International Women’s Day

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak today. There are two debates I always enjoy. One is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s debate. Well, there are no bishops here today, so we cannot go any further with that. But there has been a lot of progress on female bishops since my time first in the House.

The other debate I always enjoy is this particular one and I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness: it is indeed true that there is a dramatic number of female MPs and Peers now. When I joined, I do not need to remind noble Lords that one MP in 25 was female. It was quite a tricky time. I commend the party opposite. I do not think it has been so successful on female Prime Ministers. We have had three. I will not comment on all of them—but I will comment on the first one.

What noble Lords need to know is that Margaret Thatcher used to say, “People turn round to me and say, ‘You’re the first woman Prime Minister at No. 10’. I turn round and say, ‘I’m the first science Prime Minister at No. 10’”. Of course, she was deeply influenced by Dame Janet Vaughan and Dorothy Hodgkin, most distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society, who, for a long time, were principals of Somerville College. A colleague just now challenged me and said that Lord Salisbury was a STEM man. He took maths, but I am not sure he should really be allowed to undermine Margaret Thatcher’s claim.

While we have more women in the House, we still do not have anything like enough people who come from a science, engineering and medical background. I think it was 78 in the House of Commons at the last count, which is an improvement. The House of Lords has always been better for distinguished scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society. How thrilled we are to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, and how thrilled we are that his successor is the first female Chief Scientific Officer. In the Lords, we have the noble Baroness, Lady King, a fellow of the Royal Society, and many men. I pay tribute to my kinsman, and the kinsman of the noble Lord, Lord Hacking: Lord Julian Hunt, Fellow of the Royal Society, who is no longer with us but is a most distinguished scientist.

I am not entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, about rage and anger. I enjoy rage and anger, but I am quite celebratory today, because we have a great number of Cabinet Ministers who are women. I pay tribute to the Minister who is speaking and ask her to pass on best wishes to the delightful previous holder of her office. It is the bittersweet nature of political careers, but Anneliese Dodds is a lovely woman and was doing a very good job—and I am sure will do more.

I have been looking through the names of other extraordinary women scientists. There is Dame Ottoline Leyser, the first female head of UKRI, again a Fellow of the Royal Society and a plant scientist. We have Hayaatun Sillem, the CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering, from Oxford and UCL and a biochemist. Then there is Irene Tracey, the first female scientist vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, who is a neuroscientist and formerly head of Merton College. There is Dame Angela McLean, who has just taken over as Government Chief Scientific Adviser, and Dame June Raine, the first woman to run the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency—absolutely tremendous—and so many others. The Campaign for Science and Engineering, which does so much for us, now has a female chief executive.

I pay tribute to those women, but I share the desire that more needs to be done. I pay respect to those who have suffered so much and worked so hard in the past. We should read the biography of the first woman physician, in 1847, Dr Blackwell, and the persecution, poverty and prejudice that she faced.

In my professional life, I do a great deal to help women develop their careers in different sectors. The other day, I was in India, and I was reminded of a particularly remarkable woman who studied engineering then insisted on going to work at Tata, where they had a men-only policy. At Tata then there were no female lavatories, so she had to go home to go to the lavatory. That very remarkable woman is called Sudha Murty: she is the mother-in-law of the former Prime Minister. It is an extraordinary reminder of how recently people have led lives of sacrifice, discipline and determination.

I am sure that we need to do more to encourage STEM at an early stage. There are so many initiatives, with Teach Now bringing in science people, and with many of the policies that the Minister outlined following on, frankly, from the policies of the previous Government on how we can build that pipeline and avoid the leaky pipeline.

I want to pay tribute, finally, to the many maiden speeches. They are noble Baronesses, but a great number of them are my friends and I am absolutely delighted to see them there.

The Minister knows about the health service and education. The role of research in the National Health Service is critically important, and it is all too easily squeezed out. Dame Sally Davies, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who should be in this House, recently hosted a magnificent conference on life sciences and health innovation and what we can do together by collaborating. I commend her findings to noble Lords for further study.

Universities

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, this debate is, to me, the House of Lords at its best. Earlier this week, we were discussing the future of the House of Lords. I do not think that an elected House would produce the quality of debate that we have seen. As I listened to each speaker—all infinitely better qualified to address the House than I am—I was struck by the cumulative experience, knowledge and contribution.

I have known my noble friend Lady Warwick since she was at the AUT, and subsequently at Universities UK, and I recommended her as the person who should join the Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life. She is such a wise person, as are so many other noble Lords. I look forward to the Minister, who I have not yet heard in her new role, winding up. I will not need to remind her about the importance of universities for training doctors, nurses, paramedics and so forth. I knew her very well in her health days.

I congratulate UUK on what is a tremendous report. I enjoyed reading it, which is rather strange. I do not know about others. I enjoyed the excellent chapter written by my noble friend Lord Willetts—“Two Brains Willetts”—and Andy Haldane’s chapter on the impact of universities. I even enjoyed the chapter by the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, who we now know is auditioning to be not chancellor of Oxford but British ambassador in the United States. I know that the only aspect of higher education the House is really interested in is not, why did Oxford turn down Baroness Thatcher, many years ago, but will it be my noble friend Lord Hague, the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, or maybe AN Other? These are, of course, extremely profound points.

I want to speak about the London School of Economics. My great-grandfather, a Wrangler at Cambridge, in a part of East Anglia, went to Toynbee Hall and worked with the Webbs in setting up higher-education institutions across London. In 1894, they received a bequest of £20,000—would that it could be that today—and within a year Beatrice and Sidney Webb were admitting their first students. My great-grandfather, Dr William Garnett, was one of the seven signatories who signed up for the incorporation of the London School of Economics. What a magnificent institution; University of the Year this year; performing exceptionally well across a range of areas; and with a formidable new president and vice-chancellor, who I hope the House will get to know better, Professor Larry Kramer. Twenty Nobel Prize winners and 40 past or present world leaders have studied at the school.

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Rees, will say that this is nothing compared with Cambridge, but Cambridge was not founded in 1894. I frequently agree with the noble Lord on various issues. He has often talked about the importance of social sciences. The issues that we face today are about behaviour change. Climate change, net zero, is about not only science, technology and industry but about how we can persuade people to change their habits. The Minister will know that so many of the issues involved in health, healthy lifestyles and life expectancy have nothing to do with surgery or pharmaceuticals but are all to do with behaviour change—diet, exercise and all the things that are so much more difficult than simply having an operation. I hope that when the Government discuss the importance of STEM, science, innovation and research, they will not forget the importance of economic, social and legal analysis.

The other area where I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rees, is that the sector is incredibly reactionary. The Open University and the University of Buckingham changed the paradigm. We talk about major efficiency changes, innovation and transformative change, but I do not see much of it. I entirely agree that we need greater diversity of institutions, flexibility, institutional variety and different courses. Of course, many people would much rather go to university when they are older. When you are young, you are too distracted and have too many emotional problems to actually study. I must mention my 17 years as Chancellor of the University of Hull. Who got the firsts? It was the mature women, who had made a great sacrifice to go to university and do well. I hope that we can be more radical and more innovative about what we mean by a university education.

Talking of Hull, I have to say that being in a troubled area with great challenges, its success is all the more important. It is a global institution, but it makes a profound difference to the local community, with Professor Dave Petley doing a remarkable amount. Since Richard Lambert’s review of business and university collaboration in 2003, there has been a great change in innovation, research, collaboration with business and spinouts. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, talked about his work. All over our universities, we have institutions helping with funding, innovation and intellectual property, and we should celebrate that. I also endorse the vulgar comment. Academics are paid remarkable little. We want our best people to be academics. We need to respect them and support them.

Next time, please can we have a debate that lasts twice as long?