Role of Women in Public Life

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Government for giving time to this historic debate and to my noble friend Lady Vere for opening it so eloquently. If my mother had still been alive, she would have been 102 years old today. She was born in 1916 into a world where women were not allowed to vote, and born to a mother who, although she was poor and worked in a cotton mill, was highly political. It would be 1928 before my grandmother and all other women over the age of 21 had the vote, but she celebrated, as do we, the vote given to some 6 million eligible women after many years of struggle and sacrifice. We should not forget that the Representation of the People Act 1918 also widened the franchise for men, and it had in it proposals for proportional representation. As the Manchester Guardian headline on 7 February 1918 read: “Reform Bill Passed: Women’s Vote Won … Alternative Vote Definitely Rejected”.

My grandmother may not have got the vote in 1918 but that did not stop her keen interest in politics. Over the years, due to deaths and remarriage, she ended up the mother and stepmother to 14 children. By any measure she lived in poverty but she and her family had a wealth of love and generosity, and no matter how many mouths my granny had to feed there was always something left for someone else in the street who might not be well or had lost a loved one. People came to her for advice and help with their children and even with the birth of their children. She was simply a one-woman welfare state—and she was a staunch Tory.

I mention this to highlight the countless women over the years who, had their circumstances been different, would have made a significant contribution to public and national life, and I join the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, in paying tribute to them. That is why those of us who have been lucky to play our part have a responsibility to do all we can to motivate and support women to take the opportunities afforded to them.

I doubt there is one woman in your Lordships’ House today who would be here without the championship of other women. As the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, said, we stand on shoulders. I know that I would not be here without my noble friend Lady Seccombe—like many women in the Conservative Party, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to her—although I might not have had the benefit of her support without Barbara Porter. Barbara was chairman of the Bolton West Conservative Association, and she sent me off on a cold and foggy November weekend—with great reluctance on my part, it has to be said—to a training session for women in West Bromwich, which turned out to be the catalyst for all that followed. I owe her heartfelt thanks for pushing me out of my comfort zone.

It was that weekend that subsequently led me to stand for Parliament in Oldham in the 1992 general election, and to meet someone else who encouraged me to persevere. I have never subscribed to the view that unless you share the same politics, you cannot share friendship. So it was that I met and came to like my opponent in that election, Bryan Davies, now the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham. He was so kind to me at the count, where I inevitably lost. In his speech, he thanked me for a good campaign and said that he hoped that I would get to Parliament, just not in Oldham. If only all politics was like that.

The advances made by women over the past 100 years would never have happened without the help of enlightened men, as we heard from my noble friend Lady Jenkin of Kennington. I am sure her great-grandfather would have been very proud of everything she does today. I know that my work as vice-chairman for candidates would have been that much harder without the wise counsel of my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who was dedicated to getting more women into Parliament. After all, we had no shortage of young men beating a path to our door looking to fill in that awkward gap between leaving university and becoming Prime Minister. I am delighted that my honourable friend Kemi Badenoch now has the role of vice-chairman for candidates. I know she will do it brilliantly and I wish her well.

History will rightly praise David Cameron for the way he changed the face of the Conservative Party, but if it had not been for the drive and determination of my right honourable friend Iain Duncan Smith, with his resolve that the party must look and sound more like the country it wished to represent, and attract more women and ethnic-minority candidates, all the exciting progress my party has made would have been that much harder to achieve. The progress we have made from 2005 to today is in large part down to the wonderful Women2Win, which I had the pleasure of co-chairing for a short time. It was formed after the 2005 election when, although we had far more talented women on our candidates list, many of whom are now in the Commons or your Lordships’ House, serving as Ministers and members of the Cabinet—some of them are sitting not far away from me now—we had not made the electoral breakthrough that we needed to make a significant difference.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, who is not in her place, that she is plain wrong when it comes to the Prime Minister’s support of women. The founders of Women2Win—my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and my noble friend Lady Jenkin of Kennington—both knew that it would not be easy, but they threw everything into searching for new talent and then training and nurturing that talent, and our party and Parliament are much the richer for their efforts.

Of course, it started before 2005 for the Prime Minister, who in her previous position as the first woman chairman of the Conservative Party pioneered a number of radical initiatives to shake up the selection process for candidates. That included the first-ever open primary, in Warrington South in November 2003, which resulted in a woman candidate for the Conservatives. She never shied away from facing down complacency and prejudice, and I am therefore not at all surprised that the Prime Minister will use this historic centenary, when we celebrate the bravery of those who fought so hard for the extension of women’s rights, to highlight the pressure and abuse facing women—and many men—today as they exercise their freedom to express their political views, which some would seek to deny them.

In 2002, I was interviewed by Simon Mayo on Radio 5 Live about how the Conservative Party was going to attract more women. I was asked the inevitable question about all-women shortlists, and I was just about to give my stock Conservative answer when I decided to say something different: “Whatever your views on all-women shortlists, you cannot deny the impact they made”—and, they did. The numbers could no longer be ignored and it meant that the rest of us, in our own way, had to step up our game. We have come a long way since 2005, but in the words of the trailer on Channel 4 for its all-girls special of “The Secret Life of 5 Year Olds” to mark 100 years of women’s suffrage: “A lot has changed, but we are not there yet”.