Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and Baroness Morgan of Cotes

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

19. Whether it is her Department’s policy to ensure gender balance on its departmental board.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

It is essential that we increase women’s representation across all areas of life, including UK boardrooms. I want my Department’s board to be as representative as possible. My one DFE board appointment so far as Secretary of State has been a woman—the excellent Marion Plant. We must, however, go further to make sure that women are represented in public bodies across the UK.

[Ms Ahmed-Sheikh]

Last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) exposed the Government’s appalling record on this issue, revealing that only 68 of a total of 200 members of departmental boards are women, with only two women on the Secretary of State’s own board. Will she agree to seek an urgent meeting with Scotland’s First Minister to learn from her of the Scottish Government’s success in not only achieving a gender-balanced departmental board, but making the Scottish Cabinet one of only three gender-balanced Cabinets in the world?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Lady for that very tempting invitation. I look forward to meeting the First Minister to discuss a number of things, and this issue would certainly be one of them. May I gently point out to the hon. Lady that there are actually three women on the DFE board, because I sit on it, too?