International Women's Day

My Lords, it is a great privilege to open this debate, and as always your Lordships' House has shown the great importance that it attaches to celebrating International Women's Day by the number of speakers who have signed up to contribute to this debate. Women matter, and they should matter, to every Government, every economy and every family. Like so many of your Lordships, I have been involved in issues around girls and women for as far back as I can remember. This annual debate generates huge global interest and I should like to thank in advance all noble Lords who will speak today. Great Britain has been at the heart of global change for women and girls, and we must remain eternally grateful to women such as Emmeline Pankhurst, whose vision was one of women as equals, women having power and influence over the direction of their lives. The theme today is the ““contribution of women to economic growth””, so let me start by saying that we have made progress. Many will argue that there has not been enough progress, and that of course is true. However, while we continue to challenge and break down those barriers, we must also celebrate the achievements and the progress that has been made and illustrate what it is possible to achieve. This is a vision that is shared by all political parties in the UK, and we have much to thank the previous Government for. It is therefore right that we pay tribute to their ensuring that issues on gender remained high in their political programmes. We must thank particularly the women in the Labour Party who have led from the front on issues such as early years childcare and the new types of apprenticeships which give girls and women access to training in traditionally male-only sectors. They looked at flexible working and maternity and paternity leave, and they paved the way on the work to end violence against women and girls. I am pleased that so many of those senior women are here today. This Government are working hard on improving on those initiatives and introducing many more. The Prime Minister recognises how important it is that we build a society—our country—on the principles of fairness, accessibility and equality of opportunity. However, we also know that we have to take difficult decisions in difficult economic circumstances and therefore need to respond to restoring the economy. That is where we believe that women will have a huge role in contributing—a role which will define not just progress but the success of a changing economy. No country can afford to ignore half of its talent and human potential. For example, if women's entrepreneurship in the UK matched that of the USA, we would have an extra 600,000 women-owned businesses here that would add £42 billion to the UK economy. I come from a small and medium-sized business background. I set up my first business at the age of 19 and know the difficulties that I faced then, 33 years ago. Sadly, many of those difficulties have not gone away. I am therefore pleased that the Business Secretary's Entrepreneurs' Forum includes 13 women members among its 20 members. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has also ensured that we have 5,000 women business mentors to assist women who want to start up a business or take their businesses to the next level. It is crucial that networks and mentoring become as embedded in how women approach business as they have been for men. The Government are also establishing a Women's Business Council. Senior business leaders will advise the Government on how to improve the business environment for women. We are providing up to £2 million over the next three years to support women setting up or expanding businesses in rural areas. However, as not all women want to set up an enterprise, we also need to deliver a work programme that helps unemployed women to develop skills and gain relevant qualifications. That could be worth up to £20 billion each year to our economy. What we are learning from around the world is that no tool is more effective for economic advancement than the empowerment of women. That is why it is crucial that career choices in schools are improved so that girls are aware of the full opportunities available to them. It is great to see that six in 10 higher-level apprentices in the UK are now female. Arguably, one of the greatest transformations to have occurred in the English higher education system is the increased participation of women. As someone who was not allowed to go to university for cultural reasons, I was—and remain—determined that those choices should always be available to anyone with the competence for higher education. I turn now to the sensitive subject of pay. The Government are determined to see greater transparency in pay so that we can overcome the continuing issues on the gender pay gap. In September 2010 we launched a new voluntary framework for gender pay reporting with BT, Tesco, Eversheds and the CBI. The ““Think, Act, Report”” framework asks private and voluntary sector employers to help tackle the pay gap through greater transparency on pay and other issues. We are also working very closely with business not only on extending the right to request flexible working to all employees but to ensure a minimisation of any administrative costs to business. Our impact assessments calculate that this will produce a net benefit of over £222 million over 10 years. We know that women, given the opportunity, contribute very positively at the top levels of business. We are therefore extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch—from whom we all look forward to hearing later in the debate—for his work on getting more women on to boards. Through his work with business we have seen within a relatively short time a positive shift in the right direction, with women making up nearly 15 per cent of FTSE directors, from 12 per cent previously. Over a quarter of all board appointments are now female, and 90 companies in the FTSE 100 have both genders on their boards. This is a move in the right direction. However, we want more women to break through the glass ceiling and reach the top of our biggest companies. Nevertheless, we cannot negate issues that still need to be urgently addressed, and I turn first to the issues of violence against women and girls. The Government are very committed to eradicating all forms of abuse and violent behaviour. We know that that will not be easy but we also know that we must do all that we can to achieve this goal. On 25 November 2010 we published our Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls action plan, which set out our vision over the spending review period. A detailed range of supporting actions was also published last year, including a full response to the review of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, of the way in which rape complaints were handled. We have protected Home Office funding of over £28 million for specialist services until 2015. In addition, the Ministry of Justice has committed to £3.5 million each year for three years for rape crisis centres. We will also maintain levels of funding to support specified national functions; for example, £900,000 per year, over four years, to support national help lines. An indicative figure for the minimum and overlapping cost of violence against women and girls in the UK is estimated to be around £36.7 billion per year. Sadly, more and more incidents among teenagers also seem to be occurring. We therefore relaunched the teenage relationship abuse campaign last September. To date, we have had 170,000 visits to the website and a high level of participation in the online discussion forum. We have also provided £1.2 million to be used to form a new network of support for young victims of rape, sexual abuse and exploitation, including by gangs. However, we believe that there is still an under-reporting of sexual crime. We are working closely with police, the CPS and other agencies to ensure that victims feel they are fully supported when they come forward. I know that a number of noble Lords were concerned about the issue of stalking. This deplorable invasion, through horribly sinister means, often has far-reaching consequences on how people manage their everyday lives. The Government's consultation on stalking, launched last October, closed on 5 February. We are currently considering the responses to the consultation and will respond very soon. I have not touched on a number of areas in my opening remarks but in my closing speech I shall talk about the work that we are doing internationally and, of course, respond to points that noble Lords raise in the debate. The Government are strongly committed to ensuring that all departments take into account the impact that their policies will have on women, and through inter-ministerial meetings departments we are working actively for positive outcomes. As Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, famously stated: "““If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just””." The UK, for me, is all those things and more—and that is why we so often lead in the world on these debates. I beg to move.