International Women’s Day

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak today. There are two debates I always enjoy. One is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s debate. Well, there are no bishops here today, so we cannot go any further with that. But there has been a lot of progress on female bishops since my time first in the House.

The other debate I always enjoy is this particular one and I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness: it is indeed true that there is a dramatic number of female MPs and Peers now. When I joined, I do not need to remind noble Lords that one MP in 25 was female. It was quite a tricky time. I commend the party opposite. I do not think it has been so successful on female Prime Ministers. We have had three. I will not comment on all of them—but I will comment on the first one.

What noble Lords need to know is that Margaret Thatcher used to say, “People turn round to me and say, ‘You’re the first woman Prime Minister at No. 10’. I turn round and say, ‘I’m the first science Prime Minister at No. 10’”. Of course, she was deeply influenced by Dame Janet Vaughan and Dorothy Hodgkin, most distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society, who, for a long time, were principals of Somerville College. A colleague just now challenged me and said that Lord Salisbury was a STEM man. He took maths, but I am not sure he should really be allowed to undermine Margaret Thatcher’s claim.

While we have more women in the House, we still do not have anything like enough people who come from a science, engineering and medical background. I think it was 78 in the House of Commons at the last count, which is an improvement. The House of Lords has always been better for distinguished scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society. How thrilled we are to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, and how thrilled we are that his successor is the first female Chief Scientific Officer. In the Lords, we have the noble Baroness, Lady King, a fellow of the Royal Society, and many men. I pay tribute to my kinsman, and the kinsman of the noble Lord, Lord Hacking: Lord Julian Hunt, Fellow of the Royal Society, who is no longer with us but is a most distinguished scientist.

I am not entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, about rage and anger. I enjoy rage and anger, but I am quite celebratory today, because we have a great number of Cabinet Ministers who are women. I pay tribute to the Minister who is speaking and ask her to pass on best wishes to the delightful previous holder of her office. It is the bittersweet nature of political careers, but Anneliese Dodds is a lovely woman and was doing a very good job—and I am sure will do more.

I have been looking through the names of other extraordinary women scientists. There is Dame Ottoline Leyser, the first female head of UKRI, again a Fellow of the Royal Society and a plant scientist. We have Hayaatun Sillem, the CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering, from Oxford and UCL and a biochemist. Then there is Irene Tracey, the first female scientist vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, who is a neuroscientist and formerly head of Merton College. There is Dame Angela McLean, who has just taken over as Government Chief Scientific Adviser, and Dame June Raine, the first woman to run the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency—absolutely tremendous—and so many others. The Campaign for Science and Engineering, which does so much for us, now has a female chief executive.

I pay tribute to those women, but I share the desire that more needs to be done. I pay respect to those who have suffered so much and worked so hard in the past. We should read the biography of the first woman physician, in 1847, Dr Blackwell, and the persecution, poverty and prejudice that she faced.

In my professional life, I do a great deal to help women develop their careers in different sectors. The other day, I was in India, and I was reminded of a particularly remarkable woman who studied engineering then insisted on going to work at Tata, where they had a men-only policy. At Tata then there were no female lavatories, so she had to go home to go to the lavatory. That very remarkable woman is called Sudha Murty: she is the mother-in-law of the former Prime Minister. It is an extraordinary reminder of how recently people have led lives of sacrifice, discipline and determination.

I am sure that we need to do more to encourage STEM at an early stage. There are so many initiatives, with Teach Now bringing in science people, and with many of the policies that the Minister outlined following on, frankly, from the policies of the previous Government on how we can build that pipeline and avoid the leaky pipeline.

I want to pay tribute, finally, to the many maiden speeches. They are noble Baronesses, but a great number of them are my friends and I am absolutely delighted to see them there.

The Minister knows about the health service and education. The role of research in the National Health Service is critically important, and it is all too easily squeezed out. Dame Sally Davies, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who should be in this House, recently hosted a magnificent conference on life sciences and health innovation and what we can do together by collaborating. I commend her findings to noble Lords for further study.