Queen’s Speech

Baroness Wall of New Barnet Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, would like to congratulate the noble Lord on his entrance into this House, and know that he will play a major role. As somebody who comes from the other side of the north-west divide, I was delighted to hear his rich south Manchester accent is still prevailing. It is really important that we keep the flag flying for the north-west.

I want to focus my contribution in this interesting and wide-ranging debate on important policies on an issue that some businesses are succeeding in and some are trying hard to do so, while many still struggle to understand the value that it would have for their business and, importantly, to many of their staff of both genders. I refer to getting the balance right—women in business. It is a fact that women play a vital role in business across all sectors, not least in the advanced manufacturing and engineering sector, and in all the STEM roles. Manufacturing is an important component for a balanced economy, and women are a vital component for a balanced workforce. We need 1 million more women in STEM roles by 2020 to meet the skills shortage and to achieve 30% critical mass of women carrying out those STEM roles. WISE has been very helpful in providing me with information to put this speech together; that organisation is very anxious about the state of science and engineering, particularly from its own aspect.

In 2014, there were 14.2 million women in the workforce overall, representing 46.5%. However, in STEM occupations there are only 689,000, representing only 12.8% of the STEM workforce. Currently, fewer than one in five, or 13%, of those working in STEM occupations in the United Kingdom are female, with fewer than one in 10 STEM managers who are women. In some areas, such as ICT and science and engineering, the percentage of women is actually falling.

I am keen to discuss what works. By taking positive action to support their female workforce, companies can target improvements in their recruitment of women, in reducing their resignations and holding on to them as important members of society, and increasing the number of women in senior executive roles. Many leading companies in the advanced manufacturing and engineering sector are implementing diversity strategies to ensure that they can recruit, retain and, very importantly, progress their female talent to deliver business growth.

A number of companies use Skills 4, which I support. Its career development programme to support female talent to progress their careers is usually successful. It is now offered as an open programme in partnership with WISE to allow smaller companies and individual women to access the rights and opportunities to grow. A number of companies are focused on improving their gender balance across a range of activities. For example, Atkins supports a women’s professional network and a women’s leadership council which guide women and act as role models and mentors. The Skills 4 career development programme and returners programme support women returning to the workforce following maternity leave or carer leave. They also offer a wide range of part-time and flexible working schemes. If businesses are serious about aspiring to have 30% of women on boards, they must take serious action to support and progress women to the top of their careers to ensure that they will be there when the places need to be taken up.

My noble friend Lord Davies of Abersoch, working collaboratively with business, agreed and got co-operation from business to set a target of 25% of women on the boards of businesses. There has been good progress in the FTSE 100, and it is believed this target will soon be achieved. However, this will be difficult to achieve in the STEM sector due to the small percentage of women in that sector, which means that the pipeline is not there and we need to create successful role models. There have been a number of key successful government initiatives to support women in STEM, but we do not have a real strategy across the key government departments—the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—to ensure long-term success.

The right honourable Nicky Morgan, the returning Minister for Women and Equalities and Secretary of State for Education, is in a good place to influence this. She stated that, looking forward, the Government have ambitions and plans which include continuing to close the gender pay gap, increasing the number of women on boards and in public life and increasing free childcare to 30 hours for working parents of three to four year-olds. This is all key, nobody would disagree with it and all of us would support it, but it has to happen rather than be talked about. There is a need for a joined-up government strategy across education, skills and businesses that we all want to succeed to make gender balance an integral part of mainstream policy rather than what often seems an add-on programme, particularly in apprenticeships where there is a chronic gender divide.

Who benefits? The compelling business case is clear and well researched. Diverse teams help drive customer insight, a further reach into new markets, team working, safety and risk management. It is well known that teams involving people from different backgrounds make better decisions than homogenous groups. Companies with three or more women in senior management perform better on nine criteria of organisational excellence, including leadership, accountability and innovation.

We urgently need young women to consider a career in STEM. This is the only way we will have that future and that pipeline will be filled. I congratulate the Minister on her dual role, which is obviously onerous but I am sure she will do extremely well. I urge her to work very hard with the new Minister to make sure that we have joined-up government. We need to stop saying the right things and start taking the right decisions.