Lord Mitchell
Member of the House of Lords · Labour · United Kingdom
“In those days, no one quite understood the long-term dangers of radiation, and protection was rudimentary. For him, it was fatal. In 1998, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, which he knew was terminal. He told me, in his usual blunt way, “I know how this story ends and it is not pretty.”
“My Lords, on 9 October 2000, my parents-in-law, Jack and Ruth Lowy, committed joint suicide. He was dying and she had decided to accompany him on this last journey. Jack was born in Bratislava in what was then Czechoslovakia. The family were Jewish and following the events in Munich in 1938, they fled to Philadelphia.”
“My wife in particular sensed that they would carry out their wishes. After all, they were both intelligent people who had carefully thought this through. There was no one to support Jack and no one on hand to help Ruth in what must have been hell for her.”
“I cannot be certain about my mother-in-law’s motivation to join him, but they both knew that his own suicide at home could well run the risk of her being charged with committing a crime as an accomplice. What I do know is that had this Bill been law, she probably would have chosen life.”
“I always felt that the issue of antisemitism on campus did not emanate solely from the students. It also came from the laissez-faire attitude of the faculty.”
“We kept the brief tight, with no references to the Middle East; we judged that there was nothing we could do or say that could make any difference. Where we could definitely make a difference was through reference to our common UK experiences and our heritage. I think we made progress.”
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“Eric Schmidt, Google’s worldwide CEO, gave a reply that was a tad disingenuous: “Google pays the tax it is legally due to pay. If you don’t like it, then change the law”. I was shocked again. Codes of conduct, voluntary tax payments and exhortation are all very well, but seldom enough. Governments around the world need to work harder to ensure that the laws are in place and that the rules are clear. That way, both the spirit of the law and the letter of the law will come closer together, giving business the certainty that it needs to fulfil its vital role in our society.”
“If the BBC is listening, we must all hope that the noble Lord’s slot on “Thought for the Day” will continue. The Jewish Association for Business Ethics was partially set up by the noble Lord, Lord Sacks. On two quite separate occasions, we had two leading lights from the UK advertising industry as keynote speakers. I asked both of them the same question: “In view of the UK’s recent actions to ban tobacco advertising, would your agency run advertisements in countries where cigarette advertising is still permitted?”. Both of them gave me the same answer: “If it’s legal, we will do it”. I was shocked. The issue of strict legality came up again when I attended the Google Big Tent event last month. Not surprisingly, keynote speaker Ed Miliband criticised Google for avoiding UK tax.”
“My Lords, the Government have been prolific in announcing new schemes designed to assist small businesses to grow. They all have one thing in common: not one of them is working. The money simply is not getting through. If large organisations could be shamed into paying within 30 days, small companies would benefit immediately. Here is an idea: why not make it compulsory for all organisations, public and private, to include payment performance in their annual accounts?”
“My Lords, these answers hardly fill one with confidence, do they? UK Export Finance was set up specifically to help all businesses to export more, but let us look at the results. Over one year—2011-12—the number of small and medium-sized companies receiving help from UKEF has been the magnificent total of 21. Cannot we do better than that?”
“My Lords, is it just me, or is there a sense of complacency in the replies that we are getting? This is a very serious issue. With the benefit of hindsight, I accept that it would have been difficult to prevent such a despicable act. However, now that this has happened, what steps are being taken by the Government to ensure that safety equipment that is not classified as military equipment or subject to the same export restrictions has adequate checks?”
“It is Schumpeter’s creative destruction being condensed into months rather than decades. This digital revolution is exciting and challenging. It will continue to revolutionise our lives. We must not be afraid of it. We must grasp it and make sure that all our people are equipped to participate in its benefits. Most of all, we must make sure that no one is left behind.”
“That is a tough challenge in that, as she said, 7 million people have never used the internet. I am delighted to have a fellow IT entrepreneur in your Lordships’ House and I look forward to working with her. There is a digital train crash about to happen. In the past few months, we have seen some dramatic failures on our high streets. Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster video have all gone bust but not as a result of the financial crisis, the Government’s policies or the boom in out-of-town shopping centres. They have failed because they were unable to anticipate the tsunami of the digital revolution. Cameras are on their way out, music is streamed, DVDs are downloaded over the internet. This is just the beginning and we had better get used to it. The internet is changing everything.”
“So one way or another, Soho is part of my life. My only regret is that, unlike the noble Baroness, I did not have the foresight to include Soho as part of my title. To those of us in the IT sector, Martha Lane Fox, as she then was, is a legend. Lastminute.com was one of the triumphs of the dotcom boom and one of the survivors, as was I, when all around us collapsed. Indeed, the noble Baroness is a born survivor. No matter what slings and arrows have been flung her way, she just brushes herself off and gets on with it. She has been a champion for our industry and has helped government understand the challenges of the digital revolution. Through her chairmanship of Go On UK, she has sought to make Britain the most digitally skilled nation in the world.”
“I went along this street and that street and, eventually, was standing outside what I would probably describe as a massage parlour. It was a tanning salon—noble Lords get my drift. I was pretty concerned about this, but I went in through the aforementioned massage parlour and into the noble Baroness’s office, where lots of exciting people were doing amazing things in the IT sector. Soho has played a major part in my own life. As a misbegotten youth, I used to spend much time there going to jazz clubs and generally hanging around. But perhaps I should move swiftly on. When I met my wife, she was a film director working in Soho, and we had our wedding reception there. In a moment of complete madness I opened a mega-restaurant just off Dean Street, which failed dismally and cost me a fortune. I put it down to a learning experience.”
“The programme has so far created around 2,000 new jobs. This type of programme is not exclusive to Goldman Sachs and variants are practised by others, but there is no denying that these are impressive results and an indicator that selecting high-growth small companies with big ambitions and helping them to accelerate their growth is an important way to stimulate the economy. I cannot let the opportunity go by without welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox of Soho. Her maiden speech was outstanding; for me, as an IT entrepreneur, it touched many key points. The noble Baroness is not in her place, but perhaps I can relate to fellow Members of the House of Lords how I first met her. I had to see her to do with a charity that I was involved in, and I was given an address in Soho.”
“The most exciting aspect of the programme is the dependence on peer-to-peer learning and engagement, which comes from the entrepreneurs themselves, from different backgrounds and different industries, sitting down together, challenging, querying and providing support from each other to each other. The results are staggering. Employment growth is up 23% compared with 1% for small businesses as a whole, and there is revenue growth of 16% compared with minus 9% for the small business area as a whole. Equally impressive are the following qualitative statistics: 92% became more confident of their ability to grow their businesses; 83% introduced new internal processes; 81% used financial data to derive business decisions; and 84% had an understanding of external finance options that they did not have before.”
“What the Goldman Sachs programme seeks to do is to locate such high-growth companies and propel them to achieve significantly greater returns. So what does Goldman Sachs do? It selects high-growth potential companies that have more than 10 employees and a turnover of just over £1 million and screens them carefully to determine their ambition and their management competence. Each CEO commits to undertake 100 hours of involvement over a four-month period. As Goldman Sachs puts it, they are companies that have dreams and talent which they wish to translate into advanced action. They learn about money and metrics, leadership, marketing, strategy, financing, and putting it all together. At the end, they produce a business growth plan—not so much a business plan, more a commitment to growth.”
“Several years ago, Goldman Sachs introduced a project called 10,000 Small Businesses, which is a target that it set for itself. In conjunction with five UK universities and based on its American experience, it set its goal to supercharge ambitious small businesses, seeking to generate small business growth that otherwise would not have happened. The results have been extraordinary. Small businesses are the major source of job creation and also drive economic growth through innovation and market expansion. It is true that the overwhelming majority of small businesses do not grow and are static; they are important, but they do not produce economic growth. But there is a small percentage of small companies that are ambitious, growth hungry and well run.”
“As the Minister will know better than anyone, we saw it in the Olympics. When people believe in themselves, they can move mountains. As it is with sport, so it is with business. Confidence comes from leadership, and leadership, of course, comes from the very top. When I look at the grim face of George Osborne, all I see is dour despondency. What he needs to do is to lighten up and provide strong, positive leadership. He needs to change the atmosphere, be upbeat and introduce a strategy for growth. He could have done it in the gracious Speech, but he chose not to. Goldman Sachs, for which I know the Minister has a special attachment, has run an interesting study in business growth, and I would like to bring it to your Lordships’ attention.”
“I loved the freedom, I loved building teams of well motivated and excited people, and I revelled in the joys of customer satisfaction. So when I hear politicians somehow thinking that a tweak here and an incentive there will suddenly turn us into an entrepreneurial society, I know that they have got it wrong. It is not how it works. Nothing illustrates this better than the shares-for-rights issue that we debated at length in the previous Session. No businessman would have dreamt up such lunacy as this. What does matter is creating a climate where the entrepreneur feels comfortable—and for them, as for all business people, the one ingredient that gives comfort is confidence. Success in any field comes from confidence. Just see what happens to a football team when a great new manager arrives; the same players are revitalised.”
“There is the perennial stress that the money might run out, that an important customer might go somewhere else, or that a key employee might be recruited elsewhere. You need the constitution of an ox. Put simply, it is not for everyone, but if you succeed it is truly wonderful. When I created my companies I never thought about the rates of income tax, corporation tax or capital gains tax, and I certainly did not have the vaguest notion what inheritance tax was, nor did I care. Indeed, when I started my first business in 1972, I seem to recall that the top rate of income tax was 83%, plus unearned income tax of 15%—not what one might call an entrepreneurial incentive. To me it was all irrelevant. I wanted to be my own boss. I had worked for big companies, and I simply knew that I could do it better; it was the arrogance of youth.”
“As I have mentioned on many occasions in your Lordships’ House, nearly 40 years of my business career were spent in the small business environment. Well, that is not quite true, because the three small businesses I founded each grew to become medium-sized international companies. But in the beginning each business started with a few of us sitting around a small table, or at the bar in a pub, where we said, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea if?”. It is very hard to convey what it is that motivates one to become an entrepreneur. When I think back, I sometimes think that I must have been crazy; the incidence of failure in start-up businesses is heavily stacked against the entrepreneur. What few people outside the entrepreneurial circle understand is just how stressful it all is.”
“My Lords, in my reply to the gracious Speech, I will address two issues. The first is the special concern of small business growth, and the second the consequences and opportunities of the digital revolution. Despite the fact that my job definition as Shadow Business Minister includes responsibility for SMEs, I have vowed to myself to refrain as best I can from using the expression SME. It is so engrained in our vocabulary, but it is such a misnomer. The fact is that small businesses and medium-sized businesses are not the same and should not be grouped together; their requirements are so different that combining them is an error. Those who do so, in my opinion, demonstrate that they have no understanding of the particular needs of each sector.”
“I thank the Minister for that reply. The report from the OFT is indeed a hard-hitting document. It says that payday lenders are guilty of widespread non-compliance with the law—not a few of them but most of them. However, I am left with two concerns. The first is that the Government seem to be indicating that they are reluctant to place caps on the interest rates charged. Is this true? Secondly, are payday lenders now sidestepping regulation by going offshore? What are the Government doing to plug this loophole?”
“Only 7% of those polled say that they think that the CEO of a large company should receive compensation of more than £1 million and only 1% think that they should be paid more than £4 million a year. Is that any wonder when profits for failure feature so heavily in the news? For example, last week, HSBC announced that 204 of its global staff were to receive £1 million in bonuses and compensation—this in a year that has seen the bank fined £1.2 billion for laundering Mexican drug money. RBS has made it clear that a £5.2 billion loss was no barrier to paying out more than £600 million in bonuses.”
“In the United States, the Dodd-Frank enactment of 2010 has significantly tightened shareholder scrutiny on executive compensation. This is referred to as “say on pay”. In the EU a couple of weeks ago, strong recommendations were announced with respect to bankers’ pay and bonuses. It will not have escaped noble Lords that just over a week ago, the Swiss, of all people, held a referendum on curtailing bankers’ bonuses. The proposal received 67% support among Swiss voters; 1.6 million of them turned out to vote; and all 26 cantons approved it. Were we to have such a referendum here, one wonders what the result would be, although we can get some idea by looking at the attitudes of the British public.”
“There are, of course, other stakeholders in all companies, first and foremost, the employees, but also the customers, the suppliers and the community where the company is located. They are important but just for now we are concentrating on the shareholders and their rights to know and to control. When we address executive pay, we are saying that this subject is so important that the shareholders of a publicly listed company should not only be consulted but should also vote on the policy and the actuality of the pay packages that senior executives are to receive. Much today is said about the shareholder spring—the hope that shareholders will assert themselves more and, of course, we agreed wholeheartedly with this. If we look around the world, shareholders are flexing their muscles in all sorts of ways.”
“I have made this personal statement to put it all in context because the series of amendments I have tabled, and which we are about to discuss, centre around the rights and powers of the shareholder, with whom I have a strong personal sympathy. The shareholders are the owners. If the company does well, their share price goes up. If it fails, they can lose the lot. Executives can move on; shareholders are left with a loss. The board of directors is accountable to the shareholders and the management reports to the board of directors. In many small private companies, the management, the board and the shareholders are often one and the same, but in quoted companies this is seldom the case. That is one of the reasons why these amendments refer solely to quoted companies.”
“I will make no further reference to the Soho restaurant that vanished without trace. I lost a packet and there were several others like that. On the other hand, I have had my notable successes. I have been in the IT services business most of my adult life. I created three businesses from scratch, built each of them over 10 or more years and then sold them. Each company became a market leader and two of them were international operators. Not surprisingly, I dwell upon my successes these days although it must be said that the failures made me a better man. I learnt one golden rule: stick to what you know. I am a senior entrepreneur in tooth and claw. I know that success is wonderful and failure is painful. I understand the rules of the game.”
“It must also be said that the noble Lord, Lord Gavron, is also a generous supporter of the High Pay Centre, which has conducted a great deal of important research on this subject. Based on discussions that the noble Lord had with the noble Lord, Lord Marland, and others, he felt that the Government had taken his points on board and in consequence he withdrew the Bill. To their credit, the Government have indeed incorporated some of the points made in the Gavron Bill, but I believe that this Bill can still be improved on. That is what we are seeking to do. At the heart of the matter lies the empowerment of shareholders. Just in case noble Lords question my position in speaking on this subject, I add a little personal background. From 1972 to 2006, I set up numerous businesses. Some were very successful, some were total disasters.”
“My Lords, in moving Amendment 84AHAZB, I will also speak to Amendment 84AHBA, which is consequential. These would give shareholders an annual binding vote on executive remuneration. Last year, my noble and very dear friend Lord Gavron tabled a Private Member’s Bill on the subject of executive pay. Sadly, he cannot be with us today. In the next few days, he is due to have a very serious operation. I know that I speak for the whole House when I wish him a very safe and speedy recovery. It was the noble Lord who first stimulated my interest on this issue when he asked me to support his Bill. Of course, I was pleased to do so. Since then, I now find myself on the Front Bench and fortuitously in a position to lead the opposition position on this issue.”
“I thank my noble friend for that comment. I think it is a really good idea. They should be accountable. They manage so much money, and I think it is a very important factor.”
“Not only the popular press but leading newspapers in this country and throughout the world bring up this issue of executive pay. It has got out of kilter. We are going for the annual situation rather than the triennial situation because it should be an automatic consequence and is just as important as the selection of auditors and the approval of the accounts. Three years just seems to us to be too long for such an important issue. I have listened to what the noble Lord has said, but I would like to test the opinion of the House.”
“I thank the Minister for his comments and all other noble Lords for their contributions. I will deal first with the 75% special resolution issue, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell. As my noble friend Lord Wills was saying, it is important for the shareholders to hold the executives’ feet to the fire in some respects. This is a crucial issue. I know there is a difference in this between the ordinary and the special resolution, but that was why we went for the 75%. The main issue is the annual point. You only have to read any newspaper in this country, and indeed around the world, to see what a vexatious issue this is at the moment. The population is disturbed, and the financial press is disturbed.”
“Clause 2 said: “A company’s annual report must prominently feature details of the remuneration ratio between the highest remunerated director or employee and the average remuneration of the lowest remunerated 10% of employees”. This amendment is slightly different but would have the same effect, introducing a measure of transparency as to the ratio between the highest and lowest paid workers. Yesterday, Secretary of State Vince Cable pledged to support a push for openness about what tax businesses pay in different countries. This amendment is a similar push for transparency. I hope that the Government will find that they are able to support it. I beg to move.”
“First, they concern only the banking sector, but this issue is not limited to that industry. Let us consider the top pay at BP. In 2011, it was 63 times that of average employee pay, whereas in 1979 the difference was only 16.5 times. However, these proposals had nothing to say about the severe problem of low pay, which, as my noble friend Lady Turner of Camden pointed out in Grand Committee, produces many difficulties in our society. I think we could all agree that pay at the bottom of a company should be considered when pay at the top is set. The initial Private Member’s Bill of my noble friend Lord Gavron contained a similar provision.”
“Most of the moves to get companies to release more information on pay to their shareholders cover only banking. The Treasury’s current consultation proposal is that the top eight highest-paid earners beneath boardroom level in banks are to have their salaries disclosed. Although it is difficult to know the details at present, it appears as though the European capital requirements directive IV will opt for a different disclosure proposal, whereby the figures for those earning more than €1 million a year are to be collated and sent to the EBA, which will then produce the numbers in a common format. It is possible that in some institutions this could produce less information than the Treasury proposal. Both these proposals from the Treasury and in the European capital requirements directive IV differ from ours in several important ways.”
“By way of comparison, in 1979 the difference was only 14.5 times. Put simply, too many are being left behind. This is certainly not the one-nation economy that this country needs. Therefore, shareholders should have more power to hold to account the companies they invest in, as we argued with regard to the previous amendment. Greater transparency about levels of pay at the top and bottom of the company would give shareholders the tools they need to make informed decisions on how they vote. This amendment gives shareholders those tools by requiring companies to disclose the top and bottom 10 earners outside the boardroom. There are corresponding moves to increase transparency on pay, so it is worth going over why we consider there to be a need for this amendment.”
“My Lords, Amendment 84AHAA speeds right to the heart of the matter in hand. The disparity in pay between top and bottom earners has informed much of the public outrage about remuneration, and it no doubt lies behind the polling figures that I mentioned previously. Had the minimum wage kept track with executive pay since it was introduced, it would now be worth in the region of £19 per hour. Instead, we see a very pronounced wage discrepancy. It is felt particularly acutely here in London, where many FTSE 100 companies and our financial sector are based. In 2010, the top percentile here received 16.5% more than the bottom percentile. The ratio between top and bottom pay has gradually grown over the past 30 years to the point that in both the Lloyds Banking Group and Barclays top pay was 75 times that of the average employee in 2011.”
“Our position is that it is information that some investors would like to know about companies: what is the disparity in those companies? I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that I had not really thought about it, but it must refer only to the United Kingdom. It had not occurred to me that we could be looking at the pay that somebody in a call centre in India gets compared with the senior executive of, say, a bank in this country. I have listened closely to everything that has been said, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.”
“My Lords, I shall come first to the Minister’s final point. These are good pointers that he draws to our attention. Much of what we have been trying to do is to accelerate the process, and to encourage shareholders to become much more involved so that we get even further results on this. My noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall made an eloquent speech about working people working for companies and the fact that it is useful to see these disparities in black and white. Indeed, it is usual for countries in the north of Europe to do it, and they seem to be doing very well in the world economy. The noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, again made a useful contribution. I am not sure that I agree with his position but it was useful and not dissimilar to that of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard.”
“My Lords, we are very supportive of this amendment. It is clearly needed. I have only one question about whether the words “reasonably” and “honestly” are strong enough. A lot of lawyers would have a field day with this. I just ask the Minister to go away and think about whether we can perhaps have something a little more assertive, which would leave less latitude for a lot of lawyers to make lots of fees.”
“To do this, it needed me to sign off on a revised deal. I refused. It threatened me with a pre-pack, a term that I had not heard of before, but about which I learned pretty quickly. I still refused and, fortunately, it backed down. However, I saw how that could be used as a negotiating tactic. More to the point, I saw how the small people can get hurt. Despite that, I am prepared to concede that pre-packs can have a very important function. They can allow a company to continue and the administrator to move quickly to preserve the business and, most importantly, jobs. That is what all of us want.”
“It gives the business a second chance, but often at the expense of these creditors and shareholders. My contention is that it is often unprincipled and unfair. Usually, there is no creditors meeting and no consultation with the court before this takes place. The sale may be to individuals who were directors of the firm before the pre-pack administration, and the new firm may have a similar name. As I say, the only difference is that the new company is shorn of its debt and maybe its smaller shareholders. Effectively, it is cooking the books. Such firms have sometimes been known as phoenix companies, having risen from the ashes of the old insolvent company. My interest in pre-packs arose when a company in which I had a minority shareholding interest wanted to restructure its financing to my detriment.”
“My Lords, I speak to Amendment 84AHNZA, which calls for the Government to commission an independent review into pre-pack administrations. Noble Lords will see that this amendment represents the recommendations of the BIS Select Committee report to the Insolvency Service, released on 29 January this year. It might be helpful if I attempt to define a pre-pack administration. I find many people do not know what it is, and I am not surprised. It is where the directors of a failing company seek to preserve its continuing existence after administration by lining up replacement owners and finance before the administration takes place—in effect, relaunching the company with many of its creditors and minority shareholders stripped out, while effectively continuing the existing business in another name.”
“My Lords, I thank the Minister for his words. I remember when we were in Grand Committee, he too had an anecdote on this same subject. I suspect that many other people have as well. I thank him for what he has said and for the Government’s plans for a review of this area. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.”
“The same is true of savings: 27% of the women are now saving. Knowledge of good nutrition has gone up from 20% to 85%. Knowledge of civil rights has gone up from 16% to 90%, and participating in social work has gone up similarly from 36% to 80%. The two most important statistics reveal that participating in community activities has gone up to 70% and voting up to 75%. I know that my time is up. I would just like to say that this is an amazing organisation, and I ask noble Lords to look it up on the website.”
“She grew the business to 40 hives and was generating €5,000 a year for her family and teaching more women how to keep bees and make honey. In Rwanda, which, as I say, is one of the happiest places I have even been to, a group of white women and I weeded and harvested in the fields under the noonday sun with machetes in our hands, although it was horrible to hold a machete in that country. Thank God, after 20 minutes they called it a day. We spoke to the women in that place and one of them asked me the question that throughout my life I have found the hardest to answer—namely, how many litres of milk does my cow provide? That was a tough question to answer. I end with a few statistics that I think are terribly impressive. The average daily income of women trebles when women attend courses run by Women for Women International.”
“However, these activities have occurred in our lifetime and women have suffered as a result. I have also visited Kosovo and Rwanda. The latter has experienced terrible genocide. Nevertheless, it is one of the happiest countries that I have ever been to. It is an amazing place. In 1945 the world said “never again”, but the fact is that it never stops. However, there is some good news. Women for Women International staff are teaching women in Bosnia to carry out important jobs. I have visited those activities. I went to a chicken farm, a mushroom farm and a tomato farm and saw women who produced embroidery and supplied it to a leading brand in the United States. In Kosovo we met a female beekeeper who had started with two hives, obtained with a microloan.”
“The Serbs took part in a particularly gruesome activity. In the Muslim community, a dead body has to be buried whole. When Muslim men were killed, the Serbs mixed up their bones so that it would be impossible to find whole bodies. However, since then and with the advent of DNA, the slow process of matching these bones has begun so that bodies can be buried whole. I saw mothers and wives eventually finding some form of closure following the deaths of their loved ones. I know that this is not a political debate but I find it impossible to accept that Serbia could ever become a member of the EU, given that there is so much for which it has not atoned in that awful situation. However, I shall leave that alone. We have a house in Italy that is 200 miles away from Bosnia as the crow flies.”
“A KPMG study of this body’s activities in the DRC and Rwanda states that Women for Women International’s programme is having a significant economic ripple effect, as other women in the community are learning from Women for Women graduates who are now viewed as role models in the community. I want to say a little about my experiences. Three years ago I went to Bosnia for the first time and saw horrific things. I went to Srebrenica, of course. I am Jewish by background, and when you go to those memorials and see the names of the people who died, comprising family name after family name, it is very reminiscent of some of the memorials in eastern Europe to the dead of World War 2. Bosnia was the country that gave us such charming expressions as “ethnic cleansing” and “rape as a weapon of war”.”
“It operates in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan and Nigeria—all pretty tough countries. The ethos of this organisation is that stronger women build stronger nations and that, through access to know-how and resources, socially excluded women can change their countries and build peaceful and stable communities. The organisation creates awareness and behavioural change and organises year-long curriculums in which women are taught economic, social and civic rights, health awareness, decision-making, negotiating civic participation, business and vocational skills, how to access income-generating activities and, most importantly, economic self-sufficiency.”
“Today I wish to talk about a very special organisation called Women for Women International, on the main board of which my wife sits. It was set up in 1993 by a woman called Zainab Salbi, who was an Iraqi living in Baghdad and whose father was Saddam Hussein’s pilot. I think that it got too hot for everyone at that time and her parents moved to the United States. During the conflict in Bosnia she was smuggled into that country, went to Sarajevo and saw what was happening there. She became very interested in the whole concept of women in post-conflict zones, as Bosnia eventually became. Today Women for Women International is located in both Washington and London and has helped 350,000 women, which I shall discuss in a moment.”
“My Lords, I thank the Minister for securing this debate. I also extend my congratulations to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on his excellent maiden speech, which I watched on the screen upstairs. I must confess that I am still reeling from Question Time and the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Flight. I think that he may well be in the running for the title of dinosaur of the year. My credentials are as follows. In the mid-1980s I was chairman of a public company in the tech sector. We were a fully listed company and we had a woman on our board, who was there because she was outstanding. She was in her late 30s and had just had her first baby. She brought her baby to a board meeting and breastfed it during the meeting. We reckon that we were the first company where that had occurred.”
“Indeed, I have prepared such lists for companies that I have been involved in, where I have been chairman of a public company. It is also the practice in the United States. In some sectors, particularly the banking sector, very high earners exist outside the boardroom, which is why shareholders need these figures for context.”