Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: I do not want to be unduly provocative. I know the answer to this question. It was the case that people came to the House of Lords as a sign of achievement, so, generally, only people who had been in the Cabinet would come to the Lords. If the noble Lord looks at the situation, a disproportionate number of Labour Peers kindly made way from their safe Commons seats for an individual of No....
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I join those who warmly congratulate the noble Lord on initiating this debate. I am not one who believes in a major commission, except in so far as it would give the noble Lord many opportunities to present evidence which we would all greatly enjoy. At a time of coalition Government, I do not think that uncharted territory is the time for a fundamental reform. Many of the comments...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, it is a great privilege for me to follow my noble friend, who has indeed been a friend for more than 20 years and a colleague in many settings. The great strength of her contribution today and of her contributions going forward is the breadth of her knowledge and involvement as a really high-flying civil servant. She has worked at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, at...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Lord on introducing this debate. I became a Conservative when working for the Child Poverty Action Group, influenced by a distinguished Jewish politician who had a profound on Margaret Thatcher, the late Lord Keith Joseph. I had written a wonderful paper about family benefit, or child benefit, and how critical it was. He read my paper when I was aged...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend Lord Boswell for his sanity and good judgment. I want to speak about the gap between the last two speakers because this proposed directive is an example of the most irritating and frustrating way in which the European Commission sometimes behaves. It is alienating and irritating and it maddens individuals who are more open-minded than some might...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: I am more sympathetic to the noble Baroness's argument than I am to people who go excessively far in arguing for the financial returns. Frankly, enlightened businesses have gender-diverse boards, so it is very hard to tell what the variable is. However, there is evidence that where governance is weak, female directors exercise strong oversight. They are very good at managing and controlling...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I declare my interests listed in the register, which include being a board member of BUPA. I shall follow the right reverend Prelate by adding the warmest appreciation to the most reverend Primate for his service to us all. In my experience he is a man of deep faith, intellect, wisdom, virtue and modesty. I speak as a lay canon of one of our cathedrals. How delighted I am that he is...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I am honoured to follow the right reverend Prelate. I warmly commend his approach, and that of many of his colleagues, of taking every opportunity available, whatever the topic of debate, to reinforce the arguments for women on the Bishops' Benches. Many of us should follow that example. If we could extend it to the Roman Catholic Church we might really be making progress. I...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: This has been a most exhilarating debate. I hope that the Minister will be able to use this experience to talk to other colleagues in government about why, for example, a non-executive director on a board has to have annual re-election once over 70. Recently, an Oxbridge college appointed a principal who is 72 and the articles of association had to be changed. I declare an interest because...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing time to raise such an extraordinarily important and practical topic. During almost 30 years in this and another place, I have never ceased to take up opportunities to identify the critical importance of mental health. How excellent it is that so many in this House take this topic seriously. In their strategy document entitled No Health...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I am delighted to speak in this debate and warmly congratulate my noble friend Lady Verma on her comments. For many of us in this country, our generation has been one of complete transformation in opportunities for women. It is just over 100 years since the first International Women's Day was celebrated. In that time we have seen the first female Member of Parliament, the first...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I strongly commend the noble Lord for his initiative in bringing forward this practical, concise and important Bill. It was 50 years ago that Enoch Powell talked about putting a torch to the funeral pyre of the great Victorian lunatic asylums. It was also 50 years ago that Erving Goffman, the great American sociologist, talked about stigma theory: the process whereby an individual...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I am delighted to follow the right reverend Prelate and relate to him the advice first given to me when I was one of the two people who planned to speak in this debate along with another former Secretary of State for Health. I look forward to hearing what my noble friend Lord Fowler says towards the end of it. The advice I was given was first to find the chaplain as he will tell you...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, the House is grateful to the noble Lord for identifying a subject that is of such concern that we all wish that this had been an all-day debate rather than just an hour's debate. I share his view that, for all the stakeholders in the debate, the institutional community is not sufficiently well engaged currently and the stewardship code offers a serious opportunity. The fact is that...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I, too, support the amendments of the noble Baroness. My interest is that I appointed her as chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority all those years ago. One of the first Bills for which I had responsibility in Parliament when I was Minister for Health was the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, following the very distinguished report of the noble Baroness,...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, on raising this matter of great importance. I think that all of us greatly respect his commitment to and interest in this issue and the depth of his research and investigations. My earliest involvement in this subject was in the early 1970s when I worked in child guidance clinics in Brixton and Peckham. I was all too aware of the...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I am more than happy to take over from the noble Baroness, who I have regarded as a friend for very many years. If I might give her some words of comfort, in 1997, when my party went into opposition, I was convinced that the Government were municipalising all charities, taking editorial control and providing grants only on the basis that they were silenced. I suspect that it is...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, I am extremely pleased to follow the noble Baroness, because I do not intend to speak on PSHE, although I am confident that the next speaker will discuss the subject. I regard this question as far above my pay grade. My daughter is a gynaecologist. I spent far too many years in another place discussing this ad infinitum. I have a common-sense view and I am unable to embrace the...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, on this important topic. The two of us go back to the years when she was deputy director of social services in Lambeth and I used to sit as the juvenile court chairman—when I was not sitting with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, who was part of yesterday's debate. There are many in this Chamber whose experience and...
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, the noble Lord referred to being dispassionate. I do not feel remotely dispassionate on this subject; I feel passionate about it. I commend the noble Baroness, who has always identified a just cause, for bringing this matter to the House in the footsteps of many other distinguished Members. Long ago, we served together in the juvenile court in Camberwell and Lambeth, and even then...