Women: Economic Empowerment

Baroness King of Bow Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness King of Bow (Lab)]

The message today, on International Women’s Day 2015, is on “Empowering women”. I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, on securing this important debate. Empowering women means giving them the practical tools to escape poverty and prejudice. Around the world, including here in Britain, a baby girl’s life chances are disadvantaged in comparison to her brother’s at almost every turn, and once she becomes a woman the disadvantage becomes entrenched.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, opened the debate by giving examples of how investing in women yields radically better results than investing in men. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, gave the example of how spending £1 on vulnerable women here in the UK saves £3.57 later on. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, quoted Kofi Annan on this point, who has said that there was no more effective tool in development than investment in women. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby quoted Goldman Sachs to show scientifically that investing in women benefits society economically. Indeed, the many noble Lords who spoke powerfully about the international development aspect of this debate, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Bottomley and Lady Hussein-Ece, and my noble friends Lady Armstrong and Lord Boateng, all said that we must invest in women. It is fantastic that there is no disagreement; there is complete cross-party consensus that we must do that. From the government Minister to former Cabinet Ministers on both sides of this House to every Back-Bencher, everyone is agreed on the clear, indisputable fact that investing in women boosts the economy and benefits society.

I applaud those international development programmes funded by this Government, some of which the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, outlined, that invest in women. My question is: why do the Government disproportionately advantage women in their overseas programmes yet disproportionately disadvantage women in their domestic programmes? There is an avalanche of data showing that the coalition Government are doing domestically exactly what they decry internationally. Instead of following the common-sense strategy of putting money into women’s pockets, which everyone here, including government Ministers, has supported, the Government have systematically taken money out of women’s pockets. Independent research from the House of Commons Library shows that, over the course of this Parliament, a staggering 85% of cash raised from tax and benefits changes has come straight from women’s pockets, a figure that was quoted by the right reverend Prelate. Eighty-five per cent is a truly staggering figure. That is not all: according to the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, the group hardest hit by the coalition Government’s choices are families with children.

Sadly, the Government’s choices are not delivering women’s economic empowerment; quite the opposite, they are not benefiting women and children. The Government’s own figures show that, for example, in terms of some of its reform policies and benefits, two-thirds of those hit by the bedroom tax are women. It is easy to go on. The majority of those on zero-hours contracts, which the Government refuse to ban, are women. The majority of those earning the minimum wage are women. While Labour will increase that minimum wage to £8 per hour, the Government will not. The Government will not listen to their own advice on increasing women’s incomes, and the Government package this ongoing wealth transfer away from women as benefits reform, deregulation, cutting red tape, liberalising the labour market or value for money. The point is that either the Government do not undertake gender impact assessments or they ignore them.

So here are five key changes the Government could make immediately that would transform women’s lives. First, close the gender gap, increase the minimum wage to £8 per hour and ban exploitative zero-hours contracts. Secondly, improve maternity and paternity provision and provide affordable childcare, because, as Ministers will be aware, under this Government childcare costs have increased by 30%. Thirdly, do far more to protect women from violence, most often sexual violence. Again, the facts are shocking: despite a rise in reported rapes, prosecutions for rape are down by 14%. Fourthly, give women the power to challenge discrimination. Face facts: since the Government introduced tribunal fees—and this is one of the saddest statistics of all—claims for sex discrimination have fallen by 91%. It is not possible to put a price on justice and not realise that that price will be paid, and here it is clearly being paid by women. Fifthly, empower the next generation: stop channelling girls into low-paid work. So much of this is bound up with cultural barriers, as illustrated by the noble Baronesses, Lady Greenfield, Lady Brady, Lady Rebuck, Lady Perry, Lady Kidron, Lady Mobarik and Lady Crawley, among others. I am sorry I cannot mention every single Peer in this debate—although I am doing my best. Also, my noble friends Lady Howells and Lady Uddin raised the point of the obstacles facing BAME women.

What everyone is saying is “Give girls and women a level playing field”, and this theme was taken up by IMF managing director Christine Lagarde. The IMF is not known for its bleeding-heart liberalism. Christine Lagarde says that nations should remove laws that prevent women from working in order to increase the female labour supply and boost economies. She says:

“In too many countries, too many legal restrictions conspire against women to be economically active. In a world in search of growth”—

and that is our holy grail, as we all want growth—

“women will help find it, if they face a level playing field instead of an insidious conspiracy”.

Here in the UK we do not have an insidious conspiracy; we have insidious complacency. This brings me to our very own gender pay gap. I will focus the majority of my remarks on this subject, not because it is the single most important subject, but it is the single most important issue we are debating today that will be up for a vote in this House next week. I hope your Lordships will understand why I focus my remarks in this area.

I want to highlight the campaign begun by Harriet Harman and Gloria De Piero and taken up magnificently by the women’s magazine Grazia on pay transparency and closing the pay gap. Since Grazia launched this campaign, it has heard from countless women who are paid less simply because of their gender. One told how she managed to create a department at an ad agency. Looking at the salary information, she was staggered to see an obvious wage differential between the male and the female employees. Another woman described her horror at discovering that the man who was employed to take over on her maternity leave was paid more than her. When she confronted her boss about this, she was told that the man—who, incidentally, was less qualified than her—was paid more because he had to support his family.

Ellie, 36 years old, a former investment banker, discovered she was getting paid £5,000 less than a male colleague only when he let this slip himself. Ellie says:

“We were identical in performance, age, level, experience, everything. Even he supposed we were paid the same ... I confronted my boss, but he warned me that pay was confidential and couldn’t be discussed. I’d already been given a higher offer by a rival bank, so I offered my resignation there and then”.

Asha, 55, ex-director of an investment bank, long suspected her pay was not keeping up with that of her male colleagues, but she could not get her bosses to admit the difference, let alone begin to redress the balance.

“They would insist I was at the top of my pay grade, and tell me to keep it up, but despite working harder and longer than my male counterparts, my pay plateaued”.

It took her £60,000 and 16 months to reach an out-of-court settlement with her former employer. That is time and money most women just do not have.

Those are the women, the 91% drop, who cannot bring these claims any more, so women’s ability to achieve economic empowerment is being cut away from under them. That is why transparency is the answer—and, incidentally, a very cheap answer. I understand why Members on the Benches opposite probably do not agree with our view, in the Official Opposition, that we should increase the minimum wage to £8 per hour. I understand; it is a different world view—fine. However, pay transparency does not cost anything, and it really is unforgivable not to bring it in. As Asha, the ex-director of the investment bank who got the money back by taking legal action, said:

“Why would turkeys vote for Christmas? Transparency has to be legally enforced, with repercussions for not doing so”.

Possibly my favourite example is Shannon, 25, who works in advertising, and whose end-of-year bonus was a £100 Liberty voucher. Guess what her male equivalent got in the same job as an end-of-year bonus. He did not get a £100 Liberty voucher—he got £2,000 hard cash. Those examples of blatant pay discrimination are going on right now, today, this hour, this minute, in Britain, and we have a way to remedy them.

I will mention only one more example—there are so many others. Donna, 38, was a PR director from Yorkshire. She explained:

“I landed a job at a PR firm in London. After a year I was promoted to account manager and at this point they employed another account manager to work alongside me, with the same amount of experience. The only difference? He was a bloke. I was stunned when over lunch he told me”,

he was earning over 30% more than her. Donna approached her bosses for a rise but still did not get enough to match her male colleague’s salary. She says—and I would really like noble Lords to understand the implication of this—

“I know I could have sued for sex discrimination, but I didn’t want to rock the boat so early in my career. All I wanted was to be paid fairly”.

That is the point. Women are not asking for charity. They are just asking not to be blatantly, systematically discriminated against just because they are women.

Therefore I ask the government Benches opposite: what are they going to do to deliver the pay transparency that would help all those women and hundreds of thousands like them up and down the country? When the amendment on pay transparency comes up next week, so ably championed by my noble friend Lady Thornton and others in this House, including my noble friend Lady Crawley, whom will they side with? Will they side with Donna, Asha, Shannon and Ellie, who have been discriminated against just because they are women, or will they side—as they are currently saying they will—with the employers who refuse to pay them the same just because they are women? It is a simple choice.

I make no apology for getting quite angry about this. It is a scandal. What is more, it is a scandal that the Government could right, and do so fairly easily. We are the people who have a voice in Parliament; Donna, Asha, Shannon and Ellie do not have a voice here. As my noble friends Lady Crawley and Lady Dean said, we have that voice and we need to make that change. The vote is next Wednesday; the amendment to the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill would implement Section 78 of the Equality Act 2010, which enables the Government to make regulations requiring companies employing 250 people or more to publish information on the differences in pay between men and women. Granted, that is the very beginning—it would not help women who work in smaller companies, some of whose cases I just mentioned—but it is a start.

It is 44 years since the Equal Pay Act was passed, and here we have clear evidence that the law is being broken, day in, day out, to the detriment not just of women but, by the Government’s own logic, of our economy as well. How much longer do we want to wait? I echo the comments of my noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton, who said that we should be proud of the progress we have made—and we have made incredible progress. I remember that when I think of my grandmother, who was the auntie of Uncle Ted, as I call my noble friend Lord Graham—he is my mum’s first cousin. His auntie and my gran—being one and the same woman—worked in a cigarette factory. Jenny left school at 13 and worked in a cigarette factory. Do noble Lords know what her job was? It was picking cigarettes off the conveyor belt at intervals and dragging on them to check whether they were dragging properly—literally, the definition of a dead-end job.

I know that we have made progress and I am grateful for everything that the Labour Party has done in this regard—it has been predominantly the Labour Party which has done this—but the Government have done some things here and there as well. I admit that I cannot think of any off the top of my head, but the Government will have done some things because, to be fair, all of us in this House think that the instances of clear pay discrimination that I have just described are unacceptable.

On this issue, I appeal to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, who described her family’s extraordinary heritage in championing women’s rights. The noble Baroness’s grandparents would surely have been dismayed to see such blatant sex discrimination going unchecked. Perhaps the noble Baroness could champion this issue. I appeal to the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, who surely has the clout—I know that she has the decency—to get the Government to make this simple change. The noble Baroness said that our job is to make life much better for other women. I appeal to the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, who said that our job is to give women the tools. This is the point; pay transparency is just a tool. It is not even a case of giving women any money, but it is giving them a tool. It is not charity and it is not expensive. Surely, those on the government Benches have a teeny bit of influence in this area—a smidgen, a soupçon, a crumb. Not a single Member opposite can consider that what is going on is acceptable.

In summary, I ask the Minister only two questions. I do not expect her to answer the first, but I would be sincerely grateful if she would answer the second. First, how can it be right to push money into women’s pockets overseas but take money out of women’s pockets at home? Secondly, will the Minister agree to lobby the Government to make a concession and support pay transparency next week in this House? It is clear that women’s economic empowerment is intertwined with their social, psychological, physical and cultural empowerment. I am sorry that I have not commented on all the fantastic speeches that touched on the cultural and educational aspects that we need to improve. Those speeches show that you cannot disentangle economic empowerment and place it neatly in a box. The least that we could do is empower women and pay them the same as we pay men.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, the debates in the House of Lords for International Women’s Day are always outstanding, and this has been no exception.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, said, it has gone off in wonderful directions. I was pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady King, said that there was clear agreement on much that was mentioned in the debate, although she then seemed to go off in another direction.

I am delighted to attempt to respond to contributions which have covered a very wide range of topics and themes from both men and women. Any hope of ending gender inequality will be achieved only with the active involvement of men. The noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, my noble friend Lord Storey and others spoke of men as being the agents of change for gender equality. At the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, the UN will mark the HeForShe campaign.

My personal experience mirrors that of some other speakers. My noble friend Lady Perry spoke of our mothers being on these Benches. I was reminded that my mother achieved a first at Cambridge in the 1930s, but never became a graduate. It was not until 1948 that Cambridge accepted that its women students were members of the university and awarded them degrees. What is more, she had to resign from the Civil Service as soon as she married.

I was at Oxford in the 1960s when, as the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, said, only 6% to 7% of people went to university, and at Oxbridge there were seven times as many places for men as for women. This was a feature of the single-sex college set-up. Our university careers office advised women who might get married that teaching or secretarial work would be sound futures to consider. For me, who married an RAF officer, that was definitely not a route to economic empowerment, but I have never for one moment regretted my marriage. As the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, said, we were the wife division of the human race. Astonishingly, no one suggested that we might aspire to be a football club CEO. My noble friend Lady Brady has chosen a challenging career in which her talents and hard work have led to great achievement, and she has totally ignored glass ceilings, quotas and targets. These days, equal numbers of men and women go to university, and no careers office would last long offering women the narrow set of options that we were offered.

Looking to education, many doors have been opened but there are still barriers to be overcome. I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate and the church for all that it does in education in this country. How exciting it was to have in this House the Bill on women bishops, which is going to fast-track women on to the Bishops’ Benches. I am not sure how far the role brings economic empowerment, but I am sure that spiritual empowerment should be equally valuable.

Too many girls feel that their career options are limited because of stereotypes about jobs being more suitable for boys or girls. We heard that from my noble friends Lady Mobarik, Lord Storey, Lady Perry and Lady Evans, and the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield. This can start from a very young age. In an experiment in the United States, primary school children were asked to draw pictures of a scientist before and after a visit to a lab. In the “before” drawings none of the boys and only 36% of the girls depicted a scientist as a female. In the “after” drawings, although, interestingly, still none of the boys depicted a scientist as female, for girls there was a 58% increase in female scientist representation. There is much research showing that aspirations are indeed formed at a relatively young age, and that gendered influences in particular begin very early. A recent Ofsted report found that girls as young as seven and eight thought of conventionally stereotypical jobs for men and women. This is one reason why it is so important that we get careers advice and people from business and the outside world into schools for the very earliest ages.

Expanding the apprenticeship programme and improving careers advice help to open the eyes of young women to options and aspirations that they may not have considered—or, if they did, considered them inaccessible. We have heard of the programmes to raise girls’ aspirations, and to encourage them to study STEM subjects and pursue careers in science and engineering. I am glad to hear that my noble friend Lady Perry’s glass was half full, and to hear my noble friend Lord Watson affirm that girls are not biologically wired not to be able to do maths and science. The noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, spoke with great expertise and wisdom on STEM subjects, and I join her and the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, in recalling Lady Platt and all she did for WISE—Women into Science and Engineering—a fantastic programme that continues to help young women.

Compared to 2010, a thousand more girls are studying physics at A-level every year and two thousand more are studying maths, but they are still too few. As the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, said, we need to open up the thrill of science to get more young people engaged in the excitement of it. There have been 1,260 new science-based apprenticeships since 2010. Again, we are getting there but they are too few. The STEM Ambassadors programme is a network of 28,000 volunteers, of whom 47% are women, who work with women to encourage science uptake. Organisations such as Athena SWAN do excellent work in trying to encourage this, too.

The Government are setting up a new employer-led careers and enterprise company to support greater engagement between employers, schools and colleges. As my noble friends Lady Brady and Lady Brinton pointed out, it is important to change the culture of the workplace. We have just launched Your Daughter’s Future, an online guide to help parents support their daughters through qualification and career choices. We are working with the media to tackle gender stereotypes and improve diversity of representation. I also salute, with the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, “Woman’s Hour” and other programmes that have, over the years, helped to empower and educate women, and encouraged them to take up interests much wider than they have found at home.

Even in the field of education, women are less likely to be in positions of authority, as head teachers, principals, professors or vice-chancellors. My noble friend Lady Bottomley lamented the shortage of women vice-chancellors. The latest data show that 20% of vice-chancellors are female. That, my friends, is up from 17% two years ago. So there we are; there has been meteoric improvement. We believe that sector should go much further to seek out and harness the diverse talent available. HEFCE, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, is continuing its active programme to try to identify senior managers from more diverse groups. In the world of work more generally, women’s strengths and skills remain an untapped resource.

I turn to employment and enterprise. We have been berated about the measurement which showed that the UK had plummeted down the gender gap ladder to number 26. That was based on a particular set of measures. It does not represent the gender pay gap as it stands in the UK. That is now at 19.1%, the lowest level ever, and the pay gap has been virtually eliminated among full-time workers under the age of 40.

[Baroness King of Bow]

Does the Minister, however, accept, from some of the examples I just gave, that there are many unreported instances of the pay gap—including those brought to light by campaigns such as that of Grazia magazine—where it appears that professional women are quite often earning 30% less than their male counterparts?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I agree that there are cases of that in women’s earnings, and that women are still bearing the greater responsibility for children, the home and the care of sick and elderly relatives. However, we are encouraging much greater transparency in the reporting of pay. I will not be lured into pre-empting my noble friend the Minister next week, when the amendment on transparency of pay comes up. Rest assured, however, that the Government have done a great deal and have taken practical measures to ensure equal opportunity, whether it be in Parliament, among judges and editors, or on boards. However, as the right reverend Prelate also said, women very often take jobs below their qualification level, which is another feature of the lower pay that women may receive. Very often it is part-time pay, which is one of the factors that influenced the OECD measurement—it was factoring in part-time pay as if it was full-time pay.

My noble friend Lady Jenkin has spoken of the Women2Win initiative and the initiatives of all political parties to encourage more women and ethnic minorities into the political field. It is particularly important that the other place is fully representative of the country. It is, in fact, the most diverse Parliament ever. Women represent 22.8% of current MPs. That is up from 19.5% in 2010. With the efforts of all parties to promote women and to mentor and help them into Parliament, we can hope only that the next election will see even more women coming into Parliament.

We set ourselves an ambitious aspiration that by the end of Parliament at least half of all new appointees made to the boards of public bodies will be women. We are getting there. From April to September 2014, the percentage of public appointments given to women across all departments increased from 37% to 44%. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck, and my noble friends Lady Brady and Lady Bottomley, all talked about the FTSE 100. The percentage of women on FTSE 100 boards has been climbing steadily. Women now account for around 23% of FTSE 100 directors and over 17.4% of FTSE 250 board directors. The numbers, therefore, are going up: they are still small but we are seeing progress. Furthermore, the Women’s Business Council, in its recent report, has made recommendations to both the Government and the business community. Those recommendations are being implemented and will go some way, we hope, to promoting better equality.



We have seen some progress in the City of London, the financial hub of the country. Last year only the second woman in over 800 years became Lord Mayor of London. Dame Fiona Woolf brought distinction to the post as she travelled around the country, and the world, promoting UK plc and, indeed, women’s contribution to the world of work. The other key historic roles within the Corporation of London are those of the two sheriffs, where only five women have held office since the 12th century, three of them within the last five years. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, has just become one of the few women aldermen in the City. So the pace is quickening.

Staying with the City, key to education and training for work have been the livery companies. There are now 110 of them, some dating back to the medieval guilds. Over all the centuries, the number of lady masters, of whom I have been one and my noble friend Lady Byford another, has been just over 100.

My noble friend Lady Mobarik spoke of the importance of enterprise. Indeed, there is enormous potential in women’s untapped entrepreneurialism. The noble Baroness, Lady Howells, who has been a champion in this area, reminded us of the contribution of black women in business. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, mentioned this too. Indeed, we recently held a summit for black and minority ethnic women entrepreneurs, chaired by my noble friend Lady Verma, a successful entrepreneur herself, which highlighted the immense achievements of the community but also some of the challenges that it still faces. We shall continue to support and encourage the talents of BAME women.

Nevertheless, we can celebrate the fact there are now more women-led businesses than ever before: 20% of small and medium-sized enterprises are run either by women or by a team that is more than 50% female. These women contribute around £82 billion gross value added to the UK economy. The Government are supporting them in myriad ways, for instance by providing £1.6 million to support rural women’s businesses, by providing £1 million to the women and broadband challenge fund to help women move their businesses online, and by investing £1.9 million in the Get Mentoring project.

The amount of time that women spent on care came up in a number of contributions. Carers are the unsung heroes of society. We are helping them to combine their caring responsibilities with work. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, and others referred to these essential workers’ low pay, but we have just begun a £1.5 million project to help local businesses support more carers to work remotely from home through the use of assisted technology.

We have done a great deal for women in this coalition Government. We have lifted 1.1 million of the lowest-paid workers out of income tax altogether, more than half of whom are women. We have also increased child tax credits for low to middle-income families. We have introduced shared parental leave and the right to request flexible working. To tackle the concern that parents have about their children getting the right start, we have invested a record £7.5 billion pupil premium in education to help the poorest children get the boost they need.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, had thought-provoking words on the impact of motherhood on careers, especially within the arts. We all noted her concern about the lack of women in such specialisms as film directing. Given how well the UK does in the creative fields, it would be good to see women represented across those fields too.

The cost of childcare was also mentioned. We now have tax-free childcare supporting childcare costs for working families. That can be worth up to £2,000 per child per year, to be introduced in autumn 2015.

A number of noble Lords mentioned violence against women. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, linked it to homelessness. We acknowledge that women facing violence need support to rebuild their lives and to become economically independent. The Government have announced a £10 million fund to support women’s refuges in 100 areas across England. I also note her comments on joining up the services so that people do not fall through gaps between different forms of support services. We have ring-fenced nearly £40 million of funding for specialist support services and brought in legislation for tougher enforcement. This includes laws to combat stalking, to enforce the protection of girls from female genital mutilation and to make forced marriage a crime in this country. As we seek to combat the oldest of challenges, so we are acting to tackle the new ones and treating the online abuse of women and girls as robustly as offline abuse.

I turn to the international dimension of this debate, on which we had a great many contributions. I apologise if I may not be able to refer to them all. My noble friend Lady Brinton and the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, mentioned Grameen Bank, which has reversed conventional banking practice; 97% of its customers are women. It is doing great work to enable and empower women to go into business. On microfinance, access to finance for women is a core priority for DfID. We have exceeded one of the departmental results targets, access for 18 million women by 2015, with 27 million accessing finance in 2014. DfID’s programmes for microfinance around the world have a focus on savings, especially for women in rural areas. As a number of noble Lords have said, it makes all the difference in the world, particularly in underdeveloped countries, if women are enabled to go into business.

On fuel and water poverty, which my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece and the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, mentioned, my noble friend Lady Northover and other DfID Ministers have led an 18-month campaign on clean energy access for girls and women. We support programmes to improve technology and to increase access to affordable and clean energy sources.

The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, also mentioned how Ebola affects women more, because it is women who care. DfID is indeed supporting two local NGOs in Sierra Leone through Womankind Worldwide and Women’s Partnership for Justice and Peace, specifically to address the Ebola impact on girls. I note his remark that men tend not to listen to women until it is too late. I hope we will make sure that it is not too late.

A number of noble Lords mentioned social norms and culture, including the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, and my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, relayed just how transformative her VSO experience had been in Kenya, finding a completely different culture and way of life. One of my daughters went off to Lesotho for a year after she graduated and found it an absolutely transformative experience 20 years ago in a land where the need and level of living was so completely different from anything in the UK and the developed world. My noble friend Lady Bottomley also spoke powerfully of the difference between women in the UK and women in other parts of the world. The right reverend Prelate mentioned the work of Christian Aid, which has such importance and has had such an impact on underdeveloped countries. My noble friend Lady Jenkin referred to family planning, proper maternity care and health for women. That, of course, can have an enormous impact on women’s lives in these countries.

We have put women and girls at the centre of our development efforts. We should be proud that last week we passed a Bill to put into legislation a target of spending on overseas aid of at least 0.7% of national income. We hope that our efforts will enable women to exercise voice, choice and control, which are critical to ending poverty and building freer and fairer societies. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, spoke of the challenge of sex work.

[Baroness King of Bow]

My Lords, will the Minister give way?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I am running out of time. I apologise but I cannot give way as I have only a couple of minutes and want to finish quickly.

We hope that putting more work and effort into businesses for young women will help them to avoid going into sex work. The noble Baroness, Lady Nye, mentioned the Stand Up for Girls campaign, which has been so important.

I will touch on one or two other issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Healy, spoke about women offenders, which is an enormously important area. I am afraid that I cannot possibly do justice to it now, but the Government are mindful that we need to have more financial information within prisons and more support when women come out of prison. It is on the radar and we just hope that we will see improvements. The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, mentioned Yarl’s Wood. I assure her that steps are certainly being taken to ensure that those vulnerable women are treated with the due care and consideration that they deserve, often having come here with some absolutely hideous experiences in other countries. It is perhaps notable that the noble Baronesses, Lady Rebuck and Lady Brinton, my noble friend Lady Brady and others spoke of the importance of instilling confidence in women. Even this generation of young women do not seem to have the confidence of their male counterparts. It is important to encourage girls to do things, as my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece said, and to instil in them that there is nothing they cannot do if they really set their minds to it.

I apologise that I am out of time and have missed answering some of the issues that were raised, but I shall write to noble Lords on issues to which I have not had the chance to respond. I would like to note that many older women were trail-blazers in their time, and I acknowledge, if I may, with due deference in your Lordships’ House, that such people as the noble Baronesses, Lady Turner and Lady Trumpington, both hit through glass ceilings in their time in ways that we of our generation can only begin to imagine.

I hope that I have made clear the Government’s determination to everything in our power to transform the rights and opportunities available to women and girls in the UK and overseas. This has been a most insightful, stimulating and informative debate, which will play its part in driving forward the gender equality that we all need to see. It will benefit women, families, communities and nations. I thank very sincerely all noble Lords who have taken part.