Women: Training and Upskilling

Debate between Baroness Howe of Idlicote and Baroness Wilcox

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

My noble friend Lady Harris is very kind in allowing me to say that I do not have the data with me. I will send a list to her and a copy in the office. I know that 56% of women are now in full-time work, which is useful to know, and the number of women employed rose by 23,000 this quarter. Sadly, I cannot give her the data sets today. We are working hard to make sure that the apprenticeships women take up—and more than half the apprentices in this country are women—are much higher skilled and very often jobs which would have gone to men without even a second thought. So we are on the job.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, as well as this important side of training women for relevant jobs—retraining them in many cases—would the Minister also ensure that adequate attention is given to young girls? They should be made aware of the needs of the nation and the fact that these are often in completely different areas than the ones that are their favourites today.

[Baroness Wilcox]

I am delighted to answer that question. We are starting in schools; we have an all-age careers service, which will come into schools to talk to girls much earlier than we have done in the past, to give them much more idea of what is available. We have more than 200,000 different apprenticeships available now, including in nuclear decommissioning and all sorts of wondrous things that girls can learn. So, yes, it is an excellent idea.

Corporate Governance

Debate between Baroness Howe of Idlicote and Baroness Wilcox

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

I am sure that the usual channels will discuss the matter and we will come back to the noble Lord.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, given the mention of the Davies report and given a recent report which I read, which showed that women's contribution had increased UK GDP by a considerable percentage, can the Minister give us a clear idea of what steps she and the Government intend to take to speed up the process of implementing the Davies report?

[Baroness Wilcox]

The implementation of the Davies report is going ahead and things are improving, but we want to see what results can be achieved through a voluntary approach, and we are taking a very close interest in how much progress is being made. We want to encourage talent, but we want to avoid tokenism. I think that 89 per cent of the women whom the noble Lord, Lord Davies, spoke to said that they were not in favour of quotas, so we are trying to avoid getting to that stage if we can. There is no one-size-fits-all answer—companies need to be flexible in their operations. I should like to think that the women who are chosen to go on those boards are chosen because they are the right people for the job.