Promotion of Women in Business

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) on securing this debate. Ever since I left university, I have worked in business, and over the past 10 years I have run a couple of businesses. I was not sure what I, as a man, could bring to the debate, but when I spoke to my hon. Friend yesterday, it suddenly occurred to me that for 10 years I have run a business with about 80 staff of whom more than 90% are women. That had not occurred to me in the context of this debate, because we did not go out looking to recruit women or in any specific area. I fully agree with the comments about discrimination made earlier by my hon. Friends. Discrimination is not acceptable, but equally, we do not want positive discrimination.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) that we should not seek Government legislation that makes work more difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises. It is already difficult enough to employ more people under the existing regulations, which put companies off. The Government can set an ethos, however, and perhaps I can add my experiences to the debate, and say what it is we do that means we attract more women, and why that works so well.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is a limited role for Government in terms of imposing rules. Does he agree that it is important to encourage mentoring? A lot of studies show that all people benefit from mentoring, and women do not get as much of that as possible. Organisations such as Enterprising Women do a lot to try to promote that aspect, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will mention it.

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman is right. People across the board benefit from mentoring, and men are sometimes afraid of saying, “Look, I need a bit of help.” Some women I have worked with do that better and have benefited from it. Women hold top positions across my business. As declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, my business involves a couple of schools and a nursery in which the head teachers are women. My administration team that runs the business is also made up of women. I have to say that they do a far better job now that I am not there interfering than was the case when I was. As an employer, we have appealed to women partly because primary education, on which we focus, tends to attract women. The tougher part of our job has been recruiting men into primary education, which is important because of balance.

When I was a council leader, I was always proud that I had a council group with very good balance. My hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald made the point that for any business or organisation, it is balance that makes it work. The balance of men and women in my council group was about 50:50. I was very proud of that and made a big point of it, because we achieved it before many authorities could get anywhere near it. We also had people from different walks of life and different business backgrounds. They ranged from a councillor of 18—the youngest councillor in the country—through to councillors in their 70s. It was the balance of members—members who agreed with one another and members who did not—that made it a more powerful team.

In my business, it is the balance that works, and flexible working also appeals. As we are an educational establishment, we have a slight advantage, in that we can advertise jobs for people who want to work only in term time to fit with their families. More men might consider that, too. This is a time when we are looking for more opportunities for men, and men are sometimes afraid of admitting that they want to spend more time with their families. I am sure that many of us in the Chamber would fall into that category, if we could. However, the ability to work in term time—the ability to work part-time hours—has meant that we have attracted women, which is benefiting our business. Our turnover of staff is extremely low. I think that in the 10 years that I ran the main administration team, we lost only one member of staff, who went on to a promotion elsewhere and has been very successful as a result. Business can consider those issues. This is about achieving a good balance across the board, with different types of input from people with different backgrounds, from men and women, from different age groups and from people with different professional backgrounds.

With regard to being flexible about work, the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) made the point about “coat peg hours”—a phrase that has stuck with me for many years. When I first qualified in law, I spent some time in a law firm and it always struck me as bizarre that the lawyers, particularly in the corporate law departments, seemed to feel that they had to be in the office from 8 am until 10 pm or later just to prove that they could be there. They were sitting in a square box, staring at a wall, doing work that they could easily have been doing at home, probably more productively.

Therefore, I have always taken a different view with people in my company, whether they are men or women. What interests me as a boss is that the work gets done and is of high quality. Unless there is a particular time demand, I am not interested in whether it is done at 8 am in an office or at 8 am in someone’s home. With the way communications work these days, businesses should think outside the box and be more open-minded about allowing staff, of whatever background and sex, to do their work to the best of their ability and not be so focused on “coat peg hours” and sitting in an office for the sake of being seen to be there. That in itself would be a big step forward for business.

If we can do nothing else in the next few years but encourage businesses to be more open about their working practices to allow people to be more flexible in that respect, we will see more women in business and certainly more production for business, without the need for legislation. I agree wholeheartedly with what hon. Members have said about how business has an opportunity now to make progress on this issue and to have more diversity across the board. Otherwise, we will end up having to look at more legislation, something which all of us who have been in business agree that business can do without.