Women’s Contribution to the Economy

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Coffey]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s thinking on that point. She should make that suggestion in writing to Mr Speaker and the Clerk of the House of Commons; it is a good idea.

[Pauline Latham]

Further to that point, would it not be better to give unconscious bias training to Members of Parliament who have been here for a long time, rather than new Members of Parliament? Members who joined Parliament in 2010 do not have the same bias as some older Members.

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

I will not take that personally.