International Women’s Day

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing this debate, which is always moving, inspiring and wide-ranging.

We have quite rightly reflected on the horror that Putin’s war in Ukraine is inflicting on women there, which was demonstrated in last night’s barbaric bombing of a maternity hospital. The haunting speech of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) reminds us—as it does every year—of the many women who are not with us to celebrate International Women’s Day today. Among them this year is my constituent Clair Abelwhite whose murder has shocked the rural community of Colston Bassett in Rushcliffe. The case is ongoing and an arrest has just been made, so I will not be discussing it any further today, but I did want to put it on record that my thoughts and prayers are with her friends and family, especially with her small children.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) also brought up the achievements of women in STEM, and I will be asking her to feature in my campaign for British Science Week next week, when we are profiling some of the brilliant women who have STEM careers, and I hope to encourage more women and girls into those.

Today, I want to celebrate the achievements of an incredible group of women—female entrepreneurs—whose energy, dynamism, creativity and sheer bloody hard work create new jobs and grow our economy. The UK set a new record last year: 140,000 women started their own businesses. In total, 20% of new firms are now led by women, but—and there is a but—it is estimated that only 1% of venture capital goes to female entrepreneurs.

I want to call out two brilliant women in Rushcliffe—Sarah King and Claire Dunn of “we are radikl”. They decided that this had gone on for far too long and are trying to do something about it. As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) proved in her speech, if you want something done, get a woman to do it. They have started their “Over Being Underfunded” campaign to increase access to investment for female entrepreneurs. I went to see them last week—they have an office just down the road from mine. My right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) said that she loved a rebel. Well, they have a brilliant piece of artwork on their wall, which is called, “Rebels get results”. It is a fabulous print and I am looking at purchasing a copy for the Chief Whip, who, I am sure, will be delighted with it.

Their campaign has three main asks. The first is to extend the current timeframe from two years to three to secure the investment that is offered to entrepreneurs via the Government’s seed enterprise investment scheme. That extension would reflect, on average, the greater amount of time that women spend on caring responsibilities —it was twice as much as men during the pandemic—which obviously gives them less time to spend on their businesses, meaning that, sometimes, they take longer to scale. Women are also less likely than men to have access to investor networks, so it takes them longer to build those relationships.

The campaign is also asking for gender, race and ethnicity reporting to be introduced on the seed enterprise investment scheme, in terms of both the entrepreneurs it works with and the investors. Finally, it wants to see more support, mentoring and awareness campaigns targeting early-stage women entrepreneurs, because they know women are less likely to know about schemes such as SEIS and more likely to be up for mentoring and other similar types of support.

The “we are radikl” team hope that Ministers in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Treasury will engage with the campaign, and that BEIS’s enterprise strategy, to be published later this year, will reflect its asks. They are doing so much to address the problem, building their own network of investors, Halo, and breaking down myths and perceived bias in the investor community. The Government commissioned the Alison Rose review in 2019, which identified a £250 billion boost to the UK economy through breaking down barriers to female entrepreneurs. However, we will not get very far if 99% of venture capital is passing female-led firms by. That is something the Government must turn their attention to now.

I welcome the huge amount of work the Government have done to get women into senior positions in business, and I am delighted that we are now second in the world for female representation on boards. That has increased by 50% in the past six years—as it should. We must now focus our attention on doing more to empower our female entrepreneurs. If we are to take advantage of the record number of female-led businesses founded last year, that must be a priority for us.

I wish a happy International Women’s Day to Sarah, Claire and all the brilliant women they work with. I look forward to working with them and seeing the jobs and innovation that their businesses will bring to the UK. I hope Ministers will agree to meet us to learn more about the experience of the female entrepreneurs in the “we are radikl” network and that those experiences can be better reflected in the Government’s approach to supporting female entrepreneurs.