It is a great pleasure to participate in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) for securing the debate through the Backbench Business Committee. I agree with the hon. Member for Slough about the unfortunate timetabling error, which I hope we will not see again next year. I hope we will be celebrating the achievement of women in our society—in the economy or elsewhere—in the Chamber in 2015.
Mr Robertson, may I draw to your attention, and perhaps to the Clerk’s, my disappointment at the fact that the Library chose not to produce a full debate briefing pack for this debate? There was a small contribution, but I was informed this morning that, in contrast to other Adjournment debates that have taken place here—for example, the future of the A303, which had the full works—a full debate pack was not available. Although the information that we have is relevant, we should have had a better briefing from the Library. I hope you will use your offices to communicate that, Mr Robertson.
I welcome the positivity of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and her insight into international development issues. She will be aware that 22 March is world water day. I have in the past supported charities such as WaterAid. We must recognise the international development work—through charities, direct aid and the initiatives of former Prime Ministers—to get children, particularly girls, into school. That is something of which we should be proud as British Members of Parliament.
I want to talk more about the contribution to the economy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire suggested, I intend to talk about the executive pipeline of talent. I will start with my own inspiration and why I decided to go into business. Both my parents are teachers, and I did not have much experience of the private sector worlds as a child growing up. My granny had worked in the private sector, which was kind of news to me. She started her career with matchboxes at Bryant & May, but ended up working for a company called Dista, which is part of the Eli Lilly group; I was showing an interest in chemistry. She was involved in packing, so I will not pretend she was on the executive board or anything like that, but she started to show me some of the information that used to be sent to all the pensioners by Eli Lilly. That got me more and more interested in the business side of life.
While I was doing my PhD, I was lucky enough to host Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut, when she spoke at University college London. She was a chemistry graduate—that was why she came to UCL to speak to us—and she worked as a chemist for a company called Mars, which the hon. Member for Slough knows well. She also does a lot of work highlighting the importance of science and engineering. I found that woman, working in an international business, inspiring. She was one of the reasons why I applied to join Mars.
Also during my PhD, I went off on a business school. At the time, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council used to run business weeks and everyone on a Government-funded PhD could go to different parts of the country to meet new people and, more importantly, to do things such as business games with all sorts of companies. As I was doing that, I found another lady who worked for Mars, Ingrid Uden, inspirational. I had met two ladies from Mars, so that was the only company that I wanted to work for. I was successful there and, through various bits of careers—admittedly some up, some down—my last role working for Mars was as a finance director of one of its UK subsidiaries.
Mars is an unusual company, but what struck me when I was there, which might not have been particularly well known among most employees—associates, as they are known—was that the Mars board had, as one of its key measures, the number of women in certain roles, in a certain zone, and above. Measuring that recognised the board’s desire to ensure that women were well represented in the pipeline of talent at management level—those with the potential to become future board directors at Mars.