Role of Women in Public Life

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Vere of Norbiton for moving the Motion marking such a monumental milestone in the life of our democracy and, indeed, civilisation. Although it was long overdue, it is hard to believe that a whole century has passed since women over 30 were allowed to vote in parliamentary elections for the first time, so significant have the achievements been since then. Who could possibly have conceived that only 51 years after the 1928 Act which gave women the right to vote on the same terms as men, we would have our first woman Prime Minister and now, 90 years later, our second? What a tribute that simple fact is to women, to have overcome such prejudice in the public service of our country and its people, and how much richer we are as a society for that, in so many ways. Yet it is worth reflecting that until relatively recently all of this was a pipe dream. As the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said, who would have thought it possible?

I will not repeat the key developments about which we have already heard from my noble friend and other noble Lords. I am sure they fill us all both with pride in the progress that has been made to date and, as other noble Lords, such as the noble Baronesses, Lady Gale and Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, have argued, an impatience for the further progress that still needs to be made to ensure that women realise their potential in public life. I say that not just because I acknowledge their right to realise their potential but because it is something that society has a direct stake in—as my noble friend Lady Seccombe told us, it is society as a whole that benefits and has benefited so much over the past 100 years as women have contributed more and more to our parliamentary democracy and other fields.

Marking this centenary is of course a cause for celebration, and yet it is more than that. The remarkable progress achieved by women in public life, particularly when one considers for how long their exclusion had been normalised, is also a cause for hope, not just for other women but for me personally and other disabled people who still face discrimination, as I appreciate some women do—although, I would suggest, to a lesser extent, at least here in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned disability. We are light years behind the progress made by women. Disability discrimination is still embedded in our culture. Nowhere is it more normalised—more institutionalised—than in the way that a human being diagnosed before birth with a disability such as mine is devalued on account of their disability, to the extent that they are regarded not just as worth less than a non-disabled human being but as worthless, disposable right up to birth, specifically for being diagnosed with a disability.

So why do I, as a severely disabled person, draw hope from this centenary? I do so because it reminds us of a simple but fundamentally important lesson which the experience of the past 100 years teaches us, which is that, as my noble friend Lady Jenkin of Kennington and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, highlighted, attitudes change; that how we look at each other and how we value each other can change so radically as to be revolutionary; and that progress which once seemed inconceivable can be achieved and enduring cultural change can follow.

I will always remember reading as a teenager about someone I do not think has been mentioned so far: Emily Davison, a suffragette who tragically lost—many say gave—her life when she ran in front of the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby 105 years ago in 1913. I ask that while we reflect on her sacrifice for the right to vote, we also reflect on all those human beings diagnosed as female and disabled before birth, whose equal right to exist, to become women, to vote and to contribute to public life has been denied on account not of their sex but of their disability. Their potential contribution—perhaps one of them could have been our first disabled woman Prime Minister—has been lost for ever because the diagnosis of disability before birth denied them the most basic right of all, the equal right to exist. That is our tragic loss as a Parliament and as a people.

I close with this question for the Minister: would it not be wonderful to have as a clear goal the election of many more disabled women to show by their example, as their non-disabled counterparts have done, that being born with a disability need not prevent a woman—or, for that matter, a man—making a significant contribution to public life in the service of our great country? What better way to build on the progress of the suffragettes and since, and thereby disprove enduring discriminatory attitudes that so devalue disabled human beings, male and female alike, before they are even born?