Women: Representation and Empowerment

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Mone, although they are not in their places, on two sparkling speeches—not just sparkling but interesting and fascinating. I admired them very much.

One thing that has not been much mentioned—I think the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, mentioned it—is that we hear a lot, we women politicians, about training and mentoring women candidates. I want to put it on record that nothing irritates me more than hearing about training and mentoring of women candidates. Having spent two Parliaments in the House of Commons, I think it is the men and the male candidates who need the training and mentoring. Why do we women think we need training and mentoring, for goodness’ sake? We are the people who tell children what to do, we tell our partners what to do, we organise our homes, we sort out differences of opinion, we settle squabbles—and someone tells me I have to have some training and mentoring? No, I am sorry, I think it is a nonsense. We have to look for other reasons why more women do not come into politics, which was the initial purpose of this debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, who is not in his place, mentioned that other phrase that really makes me see red—although that is unfair on the Labour Party, really, because they have more women than anyone—which is the empowerment of women. People say, “We must have the empowerment of women”, as though if women were empowered everything would be all right. But how can women be empowered here or in developing countries if they do not first have power over their own bodies? There are hundreds of millions of women all over the world who do not have power over their own bodies. They cannot control the number of children they have and if you cannot control the number of children you have, you can say goodbye to any sort of career outside the home. That is why I am always pushing the need for family planning provision worldwide—thank goodness this Government see the need and are helping to provide it—and good maternal care. This applies also to this country because our family planning services are not what they were. We must also remember childcare because if anything stops women doing anything, once again, it is those years that we have to take out to look after little children—unless we can have affordable childcare, and we still have not got there yet. Other European countries are much better off than we are and I appeal to the Government to remember that.

Just briefly, and this is very self-indulgent, I thought, “Why me? Why am I here now? Why was I in the House of Commons? Why was I a local councillor in Richmond for many years? Why did I do it?”. I did not come from a deprived background, I am afraid. I did not have to struggle at all. I was the precious only daughter in a family of boys so I was spoiled—they said. If I ever said, “It’s not fair” or “I can’t do it” or “The boys are all right but not me”, my mother would say, quoting Shakespeare from “Julius Caesar”—I think it is Cassius who says:

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings”.

My mother would shake her finger and say, “Go and do your homework. Clear off!”, and my father would back her up.

So what did I do? I had to prove myself somehow so I thought I would do medicine. I went off to UCL and did medicine. But that does not explain why I did politics—why on earth, with a very satisfying career in medicine, did I think of going into politics? The reason has always been quite clear to me and I was reminded of it last weekend when I went to an old girls’ reunion of my old school. Sorry to the boys who are still here but I am going to talk about my girls’ school in the West Midlands—I have always wanted to put this into Hansard and now it is my chance—Dudley Girls’ High School, an ordinary girls’ grammar school. My mother had gone there on a scholarship and I went there on a scholarship.

In that school since the 1920s we had had a form of school government. I do not mean a pupils’ parliament or a talking shop; I mean school government. We were not allowed to touch the curriculum but apart from that we made the school rules. We had a constitution. I know that constitution very well because I rewrote it when I was school secretary in the sixth form. We had this government: every form elected its own president, vice-president and secretary, who then represented it at school council; and one period at the end of every Monday, every week, was devoted to either form council or school council. Our prefects were democratically elected as well, as were the head girl, deputy head girl and school secretary. Everything was done properly and democratically. I remember an 11 year-old in the first form carrying on about wearing hats out of school, which was a rule at the time, and I said, “Look, all you have to do is get support from someone to second you in your form council. If you can get it through your form council, take it up to school council. Get it through school council and you can change the rule. Do it”, and she did it.

That is putting politics into practice from the very lowest level. It proved to me that there was a system whereby we could do things and change things. I bring this up in this House because I have never come across it since. Certainly none of my children had the privilege of that sort of education, to be able to elect everyone who represented them and change rules if they wanted to. It is very sad that schools talk about having lessons in politics and civics and having pupil parliaments and debating societies, but they never prove to children that they can actually change the world if they want to, and that is the way to do it.