International Women's Day

That would be if we allow it to stay the way it is. Through active engagement we are making progress. We have made 2 per cent progress in a short period of time. I am perhaps not as pessimistic as my noble friend. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, spoke about women in the developing world and early marriage, and the education of girls. The UK's development programme has put girls at its heart. We know that investing in girls at an earlier stage better helps to break the cycle of poverty between the generations. DfID is working with adolescent girls and communities to end early marriage. For example, in Ethiopia, we are supporting the scale-up of a pilot programme which will delay marriage for 200,000 girls. During the pilot, none of the girls married and all of them stayed in school. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, also talked about forced marriage, a subject on which I am intensely passionate. I know this topic inside out. Unfortunately, the culture from which I come still has the attitude that there is a very fine line between consent and forced marriage. We are working sensitively but vigorously to ensure that no longer in this country at least should we tolerate any form of forced marriage. When victims—that is what they are—want support, we want to be there to provide them with that support, which is why the police, the CPS and other agencies have been given guidance to ensure that they too respond in a reflective manner. What can I say about my noble friend Lady Miller of Hendon? She is at the heart of what most of us look for in a mentor, friend and role model for politics. I know she went completely off-key in her speech, but she did not need it. She is what I would call the friendly face and the friendly hand that comes into politics—someone who, when everything is going wrong, will tell you that it is going to be all right. The organisation of which she was a founding member actually transformed the perception of people who actively wanted to engage in politics and decision-making. My noble friend has a great deal of respect for her husband and values his support, as do I. It is when both men and women are totally engaged that the changes will be brought about. When my noble friend talks about her husband, I talk about my Ashok, because without him we would never have made this journey. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, wanted to know about adult social care. The Government are putting in an extra £7.2 billion over the next four years of the spending review to support adult social care, and that comes in the context of a challenging settlement for local government. Perhaps I may say to the noble Baroness that I have personal experience of the care sector because for over a decade my businesses have been in that sector. I agree with absolutely every word she said about the contribution, both informal and formal, made by carers. I wish that at some point we would have a complete attitude change in this country in how we look at those who actually do some of the most downtrodden jobs for the least thanks. We see the bad headlines, but we do not see that many good care workers do an excellent job on a daily basis. The noble Baroness also talked about flexible working. We are trying to introduce the extension of such working to all employees to ensure that the benefit is available as widely as possible, including to individuals in the wider caring structure and those who wish to play a more active role in the community or undertake voluntary work. The extension will also change the perception that flexible working can harm career progression. It will encourage more fathers to request flexible working in order to take on a greater share of childcare responsibilities. Someone mentioned something about fathers, and we agree that the workplace has changed. Many more fathers want to be at home spending time with their children. Flexible working is positive for business because it enables it to draw on a much wider pool of skills and talents in the workplace, along with improved recruitment and retention rates. It increases staff morale and productivity. The evidence is also clear that flexible working arrangements benefit women by helping them to balance their caring responsibilities. The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, highlighted the great benefit of strong Welsh women, and I agree with her. We have a lesson to learn from the Welsh Assembly and I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and I were thinking, ““How do we manage this for our next elections?””. What I would like to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, is this: we are a stronger nation for having Wales as part of it, and as a good neighbour we will take lessons and look carefully at how Wales is doing. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, talked about the important role played by her mother. I heard ““Hear, hear”” across the Chamber when she said that. Mothers are so important in shaping our ambitions. My mother, like the noble Baroness's mother, was, is, and I suspect will always remain my greatest inspiration. Again, if I reflect only on my own culture where girls are seen as a bit of a burden—and if you are a girl with a darker skin than the other girls growing up around you, you are a bigger burden—I can tell noble Lords that it is usually the mum who tells you that it is going to be okay. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, talked about legal aid reform and expressed her concerns about women losing out on vital legal aid. The Bill is currently in the House and there will be, I am sure, energetic discussion on it. However, I can reassure the noble Baroness that we are retaining legal aid in key areas impacting on women—in particular injunctions to protect victims from domestic abuse and in private family law cases where domestic violence is a feature. The noble Baroness also referred to human trafficking. The Government published a human trafficking strategy last July which focused on: improving identification, care of victims, enhancing our ability to act early before the victims reach here, smarter action at the borders and much more co-ordination of law enforcement in the UK. We are also tackling trafficking through our international work. DfID supports projects which are specifically designed to prevent trafficking—for example, the Malawi anti-child trafficking project run by the Salvation Army to improve knowledge of, and access to, rights for children in Malawi who are vulnerable to being trafficked; and in Bangladesh DfID has supported the establishment in the police of a specialised unit for human trafficking. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, asked whether I agreed with not only the outstanding sacrifices but the work of the suffragettes. Absolutely. Had they not done what they did then, we would be fighting this battle at a much later stage than we are now. The suffragettes put into motion what we have to continue. The work is far from done but I agree with the noble Baroness that it took some outstanding women to stand up at a time when it was very difficult to do so.. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked about DfID's work with girls and women. I have spoken about that but I shall read out my note because it is important to repeat a good message. I am delighted that he welcomed our strategic vision for girls and women and that he cited the compelling evidence upon which that strategic vision is based. Investing in the poorest girls and women is good for them, their families, societies and economies. I am pleased that DfID is scaling up and prioritising resources to support girls and women in all 28 of its bilateral programmes and international organisations such as UN Women, to which the UK is the second largest donor. I have been told that I have a couple of minutes left and so I shall quickly ramble through. My noble friend Lady Seccombe spoke about apprenticeships in non-traditional roles. Working with the National Apprenticeship Service to run a series of diversity pilots we are looking at increasing diversity in apprenticeships. My noble friend pointed out how it can actually transform the culture of both men and women's thinking by taking on usually non-traditional female apprenticeships. Overall, there are more female apprentices than male, particularly in advanced and higher apprenticeships. However, of course, there is always room for improvement. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred to childcare and how there needs to be a major review. The Government are committed to investment in childcare. We are extending free childcare to the most disadvantaged two year-olds and, through the universal credit, we are providing an extra £300 million of support for women working less than 16 hours. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned grannies, an issue on which we need to focus more. They form a huge part of our population and are a huge resource of not only experience and knowledge but patience. I know, for instance, that my daughter much prefers my mother's company to mine. She thinks my mother is far trendier than I am—probably because my mother does not say no to her as much as I do. However, the noble Baroness is right. We are doing many more things. For instance, we are working on pensions to make sure that women's basic state pension outcomes rapidly catch up with those of men and continue to improve. Around 80 per cent of women reaching state pension age since April of last year will be entitled to a full basic state pension and projections are that that will rise to 90 per cent in 2018. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, and I have Leicester in common and agree that cities such as Leicester have so much to offer economically. However, we have to make sure that people in those cities are able to access services and jobs at local authority level, where we have very poor representation both for females and for BMEs. The noble Lord also talked about the legal aid Bill. As I said to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, we will leave that until we discuss and debate it in the House. The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, talked about women, peace and security. Women have a crucial role to play in resolving conflict. The FCO is working with DfID, the MoD and the Stabilisation Unit and is committed to ensuring that the promotion of women's participation in conflict resolution is an integral part of an overseas conflict policy—not only because the principles of equality and justice underpin our values but because the effective participation of women helps to secure more sustainable peace, which is vital to our security interests. He also champions the role of women, on which I heartily congratulate him. My noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton spoke about women in the Middle East. The recent uprisings in the Middle East have led to concerns about women's rights in the context of political instability and conflict. They are at their lowest in fragile and conflict-affected areas such as Yemen, Iraq, and the West Bank and Gaza. Heightened instability in the region could see a further deterioration in women's participation. However, I also congratulate my noble friend on the work she does to make sure we have a wider understanding of what is going on in that region. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, spoke about body image. I agree with almost everything the noble Lord said—we need to tackle the way that women are portrayed in the media so that girls have positive role models and are not under pressure to conform to looking, or behaving in, a certain way. We have launched the body confidence campaign to reduce the burdens that popular culture places on an individual's well-being and self-esteem. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, asked whether I would relay a message to the Colombian Government through the FCO. The Government are firmly committed to working with countries such as Colombia to uphold and protect women's rights but I will write to Jeremy Browne at the FCO, who is the ministerial lead on this area, and raise the issues with him. The noble Baroness, Lady Healy, asked me about universal childcare—which I think I have mentioned—as well as free education for disadvantaged two year-olds. The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, noted that deaths in childbirth are too high around the world and asked what we are doing to help. As I have said, DfID, through its strategic vision for girls and women, has set out our commitment to improve reproductive and maternal health for women in the poorest countries as a priority. By 2015, the UK will have helped save the lives of at least 50,000 women during pregnancy and childbirth, and those of 250,000 newborn babies. It will also ensure at least 2 million safe deliveries with long-lasting improvements and access to quality maternity services. I still have many more responses to deliver so I will ask your Lordships' indulgence and write to them. I will just conclude with these remarks. We have taken our domestic and international issues very seriously. I have spent the past year or so travelling around the world doing round-table discussions and asking women in the UK what is important to them. That direct contact has benefited us greatly; we are feeding into our departments some of the main issues that women have. Someone asked me some time ago what inspired me to get up and carry on the fight that sometimes seems hopeless. I said that as a kid I heard Dr Martin Luther King's speech, ““I have a dream””. While there is so much to do, ordinary people are doing extraordinary things, and that inspires me. We have made progress, but we have so much to do, and this Government are determined that we will not shy away from taking difficult decisions.