Women’s Contribution to the Economy

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) on leading the call for this debate. When I spoke to the Leader of the House on 9 January, I pointed out that it was traditional to have an international women’s day debate and that, at a time when women of the world do two thirds of the world’s work, but only get 10% of the world’s earnings, there was a big challenge that we had to address. I am sad, as I am sure other Members in this Chamber are, that the debate about women’s issues is half in the main Chamber—about women in Afghanistan —and half in this Chamber. I should like to contribute to both debates. I hope that all of us can unite to make sure that next year we do not get a repeat of this mess.

I think that all hon. Members can unite in celebrating the way in which women’s contribution to the economy has grown. When I joined the work force in the 70s, only half of women were in employment and now it is two thirds, although we have not yet achieved equality with men. The Women’s Business Council recently calculated that if we were to equalise the participation of men and women in the economy, we would increase GDP by 0.5% per annum and by 10% by 2030. I think that we could all unite in wanting that.

I am concerned that we continue chronically to undervalue the role that women continue to play, because so much of the work that women do is not paid; and that is because we do not put an economic value on the things that women do that make the world work and make the economy and society operate effectively. Caring for family is critical to economic success. Without family care, children will not succeed in learning and the costs of caring for older and ill people will be a public burden. My thesis is that if we recognised the value of women’s work more effectively, we would have a stronger economy, there would be less under-employment of women and we would all thrive better.

I want to mention specifically a group of women that we have not noticed. We have noticed that there is a child care penalty, which the right hon. Lady described well, but I want to talk about the contribution of older women. In that context, I commend to right hon. and hon. Members a report produced by the TUC this week, called “Age immaterial: women over 50 in the workplace”. It is striking that older women face additional penalties. I am really sad that, in an era when we have traditionally equalised the pay gap and it has been pulling together—under the previous Government it reduced by 7.5% or 8%—for the first time in five years it has widened a bit again. It is worth looking at for whom it has widened most and where the pay gap is biggest.

We tend to think that the pay gap is biggest for a woman caring for her children. Actually, that is not so. The pay gap for women under 40 is less than 1% and the biggest pay gap between women and men—18%—is for women between 50 and 59. We need to address this issue of women in precarious employment who are underemployed and underpaid.

Older women share one kind of vulnerability with younger women: they are much more likely to be on zero hours contracts than other groups in the economy. This is a phenomenon at the beginning and the end of employment. They are more likely to be low paid. They will not benefit from the Budget that we are all looking forward to next week—well, we may not be looking forward to it, but we will have it shortly—because more than half of women over 50 are in part-time employment and more than half of them earn less than the tax-free allowance threshold. If that threshold is increased again, it will not address this low-paid group in the economy.

We need to deal with the concern about the most precarious women workers. Right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that I have been banging on somewhat—and I want to bang on briefly once more—about the fact that we do not protect young women from employment in roles ancillary to sex jobs, in pole-dancing clubs, saunas, massage parlours, and so on. Those roles are still advertised through jobcentres. It is shocking that people who do these ancillary jobs as hat-check girls, receptionists, spa workers, and so on, can still get the employment subsidy that is available to workers between 18 and 24. It is shocking that my taxes might be used to subsidise a young woman in such a role. I should welcome the Minister’s saying that she will discuss in her colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions, whether that is happening at the moment and what the future jobs are of the girls in these ancillary roles. I fear that those jobs are a stepping stone to employment in the sex industry. If that is so, the least we should do is prohibit their being subsidised. But I divert into younger workers from my main issue, which is older workers.

If we were to tackle the issue of the quality of work available to older women, we would stop wasting a huge resource that is potentially available to our economy. It is striking that two thirds of people who work after retirement age are women, but two thirds of those women are still on the lowest pay levels. Of the men who comprise the one third of people who work after retirement age, two thirds of them are—guess what?—on the top rates of pay for their role. That is a reflection of the fact that women have to keep working because they have lower savings and poorer pensions and still have family responsibilities and costs. As I am sure other Members do, I speak to many women in my constituency who are desperately trying to get together resources to help their children and grandchildren get on to the housing ladder, and so on. We are wasting the potential of a large group of women, which we need to address.

[Lorely Burt]

I am listening closely to the hon. Lady. It is regrettable that older women are paid less—I declare my interest—but perhaps that is partly because they take time out for child care, whereas the boys, as ever, run ahead and develop their career. Also, as women get older, many of us have to care for our parents and the older generation. Does she think that the increase in flexible working rules will help this generation of women? What else does she suggest that we, as a Government, can do to facilitate the narrowing of the pay gap between men and women?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Lady is right that the motherhood penalty goes through a woman’s career, which is one of the reasons why, although women outnumber men in the earlier levels of management, they fall off the career ladder as they go up. She is also right to highlight that, if we were to make work more flexible—I will make some specific proposals on ways to do that—it would be easier for women to thrive in the workplace. As is traditional in all sorts of areas of life, a male model is the standard model and women, of course, are a diversion from that standard model. I remember that when I was first elected in 1997—I was one of the 101 women we flapped on about in the Labour party—one of the difficulties that women such as me faced was that every single thing we did, and every single step we took, represented women in politics. Every time a woman did something that was perhaps unreliable or unusual, it was because that is what women do. We were strange and unusual, and we were a diversion from the norm. Interestingly, I no longer carry on my back that requirement to represent women in politics. Although we are still a small minority of Parliament, we have become more normal.

That is good, but we still have a workplace environment in which the norm is nine-to-five. The norm is a man with a wife at home who looks after the children, ensures that they get to school and deals with their doctor’s appointments, and so on. The recent figures from the Office for National Statistics are interesting because they suggest that women take more sick days than men. There were arguments that women know how to use doctors better, but everyone who has really been there knows that it is not because women are sicker than men or are better at using doctors; it is because women take time off pretending to be sick when their children are sick. When I was a teacher, no teacher ever took time off because they were sick, but they did take time off when their kids were sick. We have failed to recognise the different experiences of women and men in how work is structured, so we think it is very modern to make work more flexible by moving from a very male model to something that is more normal for all men and women, but we need to go further.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

The hon. Lady is making some powerful and important points. Does she accept that, although there is plenty that both sides of the House can do to make work more flexible and to make it easier to achieve balance, we also have to address the deep-seated cultural differences between men and women that still seem to be perpetuated? How do we break some of those down across the economic spectrum, not just across those parts of the economy that have seen the light and are working towards equality?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I heard the hon. Gentleman’s earlier intervention on women having to be role models for other women, and I do not see why men should not be role models, too. Men should take some responsibility.

On the deep-seated cultural messages, embedded in our culture is a belief that we can pay much less for work that people are willing to do unpaid than we pay for work that people would never do unpaid. I do not think anyone would be a banker unpaid, so bankers are paid squillions of times more than care workers—I really do mean squillions. The big cultural shift that we need to make is to think about value. We severely undervalue the skills involved in caring for and looking after people. If we made that shift, perhaps organisational shifts in the workplace would follow. That is an enormous cultural leap, and we will not achieve it in five minutes, but it should be our aim. If we do not aim at it, we will continue with the situation in which, as I said, women across the world do two thirds of the world’s work—they do the child care, other caring for the family, subsistence farming and so on—and the men, who do less work, get 90% of the pay. That is not a sensible way to run a world, let alone a country.

Older women have faced the biggest jump in unemployment since 2010. Although women’s employment, generally, has increased because there has been a trend towards women entering the paid work force, there has been a huge leap in unemployment among older women. Unemployment in that group has gone up by 45% since the general election, although it has eased off slightly in the last quarter, but that compares with a 1% increase in unemployment for the rest of the population. There is a serious problem in how we deal with older women. That is partly because older women tend to be concentrated in the public sector, where there have been huge job losses, but it is also because older women are easier to squeeze out of the work force. We need to address the way in which older women are pushed out of work. When I held a discussion group for older women in my constituency, one woman said, “We are always first in line for redundancy and last in line for interviews.”

I have talked to various professional groups about what is happening in different professions. The National Union of Teachers, for example, recently conducted a survey on the misuse of capability among teachers. The survey found that more than three quarters of the union’s representatives report that women teachers over the age of 50 are disproportionately represented in their casework. Older women doctors and those in professions allied to medicine, such as physiotherapy, have reported pressure to exit their careers as hospital doctors and specialists. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales reports that, of the women members who have declared themselves to be unemployed, 60% are over 45 and 43% are aged between 45 and 54.

The Commission on Older Women, which I helped to set up, has received extensive evidence that older women are leaving work because they cannot balance work and care responsibilities. We have a perfect storm of women being squeezed out while they are trying to juggle their responsibilities. Members will have seen the commission’s work with broadcasters following evidence that older women no longer appear on our television screens. The figures on broadcasting that we received on the commission showed that 82% of TV presenters over 50 were men. While TV presenters in general are broadly reflective of the age of the general population, that is not the case with older TV presenters. Some 48% of TV presenters under the age of 50 are women—compared with 49.7% of the general population under 50—yet that percentage falls like a stone with older presenters.

There is a problem with women being squeezed out and women moving out because of their caring responsibilities. As a Parliament and a Government, we first have to do what we are doing today, which is to celebrate the contribution that women can make. We have to ensure that women are more resistant to the squeezing out efforts and more confident in their role in employment. We also need to do much more to help women to balance work and their family responsibilities.

The problem is not just about child care. We have made some progress on child care, and we need to make more, but we also need to recognise that women care at all points of their life. For example, older women might find that their spouse or a parent has a sudden crisis illness. They would not know, at that point, whether to leave work, because they would not know whether the illness was serious and long term. They would not know whether they would have to become a full-time carer, and they would not know what the caring would be like. They would not know whether they needed to get some flexibility or whatever. The least we should do is back the request made in the TUC’s “Age Immaterial” campaign to allow what it calls “adjustment leave”, which is a period of leave at a moment of crisis that people can have to adjust their lives. Some of us will have read Jackie Ashley’s account of having to care for Andrew Marr when he had his stroke. She had a tolerant employer, but she did not know how disabled he would be. It is great to see him back on our screens, but she needed to take time off to look after him and enable him to get back to work. She did not know what the future would be. We should legislate for the right to adjustment leave, which would give someone in those circumstances a short-term period of leave to find out the right thing to do, such as whether to apply for more flexible hours.

We need to ensure that there are more well-paid part-time jobs. One of the problems about part-time employment is that it tends to be at the bottom of the pay scale. As parliamentarians, we could lead a campaign to get well-paid part-time jobs. Unfortunately, too many women in part-time work at present are not paid anything like the living wage; they are on the minimum wage. As I have said, older women are often well represented in public sector jobs. They have been affected by the public sector pay freeze for a long time, and their incomes are therefore being seriously hit. We need a better system of carer’s leave. If we had that, we could keep the talent of older women workers. We are missing out on their experience, talent and capacity to lead in the work force.

One multinational company reports that it has bigger profits in its outlets where an older woman is on the serving counter. The company does not employ many older workers. We have to make much more progress on tackling the needs of older women. The consequence of older women being squeezed out of work is that too often they try and do not succeed in becoming entrepreneurs and making little bits of work here and there. We do not give enough support to women trying to become entrepreneurs, although it would be better that someone who wants to be an entrepreneur starts that at the beginning of their career, rather than seeing it as a consolation prize when they have been stuffed in a longer term career.

I make a particular plea that we get it right for older women. If we do that, and stop wasting their talent, stop excluding them from training opportunities and stop squeezing them out of jobs, and use their experience more intelligently, I have no doubt that they would contribute massively to the success of our economy and to the happiness of our families. If we do that, we will have a better society that all of us can celebrate.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I am delighted, Mr Robertson, to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on securing this important debate to celebrate international women’s day. I hope to be rather more upbeat than the hon. Lady has been over the past 25 minutes.

In 2011, just 12.5% of FTSE 100 companies had directors who were women. It has been predicted that in 2015, that figure will rise to 25%, and that is undoubtedly partly a consequence of the hard work of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to get more women into senior positions. It is no mean feat to run a high-profile business, and it is clear that women are just as capable of doing that as men. The Derby-based firm DeltaRail, run by Anna Matthews, is an excellent example of a thriving business headed up by a woman, and that is particularly impressive given the male-dominated field in which she operates.

While the number of female company directors is a good indicator of women’s enhanced role in business, more should be done to emphasise the role of women in small and medium-sized enterprises, and the contribution that they make to the economy. There are far more SMEs than there are big businesses, and they employ more people. In my constituency of Mid Derbyshire, a number of enterprising women have struck out on their own and started their own businesses. Three years ago, my constituent Wendy bought a local business called Fresh Basil. She came from a farming background and had worked as a tax fraud inspector for some years before buying the shop. She wanted more freedom to do what she wanted to do.

Just three years on, Wendy is running a thriving café and delicatessen employing 20 people. Aside from providing employment for local people, she is also diligent in promoting local suppliers, using 90 of them to stock her shop and so reducing the number of food miles. The business also supports the aims of Transition Belper, which are to support local business and for people to spend £5 a week more in their area on local products, rather than going to supermarkets and big businesses. That brings far more money and disposable income into the local economy. Wendy helps budding producers to find buyers for their products. In the context of the wider local economy, she ensures that all her staff are trained ambassadors for the town of Belper, which is within the world heritage site of the Arkwright mills, where the industrial revolution began. They all can recommend local businesses to those who visit the town.

Another business headed up by one of my dynamic female constituents is Jack Rabbits. Amelia Horne started the business as a result of her passion for good, locally sourced food, and she now runs an incredibly successful grocery and café business. All the dairy products, meat and fish that the business sells are sourced from local suppliers, including from my local butcher, Barry Fitch, in my village of Little Easton. Even the wooden boards that they serve their food on come from a carpenter in Derbyshire.

Like Wendy, Amelia is keen to help the local community, and she supplies all the business leftovers to local homeless shelters. It is with reference to these two cases that I would say that increasing the number of women SME owners not only makes economic sense, in terms of the jobs created by businesses, but helps communities, and it is important that the Government support that. This, coupled with the fact that only 18% of SME owners in this country are women, makes it clear that more needs to be done to promote women in business. Sally Montague, who runs a local hairdressing organisation, opened her first salon in 1983. She now has six salons, ranging from one for students in the university of Derby, one in the city of Derby, one in Belper, one in Duffield in my constituency, and one in Ashbourne. She employs many young people—men and women—who are all local.

Of course, successful small businesses do not stay small for long, and Pennine Healthcare in Derby is a prime example. Liz Fothergill, the company’s CEO, started working at that family-run firm during her holidays when she was at university. She was the person responsible for establishing the company’s export links with Europe and the rest of the world, and now Pennine exports to 50 countries across the globe. Liz’s achievements have been widely acknowledged, and in June 2012, she was appointed His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales’s ambassador for the east midlands through his patronage of Business in the Community.

Such local examples show that women play a vital role in local economies and communities, and that should be reflected in international aid policy. Last year, there was an article in The Guardian about women’s savings and credit co-operatives, which help women in Ethiopia to set up shops that trade in local goods. In fact, the Department for International Development also helped with microfinance for women in many countries. The businesses are not always successful, but the profits earned by the women running them mean that they no longer financially depend on their husbands, and they serve to empower the whole community.

Community development projects also play an important part in getting women to engage with the local economy. I should declare an interest in a charity I work with; it is in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Free the Children creates infrastructure in communities in less developed countries through its “adopt a village” programme. The scheme consists of five pillars, one of which creates streams of income for previously impoverished areas, which means that local parents can afford to send their daughters to school. This has been particularly successful in Kenya, but it operates in India, South America, China and other countries, and it has encouraged female entrepreneurship.

Kenyan women are shown how to grow crops to give their children a much more balanced diet, and their children are taught at school about the benefits of drip irrigation and fertilisers on their crops. The women then buy goats, chickens and cows. They feel empowered and are challenging the men as the earners in their family. They feel so empowered that the men who were sitting about not wanting to take part are now saying, “Can we do some of this as well, please?” because they recognise that the money brought in benefits their children.

Free the Children is having its first “we” day in Wembley arena tomorrow, with 11,000 students from 700 schools nationwide. Most of the students will be girls, and they will hear from inspirational speakers such as Al Gore, Malala, Prince Harry and many others to encourage them to continue volunteering to help poorer people, and to help them themselves when they get to doing their GCSEs and A-levels. It has been shown that people who work with this organisation get better exam results, and many of them want to go into international development in the future.

On the number of women in Parliament, we have not set as good an example as we should. We are much better than we were. Many more women came in at the last election from the Conservative party than have ever been here before, but one or two of them are leaving. Perhaps it is time for the Conservative party to consider all-women shortlists. I have been completely against them before, but the Labour party had them, and they have cracked the system. If we do not get enough women at the next election, we may have to consider an all-women shortlist. I say that as someone who has always been against that, but we are not representative of the whole country as we should be. We would set a better example for girls coming into the world of work, and for women already there, so that they see that they can get to the top. We have had the first and only female Prime Minister in this country, and we should be proud of that, but this Parliament is not good enough yet.

I am delighted at the results of the Government’s hard work with regard to women board members. Again, there is still a good way to go to get more women involved in small business.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I welcome what the hon. Lady says about having an all-women shortlist, but on women board members, one of the problems is that too many of the additional women board members are in non-executive roles. Does she have any proposals to make more women executive board members?

[Pauline Latham]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, but I think my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who is sitting behind me, will address that in her speech, and I do not want to steal her thunder.

If more women were involved in small business, and if that was encouraged and supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and by the Department for International Development, which does a huge amount to help women and girls into employment and out of extreme poverty, we would see enriched communities not only nationally, but internationally. Everybody could unite around the fact that that is what we want for this world.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to participate in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) for securing the debate through the Backbench Business Committee. I agree with the hon. Member for Slough about the unfortunate timetabling error, which I hope we will not see again next year. I hope we will be celebrating the achievement of women in our society—in the economy or elsewhere—in the Chamber in 2015.

Mr Robertson, may I draw to your attention, and perhaps to the Clerk’s, my disappointment at the fact that the Library chose not to produce a full debate briefing pack for this debate? There was a small contribution, but I was informed this morning that, in contrast to other Adjournment debates that have taken place here—for example, the future of the A303, which had the full works—a full debate pack was not available. Although the information that we have is relevant, we should have had a better briefing from the Library. I hope you will use your offices to communicate that, Mr Robertson.

I welcome the positivity of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and her insight into international development issues. She will be aware that 22 March is world water day. I have in the past supported charities such as WaterAid. We must recognise the international development work—through charities, direct aid and the initiatives of former Prime Ministers—to get children, particularly girls, into school. That is something of which we should be proud as British Members of Parliament.

I want to talk more about the contribution to the economy. As my hon. Friend suggested, I intend to talk about the executive pipeline of talent. I will start with my own inspiration and why I decided to go into business. Both my parents are teachers, and I did not have much experience of the private sector worlds as a child growing up. My granny had worked in the private sector, which was kind of news to me. She started her career with matchboxes at Bryant & May, but ended up working for a company called Dista, which is part of the Eli Lilly group; I was showing an interest in chemistry. She was involved in packing, so I will not pretend she was on the executive board or anything like that, but she started to show me some of the information that used to be sent to all the pensioners by Eli Lilly. That got me more and more interested in the business side of life.

While I was doing my PhD, I was lucky enough to host Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut, when she spoke at University college London. She was a chemistry graduate—that was why she came to UCL to speak to us—and she worked as a chemist for a company called Mars, which the hon. Member for Slough knows well. She also does a lot of work highlighting the importance of science and engineering. I found that woman, working in an international business, inspiring. She was one of the reasons why I applied to join Mars.

Also during my PhD, I went off on a business school. At the time, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council used to run business weeks and everyone on a Government-funded PhD could go to different parts of the country to meet new people and, more importantly, to do things such as business games with all sorts of companies. As I was doing that, I found another lady who worked for Mars, Ingrid Uden, inspirational. I had met two ladies from Mars, so that was the only company that I wanted to work for. I was successful there and, through various bits of careers—admittedly some up, some down—my last role working for Mars was as a finance director of one of its UK subsidiaries.

Mars is an unusual company, but what struck me when I was there, which might not have been particularly well known among most employees—associates, as they are known—was that the Mars board had, as one of its key measures, the number of women in certain roles, in a certain zone, and above. Measuring that recognised the board’s desire to ensure that women were well represented in the pipeline of talent at management level—those with the potential to become future board directors at Mars.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The present chief executive of Mars in Slough is a woman, which is rare in a manufacturing company of that size.

[Dr Coffey]

It is. I know Fiona Dawson well, and she is an inspirational lady. She is a busy lady as well, but she is an inspiration to many who are interested in getting involved in business, because she shows that running a leading manufacturing and retail business is an exciting career. It has taken her to different parts of the world, but she is particularly good at leading in the UK.

That takes me to the pipeline of talent report, which I was pleased to co-author with my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), who cannot contribute to the debate because of her Parliamentary Private Secretary position in support of the Government today. I want to place on the record my thanks to her, to everyone who participated in the evidence-gathering sessions, to the witnesses and to my researcher, Edward Winfield, who is leaving next week to get a job in industry. He certainly pulled together a good report.

Rather than going through all the inputs to the report, I will focus on the executive summary—if any hon. Members do not have a copy of the report, I am happy to circulate it to them. Our starting point was a quotation from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. Little more than two years ago, he said:

“If we fail to unlock the potential of women in the labour market, we’re not only failing those individuals, we’re failing our whole economy.”

It is right to get that kind of emphasis. Women can and should be playing a more important role, if they wish, in contributing towards the economy of this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire has already referred to the increase in the number of women going on boards and the hon. Member for Slough said, accurately, that we should not focus only on non-executive directors. To get more executive directors, we need to focus on the executive pipeline of talent.

In our report, we came up with a series of recommendations, because, as anyone who works in business knows, if we do not measure something, it will not get done. Our concrete recommendations are not meant only for companies and head-hunters or to inform the views of investors; they are also aimed at women and the Government.

Women should actively seek out mentors and sponsors—they are different roles—and everyone needs a champion on the top board for that to happen. We should not be too shy about asking for help. Interestingly, when some women are offered coaching, they see that as a bit of an insult, reflecting on their performance, as opposed to regarding it as an important tool to improve their performance and attainment. One of the things I have not been investing in as a Member of Parliament, but should have been, is the element of coaching. I can honestly say that it is one of the best tools for any successful person.

Women who have risen to the top of business often focus on one particular discipline—whether human resources, marketing or finance. Certainly some of our expert witnesses recommended taking on responsibility for profit and loss, managing budgets and programmes and being prepared to take on an international role early in a career as important parts of the toolkit. Such things give the wider business experience that can lead to someone who wants to be considered for promotion, or to be poached to go elsewhere, eventually making it to the board. Seeking out stretching assignments is also important; I do not know of any successful woman who stays in her comfort zone. I could use exactly the same words of any successful man. The issue is always about seeking to be extraordinary, to go up the pipeline of talent and up the ladder of promotion.

In our report, we also recognise that people should establish and use networks to increase their spheres of influence. I remember a discussion I had at a Conservative party conference with my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), as she is now. I was moving within the company, but I was concerned that my salary would go up only slightly, because of traditional rules, so I was on a considerably lower salary than fellow directors. We chatted about it, and she said bluntly, “You’ve got to ask for it and be prepared to negotiate.” She was absolutely right. I did, and my boss was probably surprised, but he recognised the fairness of the challenge and I got a reasonable pay rise and was level with other directors of similar standing in the company. We should not expect life to be handed to us on a plate; it never is. We need to ensure that we grab the opportunities.

As for the Government’s role, I want to see gender diversity reporting extended to senior management under the corporate governance code for financial reporting. The “Think, Act, Report” initiative is about capturing the data at almost every level to assess what is going on. Personally, I think that it is a bold initiative. Some of the larger companies probably already have the IT systems to add that information to the reported indicators, but even for relatively small companies, going three levels down from the board is probably not a difficult task. Any good company regularly does promotion and talent reviews, so such information should be readily available, if it is not already. The reason for putting it in the corporate reporting is to provide a spotlight on the issue and to ensure that companies are thinking about it. I hope that the Government will take that recommendation up, although I recognise that my hon. Friend the Minister will not be able to make any such commitment today.

Another thing we want businesses to do is to be more formal about establishing mentoring and sponsorship programmes. They happen in many companies, but often tend to be more informal. We also want to see more formalising of career breaks and return-to-work schemes. It was interesting to hear from a head-hunter that although some women who go on maternity leave come back more quickly—we now have flexible shared parenting leave, which is welcome—for most the issue is about keeping current.

“Keeping current” does not mean simply receiving a newsletter; it might mean having back-to-work days or making sure that people on maternity leave are still invited to go on team building exercises. The key is to put more choice into the hands of the women themselves. We also learned that women in the professional services might want to do courses to keep up to speed.

Just today, over lunch, I was discussing this debate with my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley). She told me that she had been an accountant, but through her professional network she learned that the Law Society had a successful method for getting and keeping people in touch. I would recommend that other professional bodies learn from the Law Society. What it does in that regard was news to me and I shall be following the information up.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I have been consulting with women in my constituency about child care. One thing a number of them have said is that while on maternity leave they would like to be able to participate in training at the workplace that they want to go back to, and have the associated child care costs met—some have the right to access training, but the child care costs are not met. That seems a simple thing to bring into workplaces or even put in legislation. What does the hon. Lady think of that?

[Dr Coffey]

It is an interesting idea. The hon. Lady will probably realise that I am not into legislating for every outcome, although I recognise that that might be her approach. However, the idea could be established as good practice. As we know, companies recognise that they miss out on talent when they do not provide those kinds of initiatives. If the businesses that are, dare I say it, more forward-thinking have not heard that idea before, I am sure it will ring out from the Chamber today. I am also sure that it will be mentioned to Mars when she next visits that company. It is a good idea.

In compiling our report, we looked at child care policy. I do not have children, so I do not pretend to have the same experience as others, but when I was working in the private sector I managed a team of 24 people at one stage. I think I am right in saying that 16 of those were women working part time and balancing other responsibilities. I often found that people who worked part time were the most diligent employees, partly because they valued the fact that they had a reasonably well-paid job that was part time and partly because they were very organised. I will not pretend that we came to a unanimous view on child care, but we encouraged the Government to bring forward the tax-free child care policy. The Budget is on 19 March. I will be astonished if the policy makes an early entry, but nevertheless we can say with confidence that next year we will have a new policy that will be very welcome indeed.

As for other aspects of our report, we wanted to extend the work of Lord Davies to include public sector and professional services. I thank my noble friend Viscount Younger—my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth and I were fortunate to go to present some recommendations from our report to the Professional Business Services Council, and I am conscious that Viscount Younger is keen to do something about this issue with the professional services.

More young women than young men are currently entering the legal profession—I think that these data are widely known publicly—but at the moment a man is nine times more likely to become a partner than a woman. I am sure that that will change naturally anyway—I would not expect people who have joined a law firm in the past few years to be partners by now, as that takes time—but I would like to raise the consciousness of the professional services on that, as something needs to be done. In accountancy firms it is about three times more likely at the moment that a man will become a partner than a woman. There is work to be done there.

Lord Davies has also focused significantly on non-executive directors. I know that the Government are looking at what more they can do on that issue. Although I am confident that we will reach the 25% target for board directors by next year, we need to continue working on the percentage of executives.

Another key aspect that we asked the Government to focus on was improving careers advice for girls, particularly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM. I was pleased to see that 40% of STEM ambassadors are women. I note the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden about maths being a key enabling subject for engineering. Interestingly, I have had quite a debate with the Minister for Universities and Science, my right hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), on that matter. I am astonished that people can get on to engineering degrees without A-level physics. But my discussion with him on the issue was enlightening, and I recognise that quite a lot of young women who do triple science A-level tend to take biology, chemistry and maths, and do not focus on physics.

Last week we saw the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, during her visit here. She has a PhD in physics. She is an experienced politician and a clever lady, who did the hard sciences, as Mr Speaker pointed out. I recognise there is an issue with women taking physics, but I believe that people who can achieve grade A at maths, chemistry and biology are probably just as capable of achieving at physics. If there is some way in which we can do a physics catch-up course to get more women into engineering who might not have been successful at getting on to their first choice degree course, that will be welcome. After my initial reservations, I encouraged my right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Sciences to progress those kinds of schemes.

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[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It was a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am sorry that you are leaving, but you are being replaced by the lovely Mr Sheridan, under whose chairmanship it is also a pleasure to serve.

It is great to be here for this excellent debate on international women’s day. Many important issues have been covered at length, as one is able to do in a three-hour debate when half our number are engaged in an important debate in the main Chamber. However, what we have lacked in quantity we have more than made up for in quality. The debate has not suffered for the lack of Members present.

I am pleased to be in the debate with the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), who has organised a full programme of excellent events today, culminating with tea with the Speaker in Speaker’s House for women MPs who are being shadowed by young women from their constituencies. Most of us are being shadowed by at least one young woman today, although the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) is being shadowed by six—she is a pied piper leading the way on this issue. I thank the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth for organising today’s events, which are appreciated by us and the young women who are shadowing us. I thank the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) for securing the debate and enabling us to gather here to talk about such important issues.

Women helping and inspiring other women is obviously a key recurring theme of international women’s day. It is right that we promote it as a means of increasing women’s participation in the economy and public life, particularly at the higher echelons. When it comes to the scale of the challenges that we still face in promoting women in the workplace and harnessing their potential to contribute to the economic success of the country, everyone needs to pull together in the same direction to achieve the kind of change that we need.

The Minister will be well aware that the director general of the Confederation of British Industry made an important intervention on that theme earlier this week, on the back of a PricewaterhouseCoopers report that ranked Britain 18th out of 27 OECD countries for the participation of women in the economy. He rightly called for the current generation of top executives to set a much better example and really drive through the changes that will see women progress much further in the private sector. As part of that, he advocated the use of targets for women in senior positions, as a signal to the whole organisation that its leaders want those changes to happen.

That call has seemingly been heard by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, who has asked the Equality and Human Rights Commission for advice on whether all-women shortlists for top jobs will be legal. That apparent reversal in the Government’s position is very welcome, as indeed it was to hear the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire talk about the fact that her party is now looking at all-women shortlists. As she knows, I was selected under an all-women shortlist, and they have been very successful for the Labour party in raising the number of women in Parliament, so it is very welcome to hear that her party is looking at that.

With regard to top jobs, targets are not just a means of promoting equality, which is an important end in itself; firms with greater representation of women in the boardroom and in senior positions throughout the organisation are much more likely to be successful businesses. However, the Minister and her colleagues might want to look a little closer to home. This is where, in this celebratory debate, I may come across as a bit critical, but I am the Opposition spokesperson, so you would surely expect nothing less, Mr Sheridan. It is also important to be brutally honest when discussing these important issues, and not just talk about the good bits.

I asked a series of parliamentary questions and I was quite shocked at some of the answers. Almost half of Government Departments are failing to meet the targets for women on boards that Ministers expect of top businesses. It is particularly poor to see that the Ministry of Defence, for instance, has no women on its board at all, and that only two Departments have more women than men on their boards. That is symbolic of a wider trend in senior appointments by the Government since 2010. Only 17 out of 114 Privy Counsellors appointed are women, and 13 out of 85 policy tsars are women. Fewer than one in five ambassadors and a quarter of permanent secretaries appointed since 2010 have been women.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

On the point about public appointments and women, I have been chasing Government Departments since 9 February—for a month—to try to find out what proportion of paid public appointments are given to women. I keep going round a particular circle, which gets me to a published statement by the Cabinet Office that gives the total number of appointments of men and women but does not state how many are paid. Frankly, the vast majority of those appointments are, I think, women to the magistracy, because the vast majority are in the Ministry of Justice. We really need those figures to be more transparent.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Grant]

That is an important point. There never seem to be enough hours in the day, somehow, but I promise to look at the report and talk to my hon. Friend about its conclusions.

Since Lord Davies reported in February 2011, there have been unprecedented changes in the composition of boardrooms. Women now make up 20.4% of the directors of FTSE100 companies, which is up from 12.5%, and there are now just two all-male FTSE100 boards; that figure is down from 21. Again, that is great news for the economy, but it is vital that we maintain the momentum. We need just 51 more women on FTSE100 boards by 2015 to achieve the 25% target set by Lord Davies.

The pay gap is an important issue. I do not think that it has been raised directly in today’s debate, but it is never too far from my mind. It is a matter of concern that women are still disadvantaged in pay. We are addressing that in two main ways. First, for the vast majority of businesses who want to do the right thing by their female employees, we are encouraging good practice through the voluntary “Think, Act, Report” initiative. More than 170 organisations representing more than 2 million employees are showing that they are committed to equality in their business. As the Minister responsible for tourism I was pleased to announce this morning at a Women 1st women in tourism event that Merlin Entertainments, Brakes Group, easyJet, Advantage Travel and CH&Co catering have now signed up to that important initiative.

However, we shall also take tough action against employers who do not do the right thing, and from October when a tribunal finds that an employer has broken equal pay laws it will order a full pay audit, to prevent continuing sex discrimination in pay matters.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

One of the things that my constituents say to me is that because they cannot get legal aid and proper support for tribunals, they are less likely to take such cases to a tribunal. A policy that triggers action against a company only after a successful tribunal claim has been made is likely to be less effective in future than it would have been in the past.

[Mrs Grant]

The hon. Lady has raised that issue before, and I know that she is concerned about it. As she knows, there is a remission system, so when people do not have the money to pay the fee, the state will step in. That remission system has been around for some years, and it has worked very well. I trust that it will continue to work well to ensure that people have access to justice, a concept that is very important to me and to others.

[Mrs Grant]

I apologise to the shadow Minister for not mentioning the fact that she had raised the gender pay gap; I, of course, heard her. It is an important issue, and I think we are making progress. The overall gender pay gap still stands at just under 20%, which in my opinion is completely unacceptable, but I believe that the two measures that we are taking—one of scrutiny in relation to compulsory pay audits and the other about transparency through “Think, Act, Report”—will have the desired effect.

A number of interventions have been made by hon. Members today. I am not sure whether I will be able to deal with all of them, but I will do my best. My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden raised the geographic disparity in women’s employment rates and suggested that cultural factors might be partly responsible. There are a number of factors at play, and cultural heritage may well be one of them. We want to help all girls and women to fulfil their potential, and we have a programme of work for that purpose to raise girls’ aspirations, which includes a school and business partnership and a resource for parents to help them support their daughters with their career choices. A number of excellent organisations are helping us, including QED-UK, a project that supports women of Pakistani heritage into employment in south Yorkshire, which is making excellent progress.

The hon. Member for Slough asked whether I would discuss with the Department for Education the issue of young girls receiving advertisements for jobs ancillary to sex work. I am appalled that young women are receiving adverts for jobs ancillary to adult entertainment, and I will certainly raise that issue with my ministerial colleagues.

The hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal spoke in detail and with great authority about women on boards. I share their concern that where women are getting board roles, they are more likely to be successful in non-executive roles. If we are to make real and proper progress in that area, it is essential that we focus on developing the executive pipeline. I would like to acknowledge the excellent work of an organisation called Women 1st, to which I gave a keynote speech this morning, which is trailblazing in this area. I look forward to hosting and chairing an event involving head-hunters in the next few weeks with my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal and others.

The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), who is no longer in her seat, remarked on the poor showing of the UK, in comparison with the United States, on enterprise. If she were here, I would be saying to her that the Women’s Business Council is prioritising women’s entrepreneurship. At a meeting yesterday, members of the council discussed what they could do as leaders in industry, and they discussed issues such as positive role models and positive behaviours. The council is determined to make further progress in that area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal spoke in detail about science, technology, engineering and maths, about which she knows an awful lot. I agree with her that we need to encourage more girls to study STEM subjects and raise their aspirations. That topic will be discussed at the United Nations next week, at the Commission on the Status of Women. I am happy to say that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), and Nicola Yates, a Women’s Business Council member from GlaxoSmithKline, will be advocating on behalf of the UK the need to support girls into those disciplines and sharing best practice with a truly international audience.

One of our enlightened men—unfortunately he is no longer in his place—my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), raised the need to get our girls to do A-level maths, which is an important issue. Action is being taken, and £200 million of Government investment has gone into STEM higher education teaching facilities, and higher education institutions will be required to match funding. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is also funding a programme of work to promote diversity in the STEM work force.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), who has left the room, spoke about men as agents for change. We need to have the men with us on this agenda if we are to make progress. I always say that when courageous women meet with enlightened men, there is very little that they cannot achieve. I am pleased that he made that contribution. On 20 February, John Timpson of the Women’s Business Council hosted a round-table meeting with male CEOs to develop strategies to support flexible and modern workplaces. It is important for male leaders to demonstrate leadership in that area, and their doing so shows commitment and best practice.

The shadow Minister and the hon. Member for Slough raised the issue of women and public appointments, especially in Whitehall. The Government are absolutely committed to increasing the diversity of public appointments, and we have recently established a centre for public appointments, which works right across Whitehall and with executive search industries to modernise the recruitment practices to public boards. The Government’s aim, which the shadow Minister may be aware of, is for 50% of new public appointments to be women by the end of the Parliament, and we have recently published an action plan for achieving that. We are making progress; 37% of public appointments made by Whitehall Departments in 2012-13 were women, and that has risen to 45% in the past six months.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mrs Grant]

If I can just finish my point. The hon. Member for Slough asked how many of the appointments were paid; I do not know, but I would be happy to look into that and write to her in due course. If that is the issue she wanted to raise, I hope that I can push on; if not, I will sit down.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

It is the issue I was going to raise, and I am grateful to the Minister for her offer to write to me. However, I wish I could get a reply to the question that I have asked every Department. I just want the number of appointments that are paid to be in the public domain. We do not currently know, and that information ought to be published. If the Minister could make that happen, I would be very grateful.

[Mrs Grant]

I shall do my very best to provide the hon. Lady with the information she has requested. I would also be happy to meet her if she needs further information once she has received what I will endeavour to send to her.