EU Report: Women on Boards

Lord Freeman Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freeman]

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lady O’Cathain on this very interesting and important debate. I will share with your Lordships my limited experience over the past 15 years in the private sector.

Mandatory quotas in France, where I have served on a major company board, have been accepted and work. In Norway, quotas have been working, to the best of my knowledge, for five to six years now. However, I do not believe in mandatory quotas applying to the United Kingdom at this stage, for a number of reasons. The excellent and energetic work of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch, in trying to encourage professional services firms, particularly the big accounting firms and the merchant banks in the City, to recruit more women to the board seems to working. If that does not work, I withhold judgment as to whether there should be legislation, although I am not in favour of that at present.

The public sector has got a major example to set in encouraging more women to stand for or apply for positions, whether that is on the advisory boards of different departments or serving in the other parts of the public sector. We have not done enough, and Ministers should take responsibility for what I call the “pull”. As far as internal promotion is concerned, within management below boards, that is where we are failing and I very much agree with my noble friend’s comments just now. We are seeing a glass ceiling, certainly in professional firms, which is nothing to do with women deciding to leave to have families and come back later on. It is important that they are regarded as qualified candidates to rise right to the top. However, at the moment, I am not in favour of legislation in the United Kingdom.