Should the right to work from home become the law? That’s just one of the questions I put to Matt Hancock.

I’m pretty sure that most people in Britain would have a few questions for Matt Hancock given the opportunity. Yesterday, I got that chance, over Zoom, naturally, and in front of an audience of AllBright’s digital members, I asked the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care about what the government are going to do to support women who’ve lost their jobs due to COVID-19. I questioned him on whether he believes the right to work from home should be written into law and of course, I had to try and pin him down on gender pay gap.

It was a pretty lively chat as you might imagine, and our discussion highlighted the need for women to be at the heart of decision making at every level (especially the top) on everything from work and childcare to mental health and fertility. If the last few months have taught us anything, it’s we must work towards building a future where everyone has a voice.

Here, I’ve selected a few of the most important points from our conversation to share…

Women & Coronavirus – we’re the hardest hit

First up, we wasted no time in getting into the impact of COVID-19 on women’s careers. I wanted to know what Boris’s government are doing to support women who’ve lost their jobs or who are worried about their career during this time of tumult and uncertainty.

Matt acknowledged this was a “massive problem” but said something good has come out of the crisis. Namely, we now have what women have been banging the drum about for years –flexible working. He said he was glad to see “flexibility around work increasing rapidly” and acknowledged the pressure that came with juggling childcare responsibilities.

He said he had hope in the country’s “entrepreneurial spirit” but cautioned that more job losses were inevitable. The way to tackle that he believes is to create more. How? “You create them through supporting enterprise and we know that start-ups run by women are far fewer in number, and there were barriers before the crisis. We need to make sure that tackling them is part of the route back.”

Should the right to WFH be the law?

Next I put to him a rather brilliant question from one of our members – she wanted to know if the government would you consider legislation for employers to make the option of remote working mandatory.

His answer was a straight (a bit of a rarity amongst politicians) “Yes.”

The MP clarified that working from home should become “the norm”. He said a study of how productive workers are from him needed to be done but seemed heavily in favour of the idea. He told me: “There’s a big argument that productivity has gone up during this when people are working from home, certainly in terms of wellbeing – we need to persuade people that allowing flexible working should continue. This is a change that is never going to go away.”

We need to talk about gender pay gap

 We all know before we even heard the word coronavirus, women in this country were already at an economic disadvantage. Now, experts worry that the impact on women’s earnings and savings will likely widen the gender pay gap wider more than ever and could set back the progress that has been made in equality in the workplace unless the government intervenes. I put it to him that the government must ensure this doesn’t happen in terms of pay.  

Hancock said he said did worry that the pandemic could set women back further, but he backed his party’s decisions. “The actions that Rishi Sunak has taken have disproportionately benefited lower earners and women. The biggest being the furlough scheme and all of the other different economic interventions which are at the core trying to help employers protect jobs. They’re directly protecting jobs, but especially helping to keep employers keep people on the pay role and get through this.” Of course, that doesn’t change the systemic and inescapable inequality that women earn less than men. Hancock was adamant he and his colleagues had made every effort to stop the most vulnerable being hit hardest but admitted they could not and had not “solved all of the problems.”

We talked about a lot more over the duration of 30 minutes – I challenged Hancock on what the government were doing to encourage female entrepreneurship and his department’s plans to ensure the mental health needs of women (and everyone else) are provided for in a post COVID-19 world.

And just so you know, it wasn’t all so serious. I did ask Matt what he does to tackle stress (he runs), if he had been baking at home like the rest of the nation (a little) and to name the one woman who has inspired him more than any other (it’s his mum).

Watch the full interview on AllBright’s Digital platform. If you are not already a member you can sign up for a 14-day free trial here.