International Women’s Day

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I congratulate my dear noble friend Lady Verma on initiating today’s debate. In her opening remarks, she spoke about entrepreneurs. Her own experience is as an entrepreneur and it is on that subject that I should like to pick up on points that have already been raised today by other colleagues.

I sometimes have a sense of déjà vu. I have now spent 20 years in politics and before that I spent 20 years in business—10 years working for a market leader in manufacturing in the UK and the following 10 years running my own business. At that time, I was involved in advising the then Government on women’s employment, particularly from the perspective of women who wanted to set up and run their own businesses. I also chaired Women into Business for many years. When I look back on the issues on which we lobbied the Government and sought to put to the forefront of the agenda in those days—that is some time ago—it is almost as though we have come full circle and are still talking about the same issues. Three of the key issues affecting women running businesses and wanting to start up businesses—they have all been mentioned—are childcare, access to capital and the whole area of supporting, encouraging, training and persuading them that they can take the big step of going into business. Somehow we seem to have come full circle. A lot has been achieved and we all know very successful people who have been there, done it, put themselves on the line and made their mark, but clearly we have more to do.

According to the Federation of Small Businesses, 29 per cent of entrepreneurs are women. If women set up businesses in the UK at the same rate that men do, we would have 150,000 more businesses every year. That is a phenomenal amount. If we are serious about setting up real businesses—I am talking about real businesses, not paying hobbies which sometimes get confused with real businesses—we have to look at how you grow businesses. It is not enough to say, “Start up a business”. Some businesses go very well from day one and are exceptionally successful in a very short order. The challenge for those businesses—this applies to men as well as women—is to grow the successful business while still having the working capital which will allow you to start taking on staff, perhaps move to larger premises and develop ranges of products rather than just one, as that is often a danger area. All that needs support, and I am not just talking about financial support.

I hope that the Government will look at this potential for women in the economy and will go further than the measures we have heard about today. I would like to make some suggestions to my noble friend. One follows a suggestion of the Federation of Small Businesses, which I think is absolutely spot on, and that is that Jobcentre Plus and its devolved equivalent should forge better links with established women’s business networks in the locality, such as Every Woman and the other business networks that we know of, and promote mentoring as part of continuing discussions about employment for women. People in Jobcentre Plus should know as much about the opportunities and local support for people wanting to start a business as about the vacancies listed on the computer.

The other thing that I would also like my noble friend to take forward are business angels. Although I am totally supportive of mentoring and role models—they have a part to play, certainly in changing culture—it is inspirational for women to listen to other women who have been successful in business and to see that it can be done. It is a bit like politics: when you want to go into politics—into the other place, as I did what seems like a lifetime ago now—you are encouraged by the examples set by others. Looking round this Chamber, I see women on both sides of the House. My dear friend Lady Miller was one of the women who encouraged women of my generation to take that step and told us that we could do it. However, we come up with 100 reasons why we should not do so. It is a bit like the situation in business. Is that not just typical of women? We have an idea, we think we can do something, we know that we can and then we think of a dozen reasons why we should not do so.

If I was asked to describe myself, I would say that I am a feminist but I also believe that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, if that does not sound like a contradiction in terms. Although I am passionate about equality between men and women—men and women running businesses are often affected by the same things, of course—you have to turn your attention to aspects that specifically affect women running businesses. It is not enough to have role models; they need people alongside them who are able to go through the business plan, marketing plan and product development with them. They need people on whom they can call to give that advice. Years ago banks gave that advice; today they just want to sell you insurance. I ask my noble friend to ensure that there are more business angels in the small business sector to help these women entrepreneurs, not just because of the finance that the business angels might put into these businesses but for the real hands-on business experience they have, as opposed to people who put themselves forward to undertake this mentoring but have never actually run a business themselves.