TUC president Mark Dickinson closed the organisation’s Women’s Conference today, telling delegates that Britain is “at a defining moment for women and for all working people.”

He said: “We have the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the longest squeeze on our living standards in two centuries and populists and the extremists waiting in the wings.

“And women are absolutely on the front line of this economic and social turbulence.”

But he said: “Now we have a Labour government and I believe it understands all of these issues.

“Through the Make Work Pay agenda, the government is delivering the reforms that women and all working people desperately need.”

Mr Dickinson said that the Employment Rights Bill is “a real game changer, not just the biggest boost to our rights in a generation, but the foundation stone for a fairer and more equal society.”

He said that “nobody needs change more than women,” especially in his own union, Nautilus, saying: “While the Bill is a great place to start, our movement must continue to organise, campaign and fight for change.”

Other speakers at the conference had voiced distrust in the government earlier in the week, as reported in the Morning Star, and said the Bill did not go far enough for women.