Women in Society

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market]

My Lords, I am sure that the House shares my sense of indebtedness to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for tabling this Motion. Not only has it given us the chance to debate an important topic, it has given rise to a series of amazingly powerful, informative, deeply moving and, at times, shocking speeches. I am sure that many noble Lords shared my physical reaction to the story of the stoning of a 13 year-old girl. That will stay with me for a very long time. The debate has also given us the opportunity to hear maiden speeches from seven colleagues; we have heard five and there are two to go. It is wonderful to see the diverse backgrounds of those joining your Lordships' House. We look forward to hearing from them often. I was particularly pleased to hear the speech of my noble friend Lady Parminter. It seems like only yesterday that I introduced her to the House—it was actually the day before yesterday. She is a great friend and supporter. Therefore, it was wonderful to support her in an official capacity earlier this week. It was also good to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who shares my commitment to, and love of, our home county of Suffolk. I look forward also to working with him.

I wish to address my remarks solely to the representation of women in Parliament, particularly in the other place. Many Members of this House will be aware of the statistic that at the current rate of progress it will take another two centuries before equal numbers of men and women are in the House of Commons. The notion that our granddaughters’ granddaughters’ granddaughters will still be having that debate is profoundly depressing. There has been some progress in the past decade. Certainly, measures such as all-women shortlists had the effect of bringing in a new crop of women to the House of Commons. However, it is sad that so many of those women subsequently stood down, which suggests that while there may well be a place for measures such as all-women shortlists, they are not in themselves the final answer.

Certainly in my party, we have had many debates—very many hotly debated sessions—where we have talked about whether we need some special measures to bring women into Parliament. There is an interesting fault-line between those who see it as patronising to women to introduce such measures, and those who see that this is the only way to make progress—and the fault-line is not gender; it is age. The younger women in particular are very hostile to the notion of special measures, which they see as patronising, whereas older members of the party are frankly tired of waiting for a difference to be made.

The approach we have taken in my party is to encourage people forward through mentoring. We had a certain amount of success in terms of getting women selected in “safe seats”, but sadly it was the choice of the electorate not to elect them. It is a particular issue for my party that we do not have the luxury of safe seats in order to bring in things like all-women shortlists with any confidence of improving the situation. Finding a sustainable solution requires us to think not about treating the symptoms, but to tackle the underlying causes instead. Research in my own party suggests that the lack of female representation in the Commons is to do not with discrimination, but with a combination of an insufficient number of women coming forward and a high rate of attrition among female parliamentary candidates. Put bluntly, not enough women want to do the job. Worse still, many count themselves out once they take a closer look.

The yah-boo culture of the House of Commons is off-putting to a lot of people, not just to women. It certainly put me off ever wanting to be an MP, and it is a pity that the media do not concentrate more on the other aspects of the job—constituency work, Select Committees and so on—that are not so confrontational and that I think would appeal to a broader spectrum of people, women particularly.

The way the House of Commons works in particular is also very difficult to reconcile with caring responsibilities. Even nowadays, in most families women have the brunt of caring responsibilities, whether it is caring for children or for the elderly. The general work-life juggle is inherently stacked against women for that reason. I notice very much in my party that the women coming forward for selection to Parliament are either quite young—in their early 20s—or in their late 40s and early 50s, and we are in effect counting out women over a period of perhaps two decades, at the sort of age where they feel that their responsibilities for children simply preclude them.

A Centre for Policy Studies report last year found that the vast majority of mothers with children at home would like to work. However, only 12 per cent of them want to work full-time. Westminster, with its full-time-plus—all the anti-social hours and everything else that goes with them—is effectively writing off a large section of the female population. We have always been very reluctant to reform parliamentary practices, which is something that I hope will be addressed as the Speaker’s report kicks in. I am also concerned that some of the changes that have been brought about to the expenses regime—particularly the way IPSA is running things—will actually make it more difficult for people with families to become MPs and run their lives in the way they need to.

The good news is that we do not have to reinvent the wheel—what we have to do is to look outside Westminster. Over the last decade, the right to request flexible working has quietly revolutionised the way many businesses work. Enlightened employers have embraced the benefits of retaining talented women who might otherwise have thrown in the towel. That flexibility has empowered women—and men—to be able to construct their own solutions to the career and family dilemma. It strikes me as ironic that while we have legislated to mandate flexible working in other people’s workplaces, we have failed to do it in our own.

I noted with interest the sharp intake of breath when my noble friend Lady Parminter mentioned job-sharing MPs. Well, why not? We have job-sharing chief executives, job-sharing city lawyers, job-sharing head teachers and even job-sharing high commissioners. Why could we not job-share as MPs? We have to get away from the notion that somehow we in Parliament are so different from the rest of the world that these solutions cannot be considered. It is not just about fairness, as important as fairness is; it is actually about good governance. Having a huge number of potential MPs precluded because they cannot manage these sorts of responsibilities—precluding women in that way—is bad governance. I hope that in the other place and in all our deliberations we do what we can to change that.