Caroline Dinenage
Main Page: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)Department Debates - View all Caroline Dinenage's debates with the Home Office
(11 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Order. We all enjoy hearing the Minister, but on the whole the abridged rather than the “War and Peace” version is to be preferred, so we will leave it there.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
2. What progress has been made on increasing the number of women on boards of FTSE 100 companies.
The Minister for Women and Equalities (Maria Miller)
The Government support Lord Davies’s voluntary business-led strategy for increasing the number of women in UK boardrooms. Good progress is being made: women now account for 19% of board members in our FTSE 100 companies, up from 12.5% in February 2011.
Caroline Dinenage
I thank the Minister for that answer. Is she aware of the importance of the so-called mumpreneurs, who work from home and contribute approximately £7 billion a year to our economy? Will she join me in congratulating those inspirational women and pledge to support them?
Maria Miller
I absolutely join my hon. Friend in congratulating mumpreneurs and applauding their work. I know that she is a small business woman and knows a great deal about the sector. The figures speak for themselves: in the last quarter we saw a further 27,000 women taking up entrepreneurial roles in our economy, making 1.2 million in total. That is real progress indeed.