John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)*: I apologise to the Front-Bench spokesmen, because I am chairing a meeting on the Company Law Reform Bill at 3.30 pm and so cannot be here for the winding-up speeches, although I did not want to miss this debate because I am chair of the "Hands Off Venezuela" campaign.

Today is international women's day, and I want to place on the record our respect for, and celebration of, the role of women in the Venezuelan revolution—and it is a revolution. For most of us, revolution conjures up images of armed struggle and blood-spilling, but Venezuela makes us reconsider that stereotype. Since 1998, when Hugo Chavez was elected President, and especially since 2002 and 2003, the unarmed population of Venezuela have defeated first a coup and then a sabotage of the oil industry, both backed by the US Administration. Those major events launched a process of dramatic change in the country, which was supported by the Venezuelan people, particularly the women.

The women of Venezuela have constituted the vast majority of participants in every Government campaign to eradicate poverty and raise the population's quality of life. President Chavez has pointed out that it is mostly women at the grassroots who have run the education and health missions to which my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) referred, the literacy, primary, secondary and university programmes, and the health committees that manage the 20,000 mainly Cuban doctors who live and work in the community. Those missions have transformed the country. Venezuela was declared free of illiteracy in 2005. More than a million more children are now attending school and getting three free meals a day. Everyone now has access to free health care.

The women whose labour has enabled those vital services have been transformed themselves. It is women who formed land committees in both rural and urban areas, so that families who migrated from the countryside to the city after the oil boom of the 1960s, and who ended up on squatted land, now have the deeds to their homes. Idle land in the countryside is being distributed. Co-operatives are encouraged, so that Venezuela can stop being dependent on imports for 65 per cent of its basic foods and so that food security can be ensured. A network of state markets, also run mostly by women, make subsidised food available throughout the country, and soup kitchens ensure that street children and others without income receive the nutrition that they need.

No one is left out of the community's concern. Women's knowledge of the community and their eagerness to work for the benefit of all have been central to the spread of the revolution in care. It was largely women who mobilised the electorate during the 2004 presidential referendum that ratified President Chavez's election to power with a 60/40 majority. That shows how determined women are not to lose their elected leader and what they have gained as a result of his work.

Again, on international women's day it is appropriate to highlight President Chavez's recent announcement that the poorest housewives, mainly single mothers, will receive a payment of about $180 a month—equivalent to 85 per cent of the minimum wage—not as charity, but as recognition of the fact that raising children is a social and economic contribution to the whole of society, and of the fact that they are workers in the home. The minimum wage was in turn raised by 15 per cent, and there have been increases in pensions and other low wages. The first 100,000 women will benefit in June, and another 100,000 will benefit from July. Up to 500,000 women will eventually get that wage for their vital, unwaged work.

The president has repeatedly said that women are the poorest and work the hardest. He has told them:

"They work so hard raising their children . . . This was never recognised as work yet it is such hard work . . . Now the revolution puts you first, you too are workers, you housewives, workers in the home."

That was recognised in the constitution; article 88 recognises the economic and social contribution of women's work in the home and on that basis grants housewives a pension. That has been hailed worldwide as a breakthrough, not least because it is bound to raise all women's wages, as at least some women will now have the power to refuse the lowest pay. Article 88 still needs legislation to put it into practice, but rather than wait for that, Chavez has put together the recognition in article 88 of caring work and recent legislation aimed at lifting the poorest out of poverty, and has redirected some of the oil revenues to women.

All over the world, women have been campaigning for economic recognition for unwaged caring work in order to undermine women's poverty in both unwaged and waged workplaces. In 1995, the UK-based Global Women's Strike got the UN to agree that unwaged work should be measured and valued in national accounts. In fact, a ten-minute Bill was introduced in the House on that issue. In 2005, Global Women's Strike organised a speaking tour for Nora Castaneda, president of the Women's Development Bank of Venezuela, to let people outside Venezuela know about the far-reaching article 88. Global Women's Strike has just published a book, “Creating a Caring Economy”, in which Nora Castaneda explains how that micro-credit bank is helping to build a movement that is “creating an economy at the service of human beings”.

The people of Venezuela believe that their oil and natural resources belong to the people themselves. Today, women are marching to the US embassy in Caracas to deliver a petition demanding an end to the occupation of Iraq. They have also spoken out against intervention in Haiti by the US. They will not tolerate any intervention intent on depriving them of the wealth from the oil revenues of their own country. The task of all democrats and progressives throughout the world is to support the revolution, and in particular the struggle of the Venezuelan women.

*Based on a briefing by the Global Women’s Strike