International Women’s Day

Baroness Hunter of Auchenreoch Excerpts

Friday 6th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hunter of Auchenreoch (Lab)]

My Lords and my Ladies—a phrase I have never used before here either—I am delighted to follow my noble friend, to congratulate her on her wonderful maiden speech. As she said, she is another alumna of the Margaret McDonagh school of politics, which had at its core discipline, professionalism, steeliness and fierce camaraderie. She would join the rank of what I proudly call the “backroom girls”—headsets, clipboards, pagers and all. We know who we are, on all sides of the House, who kept our respective bosses in line and our shows on the road.

When asked if such and such could be done, my noble friend never replied, “I’m not sure” or “I don’t know” but rather, “By when?” I relied on her enormously, as have many others. She invented what became known as the “game face”—the ability to behave utterly professionally, however ludicrous the thing you have been asked to do. At this she was the mistress of the art, quietly burying the madder requests without letting her guard slip.

My noble friend is the consummate professional—ruthlessly efficient, undramatic, unassuming, committed to the values of the Labour Party and rising to be its COO. She will, though, be for ever remembered as the one who was on the stage in a trice at the party conference when our Prime Minister was attacked with glitter, calmly removing his jacket and undoubtedly whispering something encouraging. She is the kind of person you want by your side when the going gets tough.

My noble friend will find many fellow travellers and strong female friendship in this House on the causes and issues she wishes to advocate for—though, for her sake, I hope not for a further 47 years. I am also delighted to be in the House to hear the maiden speeches of my other noble friends. We all warmly welcome our new female noble Lords.

I return now to one of my pet issues: namely, women in engineering. Last year in this debate, I talked about Fei-Fei Li, the first female winner of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, which is the engineering world’s Noble Prize. I declare my interest as a board member. This year’s winners, just announced, include two more brilliant women. Ingeborg Hoffmeyer is the co-inventor of the world’s first microelectronic cochlear implant, transforming the lives of millions of people with hearing loss worldwide. Jocelyne Bloch’s team developed electronic spinal stimulation technology—in other words, people with spinal cord injuries can regain the use of their limbs.

These women represent a new frontier where medicine and engineering converge to restore capabilities thought lost. I salute them on this International Women’s Day. They are at the top of the female engineering tree and there are many brilliant female engineers on its branches: Eleanor Stride, a bioengineer inserting drugs into bubbles that can be targeted on, say, a tumour; Yewande Akinola at Laing O’Rourke and Jo da Silva at Arup, construction engineers addressing climate, biodiversity and equity issues in their designs; Dame Sue Ion, in nuclear engineering; Judith Hackitt, in chemical engineering, who led the post-Grenfell panel on fire safety and building regulations; and Muffy Calder, in Glasgow, a computer engineer working in national security. All are formidable women and brilliant role models.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for spelling out the Government’s initiatives to support women in tech, which I know command support across the House. Women still make up just 16% of the engineering workforce, put off by the male-dominated culture in engineering, inequitable promotion and pay and inflexible working conditions. Some 57% of female engineers leave the sector in their 30s and 40s. The Women in Tech Taskforce’s stated aim is to dismantle those barriers for female engineers via public and private industry collaboration, as the Minister outlined, concentrating on tested, best practice solutions that work. This is an imperative. The Royal Academy of Engineering recently reported a huge shortfall of engineers, with the expected growth in jobs in clean energy, defence, digital and housebuilding over the next five years amounting to 834,000 additional jobs. One in four job adverts in the UK now relates to engineering in some form. I look forward to continuing updates of the taskforce’s progress from my noble friends Lady Lloyd and Lady Smith of Malvern, two more great women I salute today.