to talk to you about that as well i know that Stella Creasey your colleague did a phenomenal move very recently in getting access to free healthcare for women but i know that also international bodies such as CEDA have repeatedly reported back to Westminster to say that you're not fulfilling your human rights commitments to women in northern Ireland that we have had successive court cases who have ruled that our abortion laws are against human rights and given that Westminster are the state bodies signed up to be compliant with human rights and was wondering if you could have any insights or anything to say on why the women of northern Ireland have been left behind since 1967 well it's so basically um the uh northern Ireland for for those of you who are not aware of this didn't get the 67 abortion act so it didn't even get that legalisation it's in a pre-1967 abortion situation and what Stella Creasey did is for all those women who come over to England because they need an abortion and then were being charged for it and having to pay for it she's got the government to agree that women who come over from northern Ireland to have an abortion then don't have to be charged for it by our NHS but actually they shouldn't have to come to England to have an abortion it should be lawful in in northern Ireland i think that the um that the the it's been sort of beset by the sense of the importance of allowing uh northern Ireland its own you know self-determination and its own elected representatives to make that decision which then is challenged by the idea of um uh the overarching human rights that ought to be universal um and not something which a devolved administration can opt out of and um that was something that very often when we were in government i would be struggling with um and um but always warned you know if you do this it will bring the government down you know and there's always that um the other threats so um i'm hoping that following the the the work that we all backed Stella Creasey up on that we will be able to you know make some some further progress on that and it is an irony because in so many ways the equality movement which was about challenging sectarianism was so pioneering in northern Ireland under the uh peace process with the equal opportunities equal employment opportunities commission i mean a whole structure happened in northern Ireland which was way in advance um to deal with positive action in job opportunities for people from either sides of the religious divide so it is an irony that the gender equality is left behind on all of that i mean given the political reality of the moment that the the Conservative government is supported by the dup i mean the majority is reliant is that does that hold out the prospect of any progress in this issue well i think that um i mean it was a bit uh there was analogies in relation to uh the situation of of of women in Scotland where everybody would be told well uh you know you metropolitan london women you don't understand it actually um women in scotland don't want to be um having this advance um or that advance and um so that's another reason why for there to be solidarity across these um across these boundaries um i remember once when we were arguing from there was there was only um uh there was no women in the north uh in representation in labour representation in parliament for a long period and when i was arguing with one of my colleagues and saying there needs to be you know the voice of women from the north needs to be heard north of england um and him he's saying uh but you you you're just a london woman you don't understand women in the north don't want to be in parliament you know they don't want to be involved in politics and somebody else said there aren't actually women in the north in the labour party and it's like i knew that wasn't true so i think in a way it's also about us supporting our sisters in different parts of the country to be like driving the advance um for a couple more questions just right here yeah i just um first of all i wanted to um applaud you for everything you've done um for young women like myself who are interested in politics um but i just wanted to ask you you talked about women um often being pushed out um and i think gender's often left out of the narrative i just wondered what you thought um do you think that there's a sense of women on the right being alienated from feminism and from the issues because they simply have a different view alienated from feminism women on the right well feminism is intrinsically a progressive movement because it's about challenging the status quo and it's about challenging the unequal distribution of power and income and um and and therefore there is a mismatch between feminism and and and the right wing basically so i don't think it's anything that we're doing that is alienating women on the right it's just that if women want to be part of progress and cognize the progress that has been made then they need to stop being on the right you know it's like and the woman just where's she gone got my eye here oh there you are yes um my eyes it's going there um slight preamble to my question given that you talked about um Theresa May and Mrs Thatcher um i think there probably lots of people in the room who had the same visceral horror and contempt as i did at the one show thing about boys jobs and girls jobs but in a week in which a journalist has been murdered in Malta i was two weeks ago at a day conference about trafficking the woman journalist who made that programme is one of the most remarkably courageous journalists i've had the privilege to meet however perhaps unlike Laura Kunisberg she did need genuine protection one person on a bus traveling from eastern europe to london on more than one occasion she had one bodyguard with her in the bus who was Romanian she had another who is British in a vehicle behind such was the danger that they felt she was in her insurance company hearing about the programme have raised her personal insurance for 360 pounds a month and very gently i think i might defy you to say that that perhaps is a woman journalist who needs protection and to get then to my question which is trafficking could you share your views on human trafficking and what is a society we need to do about that different abuse of power predominantly by men well i think that it is a terrible thing you know and that woman who was murdered in Malta was you know absolutely you know tragic and awful um and is is a shame on Malta it's cast an absolute you know shame on them that that could happen in this day and age and um but i also think that we shouldn't not think it's important for a journalist to feel that they can't just go around at a party conference without feeling that they've got to have somebody to kind of ward off anybody who should be abusive i don't think we should necessarily not be concerned about one because another is so much more uh life threatening and the thing that you describe about the the trafficking is is because it's serious organised crime and the commodity there is not drugs or guns the commodity is human beings and a lot of it is the commodity is women being trafficked for sex um and i remember when i first heard the phrase human trafficking which was when actually we were in um we were part of the g20 having our um uh oh no it was when we were president of the uh european union for that happy days that was when we held the presidency of the european union and we were having a conference of women's ministers of europe conference in belfast and the women ministers from the rest of europe were talking about the problem of uh human trafficking and um uh one of the things that i think is needed to help stop the awful trade in human trafficking is of of women for sex is to prosecute the men who have sex with them because the women are not consenting they are not actually getting money for having sex they are enslaved and uh when i was solicitor general which is responsible for prosecutions so many cases would cross my desk where um there would be a victim of human trafficking and they would like rescue the woman they would arrest the pimps and the traffickers but they would have bins full of used condoms full of dna material and i'd be like why are you not actually getting this material why are you not prosecuting the men this is actually rape because often the woman would say we would tell the man that we would uh that we were um uh you know trafficked and enslaved here and asked for help to escape and that they would always just carry on and insist on on having sex with them except one man in one case who didn't go on to have sex with the woman but he didn't help her escape um so i think that we have to look at the demand side of human trafficking for sex you know the supply side yes as well but we need to recognize that that if there wasn't a sort of pseudo respectability or at least a prevalence of men thinking that somehow it's all right for them to use women for sex if they pay uh then it wouldn't be happening and that's one of the or at least it would you know cut it right down that's one of the reasons why i think that i'm so against uh legalizing if you like or regularizing what is called sex work because i think for the microscopic small number of women who choose to sell their bodies for sex whereby it is a properly free choice not a choice imposed on them by alcohol addiction or drug addiction or mental health problems or being trafficked and being enslaved for that infinitesimal number of women who would choose to be doing it i would rather sacrifice their right to be a sex worker for the sake of protecting all those women who are not in that situation through their choice but are actually horribly horribly abused so that's why i don't even like the term sex work i'm conscious we're just coming to an end here but before i do this couple of questions i just wanted to throw to you one is just on legislation that's currently before us or issues that are still to be tackled in the news this week in scotland the the green party lair party in s&p have all signed up to ban smacking totally in favour of that totally in favour of that do you think we should have progress at west minister i think that's yeah and i think it will happen because of what you've done here in scotland um it's more likely to to make it uh to make it possible um i think it's long overdue i was by the way you mentioned european union i thought we're going to get through the whole thing without mentioning brexit which is yes do you have any i mean do you despair i think most of us do not just politician to discuss it endlessly do you despair what's happening at the moment or do you see because you're quite optimistic i'm actually struck by how optimistic you are about so many issues are you optimistic about brexit to despite being a remainer uh i think it is absolutely catastrophic what's happening at the moment and the fact that it is brought the Tory party to its knees it's so bad what is happening to the country that i can't even enjoy the prospect of the Tory party that's that's how bad it is and i think you know people will pay a price for what is going on with this and it will not be people who've got plenty of houses and loads of money it will be as always people you know who are younger starting in out in life you've got less resources but i think if you work if you think of where we are at the moment i mean the big thing is to get a trade agreement we need an agreement because like 40 plus of our trade is with the european bloc we absolutely need that agreement we can't even start talking about it until we've sorted out three issues one is the question of the the the EU migrants and we can't sort that out because obviously the migrants rights need to be protected by the european court of justice and that has become a huge red line for the Tory party so that is like very difficult intractably the next one that is very difficult intractably is that they won't get on to talking about trade because they will not do anything which is going to destabilise the border well that is very intractable border between ireland and northern ireland that's very intractable and the other is they won't talk about trade until we sorted out the question of the money and you can just see today is that Boris Johnson is saying it's not going to be acceptable for even one penny to go for example to our obligations we've entered into like paying Nigel Farage's pension and things like that so basically these are three huge obstacles before we even get to discuss trade and the idea that we can just have no deal is absolutely unbelievable um sort of political grandstandings slash self-harm in the most extraordinary way and I they called us remainers project fear and actually what we were saying was not the half of it so um I feel that uh really uh we've got to reset the process on this but there is no chance of doing that whilst we still um have a conservative government unfortunately ironically yeah so David Cameron I think for agreeing to a referendum to go into his manifesto because he thought he'd never have to implement it because he thought there'd be a coalition and that the Lib Dems would then not let them implement it so they could say okay well it was in our manifesto but we're not going to implement it because the Lib Dems won't let us that was like unprincipled and lazy and he should never have done that because then of course he got an overall majority had a referendum and lost it and I think that's one of the reasons why he will go down as one of the worst prime ministers ever this country's had in history so I'm going to allow you to end in an optimistic note that I made though just just uh uh a lot of questions on facebook on this issue as well which is basically about what the future holds but for is same from for young men for women Thomas McGeach and Kayleigh Finnegan and Teagan Stevenson about the younger generation and particularly the role that men can play and what progress we can make and we've got 100 years of women's suffrage coming up next years or anniversary do you think I mean what progress do you think we can make or do you think there's huge battles still to be fought do you think the progress that the biggest battles have already been won or do you think there's more to do I think there is a huge amount more to be done and I think that we need to look back and be gratified with how much we've been able to do but not be like grateful for it because actually all we're doing is trying to get a situation where people have equality rather than inequality and that they face opportunity rather than discrimination and we are still a very very long way from that whether it is social class whether it's disability age gender or race we are still far from the equal society which is not only an entitlement of each individual why should anybody face discrimination or prejudice because of how aware they're born so it's not just the entitlement of every individual but it's also what makes society work better if people feel strong and empowered and equal they're more able to be part of a society and it's also absolutely essential for the economy so um for all those reasons the gap between where we are now and where we need to go we need to just you know regird our loins if that's not a rather male description um and and get there incidentally I've been sitting down while we're doing this talk but I've been thinking all the time after I did uh one of these sessions in a different part of the country one really nice woman came up to me afterwards and she said I think you should think about whether or not it's right for you to be sitting down when you do this because I've just been to a session with Yanis Farafakis she said you know the Greek former minister and she said he strode up and down like you know leaning forward on everything she said really you're probably doing a sort of bit of a sort of gender stereotype model crouched in the chair here so um perhaps next time I need to be like so I'm sorry I've been sitting down but um next time perhaps I should be striding down around in my leathers like Yanis in a couple of hours I'm going to make George Mombio sit there as well so you're in good company so can I just ask you all to say thank you very much Harry it's going to be make us available shortly in the cafe bar I believe to send copies of her book on women's work but it's been a real pleasure I'd like to thank you very much for your time this afternoon for sharing your insights and your experience of thank you Ken for sharing it as well our presiding officer presiding wonderfully thank you