International Women’s Day

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. I congratulate the Ministers on making it possible and pay tribute to my noble friends who have given their maiden speeches today and really have, as somebody said earlier, raised the bar. It has been a real pleasure to hear so much about their history and what has brought them into the House of Lords.

I want to pay tribute to three remarkable groups of women who I believe play a vital role in promoting women’s participation in science. The first and most important group has to be those women who teach STEM subjects in primary and secondary schools. I will go on and pay tribute to the women who lead our medical research charities, then I will close by talking a little about the patient advocates, almost entirely women, who have campaigned tirelessly for funding and a focus on scientific research of interest to women.

We have heard a lot about Welsh women in this debate, so it is a pleasure for me to build on that and talk about my mother, who was a science teacher. She also came from Neath, and she grew up in a very strong, close, working-class community there. She had real issues trying to get the funding she needed to get to university so that she could go on and become a teacher and teach her beloved science in some of the toughest schools in the UK. She inspired me and my sisters to go into science-related careers. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Rafferty, I would definitely classify my sister, who became a specialist nurse, as a scientist. The research that she supported was really quite incredible.

I pay tribute to those women who have been teachers in those difficult classrooms and in wonderful educational settings, who have been role models and encouraged girls to go into science, do science A-levels then go on to university or apprenticeships to take their careers further. We know that role models are really important here, and still today we see a situation where, at tops, 40% of STEM subject teachers are women. So there is much more to do but, if we get that level up, I believe that we will spark the interest of young girls to become the scientists of tomorrow.

Inspired by my mother, I went on to study science at university after a dalliance with student politics during the miners’ strike—yes, tick, that fits the list. But my career took me into the medical research charity sector. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, emphasised, we have to think about the financials and the funding. It is important to note today that the medical research charities in this country contribute about £1.7 billion to medical research; they fund about 60% of the UK’s public investment in cancer and cardiovascular research, and they are led by women in many cases.

Around 40% of the members of the Association of Medical Research Charities, including the AMRC itself, are led by women. Those are really important funding bodies for science. Notable leaders include Charmaine Griffiths, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation; Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK; and Claire Rowney, my successor at Breast Cancer Now. These charities engage in really practical activities to support women in their science, in programmes involving funding, recruiting and helping women to return to science after they have taken time out to have a family.

We know that it is a vital part of what medical research charities do, but they can do what they do only because of the incredible support they get from so many patient advocates. I pay tribute to the role of patient advocates. One of our own number, who is sadly no longer with us, Tessa Jowell, campaigned in her last weeks of life to improve the focus of research on brain cancer. I have seen thousands of women at first hand campaigning to raise funds to establish a breast cancer research centre that has now become the best in the world.

We know that women want to work in areas of science focused on areas of concern to women themselves. By enhancing the resources made available for those areas, I believe we will also encourage the greater participation of women in science.