A charity that champions the employment rights of pregnant girls and new moms has been dropped from a authorities advisory board after posting essential tweets.
In latest months, senior Tories together with the tradition secretary Nadine Dorries and her predecessor Oliver Dowden have taken pains to place themselves as champions of free speech, decrying “cancel tradition”.
So it got here as a shock to Maternity Motion, the charity stated, when it was faraway from the group tasked with advising on office discrimination after its director aired her views on social media in regards to the restricted scope of the board and a scarcity of progress.
Ros Bragg tweeted: “We have now an advisory board ‘non-legislative enhancements’ to scale back maternity discrimination which can meet quarterly till March 2023. No motion plan. No suggestions for legislative change.” After highlighting suggestions from the sector, she added: “Disappointing”.
The charity informed the Observer that officers referred to the tweets when it was informed it might be eliminated.
The Division for Enterprise, Enterprise and Industrial Technique [BEIS] has not denied the choice was based mostly on Bragg’s tweets.
Heather Wakefield, chair of Maternity Motion, stated: “We had been stunned by our elimination from the board, the explanations for which haven't been adequately defined to us. BEIS officers had been effectively conscious of our criticism of the board’s disappointingly slender remit once they invited us to hitch final yr.
“In July 2019, ministers promised a taskforce to attract up an motion plan on retaining pregnant girls and new moms within the workforce. We're nonetheless ready for that motion plan.”
Labour’s shadow minister for the humanities and civil society, Barbara Keeley MP, stated: “Fairly than sidelining a charity as a result of they don’t just like the chief government’s tweets, the Conservatives must be laser-focused on tackling vitality payments and the price of residing disaster.”
It was confirmed in parliament on Tuesday that the charity wouldn't be invited to a second board assembly. It was absent from an inventory of 12 members offered by Conservative MP Paul Scully.
Different members embrace the Fawcett Society, Working Households and Pregnant Then Screwed, whose founder Joeli Brearley stated she could be elevating the problem with BEIS on the subsequent assembly this month.
A spokesperson from BEIS pointed to an earlier assertion by Scully, which learn: “The Being pregnant and Maternity Discrimination Advisory Board’s goal is to think about non-legislative enhancements to scale back being pregnant and maternity discrimination within the office.
It's a collaboration between authorities, employer and household consultant teams and the membership wants the precise stability between these totally different teams to ensure that the board to do its job.”
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