Women and Girls: Economic Well-being, Welfare, Safety and Opportunities

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my great friend and colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for initiating this debate. She has worked tirelessly, both in her life in Wales with the Labour Party there and in this House.

Human rights are women’s rights. Women belong in all places where decisions are made, including at the peace table. This Government gave an undertaking prior to Covid that we would not go into any peace negotiations without both local women and women outside being at that table. Can the Minister give me an undertaking that this will continue? Should we become involved in peace talks in relation to Russia and Ukraine and Sudan and parts of Eritrea, it is vital that we know this today. Local women add to our knowledge of what needs to be done in their areas—about local schools, investment, further and higher education and the rebuilding of communities. Without women having been at the peace table, Northern Ireland would not be at peace, which has now lasted for 30 years.

The Government are considering moving away from the European Convention on Human Rights. This would be a great mistake for women and girls. Further, would we want to be lumped with Russia and Belarus? They are the only two European countries not part of the convention on human rights.

The WEF report published this morning makes depressing reading. It indicates that we are going backwards and that the political gap is huge. We need only look at the G20. We need to look too at our own Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. There are no women Ministers. This is the department that is meant to encourage companies to have more women on boards and in other places, but it has not had one woman Minister for some time. If we look at it clearly, it does not seem to want to fund the department’s work on women on boards. Again, the Minister should give us an undertaking that this will be looked at and the funding replaced. There is a person working there but no support staff.

I thank Prime Ministers Brown, Cameron and May, plus the noble Lord, Lord Davies, who started the whole initiative. Along with the Financial Times, the noble Baroness, Lady Morrissey, myself and other colleagues, they started the 30% Club to make the change for women on boards. This was by getting CEOs and financial directors and chairmen of major companies to work together to make the change. Diversity on boards is really important. We have seen from Parker report how some of these targets are now being met. But targets are not enough; we have to keep looking at the targets and going over them. We have seen that the financial rewards for boards and shareholders are enormous. We have seen that through the work of ShareAction, which has put pressure on shareholders to ensure that we have more women on boards. It is not just on boards; it is also right through from the C-suite up to the top. I like the situation we have in Great Britain, where people can serve on a board for only so long—two terms—and then they have to move off. The same happens for a chairman: they can do only a percentage. That ensures that we have turnaround, unlike in other countries, where once you are on, you are on for life. We see a huge amount of experience used and people giving it. We have to remember that a person on a board is a responsible for every woman’s pension, for every woman’s mortgage and for every woman’s wages, and it is vital that we have the right diversity on those boards. Women’s pensions in this country are not good at all; we need to ensure that more is done about that. We also need more teaching of finance in schools, as well as opportunities for girls to go into the C-suite and to aspire to be on a board and at a senior level.

Many Members of this House work with Speakers for Schools and the schools programme. When we go to schools, we have to explain to students that every door is open to them as it has been made open to us. Nothing is closed. Education also has to change to ensure that every girl knows. We can do that only by men and women working together to make this change. We have seen this change on boards in this country and a number of others. The 30% Club is not changing its name, because some of the countries in which we have our 20 chapters do not have the same percentages and the same way of working.

We believe in parity. It is on that basis that I want to go back to some of the opportunities that that Prime Minister Cameron mentioned when we first started. He said that all government boards should be 50:50. I would like the Minister to respond to that, to ensure that it is going to happen—there are plenty of people out there to take up these positions—and that we have a wider choice. We are working with head-hunters and investors through the 30% Club, and they keep telling us of really good people. KPMG has a whole list of people who are ready for this, but the Government still seem to be giving the positions to a very small grouping—it is not the same people; I would not say that—when we need women on those boards. That goes also for when we look at the departmental NEDs, charities and chairmen.