[John Robertson in the Chair] — Women Entrepreneurs

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 10:30 am on 18 March 2015.

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Photo of George Freeman George Freeman The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health 10:30, 18 March 2015

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to another beacon project that is sending out such a powerful signal to girls and women about opportunities available to them. I am delighted, too, that we allocated a further £20 million in the engineering skills fund to help employers to tackle skills shortages in engineering, including to develop women engineers.

Finally, my hon. Friend made a point about enterprise education. I am delighted to confirm that we are working actively with schools, colleges and higher education institutions to encourage and promote entrepreneurial attitudes and skills training, as well as providing mentors and role models and improving access to finance support.

I want to deal with the questions about child care and women on boards. A number of colleagues asked about child care support. The Government have increased the number of funded hours of free child care from 12.5 to 15 hours a week for all three and four-year-olds, saving families an additional £425 a year per child. Since September 2014 we have funded an additional 15 hours a week of free child care for the 40% most disadvantaged two-year-olds, saving families £2,500 a year per child. We have also increased child tax credit well above inflation to £2,780 a year, which is £480 more a year than at the beginning of the Parliament. All families under universal credit will be able to receive 80% support for child care costs, which is up from 70% under the existing working tax credit system. The introduction of tax-free child care could also save a working family up to £2,000 a year per child. In addition, we have committed an extra £50 million to introduce a new early years pupil premium in 2015-16 to support the most disadvantaged three and four-year-olds to access Government-funded early education. That is important if we are to support our entrepreneurs and innovators in all walks of society and to ensure that entrepreneurship is not the preserve of the well-off.

Women on boards is an important subject. A lot of our entrepreneurial companies do well and go on to become substantial, significant companies quoted on the stock market. We are ensuring that, at that point, women continue in leadership roles. Following Lord Davies’s recommendations in the 2011 “Women on boards” report, the Government are committed to achieving the target he set for the end of 2015 of 25% of FTSE 100 boards being women. We also want to increase the number of women on FTSE 250 boards. The graph that I have in my hands shows a line slowly climbing from 2004 to 2011, but then turning sharply upwards, going from 12.5% of women on the boards of FTSE 100 companies to 20.7% at the end of 2014. We are making a real impact and we must continue to do so. I am delighted that now 22.8% of FTSE 100 board members are women and that women now account for 28% of FTSE 100 non-executive directorships and 8.5% of FTSE 100 executive directorships. There is much more to do, but we are making real progress.