Employment: Gender Equality

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Tebbit

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I hate to take issue with the noble Baroness, but, in fact, the gender pay gap is at the lowest level since records began. It is now 19.1%, and more women are employed than ever before: there are now 14.4 million in the workforce.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend not think it strange that, when these gender gap questions come up, there is always a call for more women ambassadors, generals and air marshals or such like; there is never a call for more women to be plumbers, electricians and so on. Can my noble friend also explain why the Government do so much to give incentives and help to women to leave their children at home and go out to work rather than to stay at home and look after their children?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Well, my Lords, the Government are giving incentives to women to be plumbers and engineers. Only around 7% of engineers in this country are women, and there is a whole host of programmes to try to encourage girls and young women to go into STEM subjects. We need more women plumbers, too. Women who become plumbers find that they can be very successful because quite a lot of customers rather like having a woman coming to help them out.

EU: Recent Developments

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Tebbit

Thursday 16th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tebbit]

The noble and learned Lord suggests that I find something satisfactory in these difficulties. I do not. However, the sooner they are resolved by Greece leaving the euro, the sooner Greece will be able to conduct its own affairs and get back on its feet. That probably applies to Spain and Portugal as well.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, given the length of this debate, it is not customary for quite so many interventions to take place during speeches. It might perhaps enable the debate to be more effective if noble Lords are not interrupted quite so frequently.