Keeping mum

SIR Alan Sugar drives into Downing Street in his Rolls Royce Phantom. He strolls confidently up to the door of Number 10, straightening his jacket. Inside, he is shown into a panelled room.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown sits behind a giltedged desk, twirling a pen in his hand. He looks directly at Sir Alan, curling his lip in distaste at the entrepreneur's latest bout of misogyny.

"Alan," he says. "You're fired."

OK, so it's unlikely to happen. But perhaps it should. Sir Alan makes great shakes of his role as a government advisor. The opening sequence of Wednesday night's new series of The Apprentice boasted of his £800m fortune and the fact he has the ear of Gordon Brown.

Mr Brown must be squirming at being so closely associated with someone who suggested this week that employment laws designed to protect women from sexual discrimination were "counter-productive"

and that employers should be able to ask women about their family plans - presumably so they can decide not to employ someone who might be about to get pregnant.

It's the second time in two months that Sir Alan has made comments which have angered feminists - and women - everywhere.

It seemed that this week he was trying to water down the comments he made in February about employing women of childbearing age by suggesting that female employers were more likely to discriminate against women with children.

"Be under no illusion," he said. "There are women employers who are more ruthless than men.

They are more conscious of not employing other women because they feel they're not going to get the value of work out of them."

In February, he had suggested that rules preventing employers from asking job applicants if they plan to have children result in some companies simply throwing away women's CVs.

But the rest of the world of business, it seems, is more enlightened.

Sir Alan might be stuck in the 1980s, when his £400 Amstrad was in almost every home, but everyone else has moved on.

Middlesbrough businessman John Wright, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, helps campaign on issues such as maternity regulation. He thinks Sir Alan's comments are a publicity stunt.

"We think that the picture he paints of employers is absolutely wrong," he says. "Basically we realise that the programme is entertaining, but it doesn't truly reflect the real world of business."

Jon Collins, of equality campaign organisation, the Fawcett Society, says Sugar's comments are outdated and sexist in that they assume men take no responsibility for childcare.

"A suggestion that it is appropriate to ask women about childcare at job interviews reinforces outdated stereotypes that childcare is only a woman's responsibility," he says.

There will be some employers who have been greatly inconvenienced by maternity regulations, who may share Sir Alan's views, but equality in the workplace is a long way off if employers don't adapt to a changing world, the society argues. Sir Alan's fault is expecting his employees to put his business before everything else. He has freely admitted he expects them to put work before family rather than striving to achieve a balance .

A study by Cambridge University last year showed that women were being locked into low-paid, low-status jobs because they still shouldered the burden of childcare and housework.

Women are often forced to make impossible choices between their career or family. Speak to women who have returned to work after having children and many will freely admit they have chosen to put their career on the backburner while their children are young in order to have quality time with them.

This is partly responsible for the gender pay gap of 17 per cent, and for the fact that only 11 per cent of FTSE 100 directorships are held by women. However, the Fawcett Society says if employers discourage a long-hours culture it will enable more women to return to work.

Mr Wright says: "If you have someone who is a very good, skilled worker, that you have spent time recruiting and training, then they have to take a period of time off once or twice in their working life to have a child, most employers can cope with that.

That is part of our social fabric, and do we really want women - and men - not to have families?"

Government websites advise that businesses who are paying national insurance can claim back 92 per cent of statutory maternity pay - and smaller businesses can claim more than 100 per cent. So if the money isn't the issue for employers, it must be the flexible working and the maternity leave needed.

However, as Ross Smith of the North East Chamber of Commerce points out, with an ageing population there is another issue. Some people now need flexible working to care for elderly relatives.

He says: "This is going to present a challenge to employers to give staff the flexibility to work in a way which enables them to meet their care needs so the businesses don't find themselves losing staff who are in high demand."

Let's hope that Sir Alan Sugar's six grandsons have more understanding employers when he's too old to eat solid food.

Sarah Green, regional director of employers' organisation, the CBI, who is pregnant with her second child, explains why she disagrees with Sir Alan

❛ANY employer who decided to take a page out of the Sir Alan Sugar's guide to successful recruitment would soon find themselves competing with one hand tied behind their back.

There are around 20,000 vacancies for skilled jobs in the North-East which firms are finding increasingly hard to fill, so any employer who turns their nose up at a woman of child-bearing age is not helping themselves or anyone else.

Sir Alan seems to have two gripes. First, he wants to be able to quiz women over their plans for a family and, second, he objects to the length of maternity leave available to a woman who's had the temerity to have a child and a job.

I would disagree with him on both issues. For starters, why should a woman answer questions which a man would not be asked, particularly if doing so would jeopardise her career prospects.

It is a straightforward case of unfairness which should not exist in this day and age.

Second, having a child does not mean you disappear off the face of the planet. It just means being more creative about how you balance your work and family life.

Indeed, many employers who recognise the different flexible needs of all their workforce and try to accommodate them all fairly discover there are rewards in doing so as staff repay them with a level of loyalty, dedication and commitment rarely seen in other, less enlightened workplaces.

And most employers rise to the occasion and offer forms of flexible working to both women and men who want to take a child-caring role, although as a working mum and a manager of a team, I know it is not always easy. Small firms, in particular, can find it hard, especially the administration side which can be particularly burdensome.

However, ultimately having the right people in your business is key to bottom-line success and if you can retain and develop the commitment of your workforce through a flexible approach, this can lead to both happy employees and a healthy profitable business."