I welcome the Bill and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stone on introducing it. I also congratulate everyone across the Committee who is involved in it.

I want to briefly say how important the Bill is. I have always been passionate about equality of opportunity for women in this country, particularly as it was a female Prime Minister who inspired me to believe that anything is possible for a woman and that a woman can reach the highest position in the country. The more I travel, the more I see how necessary it is for us to be out there speaking strongly about the opportunities for girls and women in other parts of the world. I recently visited India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and looked at a number of things, including violence against women and girls, the education of girls, early forced marriage, the economic empowerment of women and, most recently, in the Punjab, female feticide, which is very prevalent there.

As was said earlier, these issues are not just for developing countries; they exist right here in this country and we need to be aware of them. If we take domestic violence, the very first refuge in the world was set up in my constituency, in Chiswick, in west London. In this country, one in four girls or women will experience  domestic abuse in their lives. There is much that we need to do. The Bill helps in the campaign to allow women and girls across the world to achieve their potential and helps people to see the value of women. Many of those countries will never have the potential to develop fully unless the value of women is recognised.

I thank the hon. Members on this Committee who are male for supporting the Bill. It is important for men to stand up and be counted on this issue. Often the message is stronger when it comes from people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, because it is then seen not just as a women’s issue, but as an issue for humanity and therefore an extremely important one.

I was going to make a comment about clause 1, because although the Bill is about gender equality, clause 1, in referring to the Secretary of State, talks about what “he” shall do, and the last time I looked at the Secretary of State, she did not look male to me. We might say that that is just how Bills are drafted, but perhaps we should change that. However, I then saw that new clause 1 changes “he” to “the Secretary of State”.

I also want to ask the Secretary of State how we can help to garner global support on this issue, and how we can apply pressure and give assistance to other nations that can help to change things, because if we can play our part in changing things for women and girls around the world, we will make a real difference to so many people in different countries. They might not necessarily be able to help themselves, but we can certainly help them.