Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Ada Lovelace Day and Government support for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. Today, many hon. Members will talk about modern women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—or STEM—but I confess that I am mostly interested in the fascinating woman Ada Lovelace.
Ada was born into the nobility in 1815, the child of two very talented parents. Her most famous parent was Lord Byron, while her mother—Lady Annabella—was a gifted mathematician. Lord Byron called his wife the “Princess of Parallelograms” and later, when they fell out, his “mathematical Medea”.
Ada never knew her father, and her education was organised by her mother. She inherited both the mathematical genius of her mother and the creativity of her father. In her early teens, she was distracted from her proper studies by designing a flying machine in the form of a horse with a steam engine inside. She is now best known for working alongside Charles Babbage on his hypothetical computer—the analytical engine.
Ada was a pioneer in computer science. She saw the possibilities of computing when no one else could. She understood technology as not just a set of calculations but a way to unlock creativity and serve humanity. For years, Ada was denied the recognition and credit that she deserved for her insight into the potential of computing. She displayed a grasp of mathematical imagination far beyond that of most of her contemporaries.
However, we know that talent alone is not enough. Innovation needs opportunity, guidance, and room to fail and try again. Too often, women and girls are denied that chance, and with them ideas that could transform our world are lost. How many Ada Lovelaces have we lost because they did not have access to that support? Although she was brilliant, Ada’s achievements did not happen solely as a product of her talent. They were made possible by her position in society and through the efforts of the women around her: by a mother determined to see her educated, by tutors she could access only through her social status, and by the circles she moved in, which led her to her collaborator, Charles Babbage. Even with those advantages, it took remarkable persistence for Ada to be part of that work, and her insight would go unrecognised for generations.
I take a moment to thank Suw Charman-Anderson, who is in the Public Gallery. She is the founder of Ada Lovelace Day and has given me much of her expertise on Ada. This speech would not be possible without her contribution, and in some cases I have used her words directly. I also put on record my thanks for all the work that she has done over many years to promote women in STEM.
Maureen Burke (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend join me in recognising the essential work of student-led groups such as the Women+ in Engineering group at the University of Strathclyde in my constituency? Its members champion and support each other in overcoming the considerable barriers to entry that still remain in the science, technology and engineering industries.
Lizzi Collinge
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Groups such as the Women+ in Engineering group at the University of Strathclyde can do so much to support other women in STEM. I must also put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) for inspiring this debate.
Now, back to Ada—it was her mother, Lady Annabella, who allowed and encouraged Ada to pursue her intellectual passions. Annabella hoped that mathematics would temper whatever dangerous poetical tendencies young Ada might have inherited from her father. Ada was a curious child. At 13 she was designing flying machines. By 15, she had already impressed a man called Augustus De Morgan, a mathematician at the forefront of symbolic logic. He tutored her in maths and logic, exchanging dozens of letters. He even wrote that, had she been a man, she would have had the potential to become
“an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first rate eminence.”
But Ada was a woman and as such, De Morgan believed, like many at the time, that mathematics might simply be too strenuous for her.
Ada had been plagued with health problems—first headaches, then a bout of measles at 13 that left her paralysed. Confined to her bed, she had to relearn to walk at 15, and De Morgan believed that tackling mathematical problems would only exacerbate her frailty. He wrote that
“the very great tension of mind”
that maths problems require is
“beyond the strength of a woman’s physical power of application.”
Ada, of course, ignored him. At a time when women were not allowed to go to university, her academic development relied on a cobbled together series of tutors and mentors. She burned through one tutor’s entire mathematical knowledge in just a few weeks.
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate on a matter close to my own heart. My first job out of university was supporting women into science, technology, engineering and maths. Today, I would like to pay tribute to Georgina Barnard from my constituency. Last month, we opened the institute of technology in Stafford—the best in the country —and she led that project from start to finish. I called to ask her about this debate and what she thinks is most important to help young women get into STEM and face those challenges. From her perspective, it is about supporting young women, from as early an age as possible, to see themselves in those careers. Does my hon. Friend agree with me and Georgina that making sure we have those visible role models is so important?
Lizzi Collinge
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and with Georgina that having role models and mentors is really important. One of Ada’s mentors was a woman called Mary Somerville, a scientist and polymath. It was Mary who introduced Ada to Charles Babbage, whose work would capture her interest and provide the inspiration for her most significant contributions.
Babbage was a professor of mathematics and a celebrity in the scientific world. He was a visionary, with countless unfinished plans for clockwork calculating machines. At the time, his fascination was his latest device, the analytical engine, a proposed improvement on his earlier and uncompleted difference engine. The analytical engine, he said, would be able to perform any calculation set before it, but the patience of his parliamentary sponsors had worn thin. Having funded him to the tune of £1.7 million in today’s money, they refused to finance a second machine while the first was unfinished.
Babbage was therefore forced to look abroad. After he gave a lecture at the University of Turin, the Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea wrote up his notes and published them in French. Charles Wheatstone then suggested that Ada translate them into English, as she was fluent in French and other languages. She showed the translation to Babbage, who was ecstatic, and he suggested that she add her own notes because as he put it, she understood the machine so well.
Ada’s footnotes tripled the paper’s original length, because she understood Babbage’s device, but she also saw further. She rightly saw it as what we would now call a general purpose computer. For Babbage, these machines were nothing more than calculators, but Ada saw past that. She understood that a machine capable of manipulating numbers—and of representing any value, from letters to musical notes—would have a grip on a world beyond mathematical calculation. Crucially, Ada’s vision for computing recognised that technology must be applied for, in her words, “the purposes of mankind.” Technology must serve humanity, not the other way around.
At the time, Ada’s ideas amounted to little more than a vision. Let us remember that she was working in the 19th century, before there were even any functional computers. Her work was not revisited until nearly a century later, when Alan Turing quoted her in his work.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
The Ada Lovelace event held earlier this week in Parliament was an excellent way of highlighting for many of us the importance of women in manufacturing and STEM, but Ada Lovelace was clearly a visionary. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to keep that visionary sense at the heart of all we do when encouraging the next generation of women into STEM? That means encouraging the further education sector to work with businesses and apprenticeship providers, such as In-Comm from Aldridge, whose representatives were at the event.
Lizzi Collinge
I absolutely agree with the right hon. Lady. Having that visionary view of science—looking beyond what is to what could be—is absolutely essential. The providers and the businesses that she talked about are essential to that.
Ada contributed to a debate that is extremely pertinent today when she discussed the possibility of machine intelligence back in the 1800s. She said:
“The Analytical Engine has no pretentions…to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform… Only when computers originate things should they be believed to have minds.”
That is in contrast to Alan Turing’s later thought that computers should be understood in terms of their ability to appear to think. He termed her thoughts “Lady Lovelace’s objection”, which I think is rather beautiful.
What developments would we have seen by now if we had understood earlier the potential that Ada saw? What developments do we still lose out on because we do not see the potential in women? The barriers keeping women and girls back from STEM do not just disadvantage them; they disadvantage all of us. The 2025 Lovelace report, written by Oliver Wyman in collaboration with the organisation WeAreTechWomen, found that the tech industry loses between £2 billion and £3.5 billion every year through a broken career framework that drives out talent, with women bearing the heaviest cost.
Natalie Fleet (Bolsover) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Ada Lovelace’s legacy is absolutely stellar, as everybody points out. I have the slightest link because I was lucky enough to get married in Newstead abbey, her father’s ancestral home—we all want a piece of Ada. Hers is a name that people recognise and her contribution is rightly credited. What concerns me is that the Lovelace report found that
“80% of women surveyed have recently left or are interested in leaving their tech roles”.
As has already been touched on, if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is an absolute travesty that only 20% of people in tech are women, and that we have to work to combat that?
Lizzi Collinge
I absolutely agree that that is a travesty. We are losing women in STEM at a terrible rate, which I will come on to.
The UK has made bold commitments to become a global leader in machine learning and digital technology, but to meet our goals we need to double or triple our workforce capacity in that sector. How can we do that when there is a steady exodus of women from STEM, with approximately 40,000 to 60,000 women each year leaving their tech or digital role? Surface-level takes have attributed that to caregiving responsibilities, but surveys from the Lovelace report found that caregiving was cited in less than 3% of cases. The true culprits are systemic: underpayment, stalled career progression and lack of opportunities for influence and leadership. Surveys show that more than 70% of experienced women pursue extra qualifications, yet 60% still struggle to go into leadership roles. That damages progress and profits.
Evidence suggests that not only do more diverse teams come up with better solutions to problems, but companies with more women in senior leadership roles are more profitable. Change comes through different perspectives, different worldviews and different visions for the future. On vision for the future, the world’s most powerful military, in the Pentagon, is now running a programming language called Ada. That is quite a legacy, and we need to ensure that that legacy is available for future women and girls in STEM.
Finally, I come to my daughter Ada. I want her to see the story of the woman who inspired her name and I want her to know that nobody can tell her what she can or cannot achieve.
Several hon. Members rose—
Gill Furniss (in the Chair)
Order. I remind all Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) on securing this important debate. Some Members may remember a debate that I held a few months ago on the contribution of maths to the UK. There was, I think, cross-party agreement that increasing the quality and uptake of mathematical education will be central to the Government’s growth mission. I will not repeat the arguments I made in that debate, but I will focus on maths today. Historically, it is one of the worst-performing subjects in terms of gender equality, and one where issues emerge long before women reach the leaky pipeline of STEM careers that others may mention today.
The gender imbalance in STEM is not just about fairness; it is about meeting a national need. Jobs in engineering and technology are expected to grow faster than other occupations across the UK through to 2030, yet women make up just 15.7% of the engineering and technology workforce. That is quite stark.
Around the country, excellent work is already being done to increase the participation of women and girls in maths. Yesterday evening, I attended a reception to celebrate the achievements of uMaths, the network of university maths schools that tackles under-representation in STEM through core programmes of maths and further maths A-levels, with university-linked enrichment. One of these schools is Cambridge maths school, which serves my constituency, and which I was delighted to visit earlier this year. Already nearly 50% of the school’s year 13 pupils are female, which is something to be proud of—indeed, it is amazing, considering the national figure on the uptake of maths and further maths A-level is nowhere near that level of parity. More than 10,000 male pupils took A-level further maths in 2023-24, but the number of female pupils taking the subject was less than half that.
Cambridge maths school has clearly made a huge impact simply through its core offerings and ethos, and it is looking to increase support for female students even more. Over the summer, in partnership with the university and Raspberry Pi, it ran a free Girls Enjoy Maths summer school that offered interactive workshops, talks from leading female mathematicians and time to speak to current Cambridge maths school students about their experience. It gave female students a much-needed opportunity to meet role models and see that mathematics does not have to be the masculine-dominated world it may have been for quite a long time. That is vital to increasing participation. Days such as Ada Lovelace Day should not be a historical anomaly. We should be celebrating Ada as much as possible, and I am really glad that we have this debate to do that.
If we are truly to open access to STEM careers to all, I do not think we can rely just on the provision of maths schools that separate students into the STEM versus humanities dichotomy. The Liberal Democrats believe in a broad and balanced approach to the curriculum that gives students, no matter what subjects they study, the skills that they will need in careers that are increasingly technology-driven. That matters particularly to women because research shows that the gender gap opens early—by age 10, only 11% of girls aspire to engineering careers compared with 44% of boys. Between 2019 and 2023 alone, interest in science among 11 to 14-year-old girls declined by 10 percentage points.
Evidence shows that female students are generally more likely to want to study a broader range of subjects than their male peers. It is speculated that it is partly for that reason that the uptake of further maths, a subject that makes one twice as likely to pursue a mathematically intensive STEM degree, is so low. If someone takes further maths, that means filling two of their A-level options with maths, which narrows the opportunity to choose a broader option with more humanities. As a result, many female pupils opt for only single maths, even if they are capable of much more.
Given that suffering from early pigeonholing, the other thing that I would highlight is the opportunity to reskill.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is also an important role for apprenticeships, particularly apprenticeships in the tech sector? There are some excellent apprenticeships of that nature in Reading and the surrounding area. Would he perhaps also offer a few words of support for the Government’s new policy of increasing the number of apprenticeships and setting a much higher target for both apprenticeships and university entrants?
Ian Sollom
I certainly support the increase in apprenticeships; getting more young people on to any course that offers opportunity is ultimately what it is all about, and I look forward to scrutinising the Government’s White Paper on post-16 education when it comes out—in the near term, I believe.
Lifelong opportunities are important as well, giving those people who might have been hampered by the choices they had to make at a young age an opportunity to reskill and join the STEM workforce later in life.
I want to highlight an event happening next week: the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing is co-hosting the Women in Manufacturing 2025 conference in Coventry—a clear recognition by the sector of the importance of breaking down barriers, and of supporting women to enter and progress in manufacturing careers. Breaking down barriers to women’s inclusion in STEM careers also requires cross-departmental thinking, with the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education, and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology all involved with STEM and careers. I hope that promoting such cross-departmental thinking is something that the Minister can commit to today.
Several hon. Members rose—
Gill Furniss (in the Chair)
I am afraid that I now have to limit future speakers to three minutes each.
Jo Platt (Leigh and Atherton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for bringing this important issue to the House for debate today.
As we know, Ada Lovelace Day is a time to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. I am honoured to speak in this debate and to champion women in STEM, in Leigh and Atherton and across the country, and to commit to fostering progress in helping women to thrive in these often male-dominated fields.
I will cut my speech as I go along; I always get a time limit imposed on my speeches. I will talk about some of the work that I did before being elected to this place. I think that it is important to mention my time at Leigh Spinners mill. I am the former manager of the mill, and I would often talk about Ada Lovelace when showing visitors around the heritage looms in the scutching room. The punched cards that were used to automate the weaving of intricate patterns were a key part of the tour. It is often said that they were the inspiration that Ada Lovelace drew upon when developing the idea for the analytical engine, which is widely considered to be the first computer.
Just a few floors up from the scutching room, on the fourth floor of the mill, sits the newly formed Northwest Computer Museum, an interactive showcase of the history of computing. It is a brilliant space that connects our industrial past with our digital future, and Ada Lovelace’s legacy is woven through both.
Remarkably, 80% of the businesses at the mill are still run by women. That is a legacy and a powerful example of strong female leadership. I am extremely proud of that project—this is not the first time I have mentioned it in this House.
We must support pathways that nurture future women entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers and tech leaders—and let us not forget the arts, humanities and creative sectors. That means investing in education, mentorship and inclusive workplaces. It means challenging the stereotypes that tell girls that STEM is not for them. It is not just about gender: class plays a part too. Working-class women are doubly overlooked in elite spaces. When I walk into a meeting, I bring my femininity and my northern working-class spirit with me.
Let me shine a light on two examples of brilliant women driving STEM innovation in Leigh and Atherton. Cat is a leading figure at Leigh Hackspace, a dynamic, collaborative hub, based in the mill, where people passionate about tech, science and digital art come together to create, experiment and inspire. It is a space built on curiosity and community, and it is inspirational to see a woman at the helm of such forward-thinking work.
Then there is Emily Simcox of the ComputerXplorers, which offers children aged three to 13 specialist computer classes, offering an engaging blend of fun and education that is designed to capture the imagination, spark their creativity and prepare them for a tech-driven future—
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I want to say a big thank you to the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for leading the debate. In the short time that she has been here, she has shown herself to be formidable, dedicated and committed. I want to say well done for her excellent speech on this subject—we all enjoyed that.
It is a real pleasure to see the Minister in her place. I do not know about double-jobbing; I think she was a Whip the last time I saw her. I do not know whether she has been elevated or is doing both jobs, but I wish her well.
I will very quickly give a Northern Ireland perspective. I remind everyone that we are all part of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—better together. Because of that, we share ideas about what we do back home and what we do over here, and hopefully we can all learn.
In Northern Ireland in 2021, 59% of students who gained qualifications in the narrow STEM subjects of engineering, technology and computing were male, and 41% were female, so the differential was not too high, but the Department for the Economy has identified other gaps, specifically in engineering and computer science, so there is more to do. Women are often under-represented in many STEM workforce roles—especially technical roles—in Northern Ireland. There are many initiatives in Northern Ireland, some of which have been set up to support women in gaining skills and unlock access to the sector. Organisations such as WOMEN’STEC and the WE Bridge programme at Ulster University provide training and personal development for non-traditional careers, especially in sectors such as construction and IT. Those are not alien to ladies, and they can do those jobs too, so we want to encourage those initiatives.
Careers advice in schools—especially in sixth form—is important. I often hear of younger ones saying that they remember being clear about their options. Their careers advisers in schools from certain employments really helped them to get a steer on the kind of industry that they wanted to be involved in. Back in 2017, I gave a young girl work experience in my office, and she is now a member of my staff. She had the social skills and what was needed to move forward.
If we do not have more female role models in STEM subjects, it is harder for younger women to believe that those pathways are accessible to them. It is all about breaking barriers and providing opportunities at a young age to ensure that progression is possible. It is important that we bring forward encouraging news from all our constituencies.
I will keep exactly to your three minutes, Ms Furniss, so I will conclude with this. We cannot overlook any section of our society, for the future of our economy and the workforce. I believe that we have world-class potential across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; if we want to stay competitive and creative, we must ensure that the opportunities to succeed are open to everyone. I believe that they are in Northern Ireland, and that they can be here too.
Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) so much for securing this important debate.
Other hon. Members have already outlined some fantastic initiatives to encourage women and girls in STEM. Such initiatives are so important. There is one in my constituency, at the all-girls Sandbach high school, which runs an extracurricular club called CAUC—Complete and Utter Chaos—for their female students. To be honest, it does not sound chaotic to me: together they design and build electric cars in the school’s workshop, and then race them against other schools at prestigious circuits around the country, including Silverstone. I have been and it is honestly phenomenal. They have this car building workshop, and it is just incredible.
The aim of CAUC is to inspire and encourage female students to pursue careers in traditionally male-dominated industries. We know that, at the moment, only 14.5% of UK engineers are female. The club looks to expose its students to a unique hands-on learning opportunity and many of them have gone on to do STEM degrees and become engineers and have obtained placements, including with Bentley and an F1 racing team. They are doing great stuff.
There is also the Jodrell Bank observatory in my constituency, which I truly love and have spoken about before—I should mention that a member of my immediate family works elsewhere within the University of Manchester. There are lots of fantastic women at Jodrell Bank doing groundbreaking research and discovery, and I want to recognise that Jodrell Bank has made active efforts to improve the percentage of women using its radio telescope with double-blind evaluation of applications for it. Having done that, female scientists now take up 50% of the telescope’s usage, which is fantastic and what we should all be aiming for.
The point I want the Government to look at is that there is a massive problem with childcare for people doing PhD studentships. I do not regard childcare as exclusively women’s work, nor do I regard it as exclusively their financial cost to bear. None the less, if a person doing a PhD is a young woman wishing to have children, it takes years and it is quite likely to be within a time during which they might want to have kids. At the moment, if they do a fully funded PhD, paid for by the state, they are not eligible for free childcare hours within nursery settings. An average PhD stipend is £15,000, whereas an average full-time nursery place is £12,500 a year. People would be completely unable to live and parent on that sort of money. We should urgently change that. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered radio pulsars during her PhD. We could be losing all kinds of talent by having that restriction.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I thank the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for securing this debate.
Ashley Combe, which sits above Porlock Weir, was Ada Lovelace’s home for many summers. She would walk across west Somerset, admiring its fauna and flora, including the forked spleenwort. There is a famous quote from the late, great Christopher Hitchens:
“The cure for poverty has a name, in fact. It’s called ‘the empowerment of women’.”
It is in that spirit that I speak today.
Despite the rich intellectual legacy Ada has left behind in her summer spot, STEM paths in the area, and in particular the numbers of girls going into STEM, leave much to be desired. The west Somerset part of my constituency, for all its natural beauty, suffers from the country’s lowest social mobility and ranks among the poorest for travel times to employment—at the 96th percentile. In our part of the world, we are hampered by inaccessibility which stifles ambition and aspiration. The development of Hinkley C in the years ahead will lead to inward commuting and a further exacerbation of inequality in transportation.
I laud the fact that Nicola Fauvel has been appointed station director at Hinkley Point C, having migrated from Hinkley Point B, where she became only the second woman to head a British nuclear power station. A cultural sea change was needed, and I know that Nicola has been supported no end by the group chief executive officer for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, David Peattie, and his fantastic team.
Enter the wonderful Ada in Porlock community action group. And I am delighted to say that members from the committee at Ada in Porlock join us here today. Still somewhat in its infancy, having run for just a year and a half, it has been at the heart of a number of community projects. Those initiatives have unveiled the truth that the gap between male and female interest in STEM widens, although the number of STEM students has risen by half in the last five years.
In each generation there is an Ada Lovelace and a Marie Curie. Somewhere out there today is a female scientific savante who does not know it yet. It is that potential force—the potential energy, to borrow from scientific speak—that has not been tapped into to the fullest extent. That is where the wonder lies: the randomness of greatness, the untapped potential of so many. There are more Adas out there. We know it, especially in Porlock in west Somerset—in my beautiful, wonderful constituency.
Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)
I am truly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for securing this debate and for her powerful speech.
One of this debate’s origins was a question raised by a pupil at St Thomas Aquinas school in Kings Norton. They wanted to know what more could be done to improve the share of women and girls in STEM subjects and employment. I hope the fact that we are asking ourselves these questions today will be taken as proof that representations to us as MPs make a difference in Parliament. If more time was available, I would love to talk about the work going on in my constituency to sustain and improve those shares.
Many women other than Ada Lovelace have made foundational contributions to the development of science and mathematics, but there is something that draws us back to Ada Lovelace in particular. Her insights into the possibilities of computing speak to us 200 years on—they seem sometimes to be more of our time than of her own—yet she was also unbound by today’s boundaries between arts, humanities and other subjects. As she wrote in one early letter: “give me poetical science”. Perhaps it was Ada Lovelace’s combination of science and poetry that allowed her to see, in a way that no contemporary did, the true potential of the analytical engine and general purpose computing.
As has been said, Ada Lovelace’s comments on the creative potential and limitations of computing, and her foresight about the power of general purpose programming for the common betterment of mankind, speak in a remarkable way to the debates that we have in this House today. On the question of whether Ada was a true programmer, the fact that the first and famous note G contained a very small bug, and that her periods of intense concentration were followed by occasional intense frustration, will resonate with anyone who has engaged in programming.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale said, we should imagine what might have been accomplished if Ada Lovelace, and uncounted millions before and after, had enjoyed the same formal and informal advantages as men. How many great discoveries in the fields of medicine, manufacturing and technology have been delayed or are still undiscovered because there were not women in the room? Towards the end of her life, Ada Lovelace hoped that she would leave a mathematical legacy; the inspiration that she has left means that that hope is fulfilled.
As my hon. Friend said, this is a time to ask ourselves the famous question, “What should we tell our daughters?”
Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for securing this important debate.
Ada Lovelace Day is an occasion for us all to pay tribute to a trailblazer in the fields of science and technology, and recognise the importance of women who work in those sectors today. Ada was an incredible figure—the first computer programmer—and she remains a role model to many women in STEM careers and girls who aspire to follow them. She leaves behind such an impressive legacy. I hope that we can continue to honour her by empowering more women to get involved in these fields.
This issue is deeply personal to me. Working in the life sciences and technology field prior to entering Parliament, I saw at first hand the tremendous skills and knowledge that women provide in this field, but I also saw the difficulties women face in pursuing a career in what remains a male-dominated sector. As chief executive of a company in the science and technology field, I boosted the number of female staff working in the company to more than 50%, and all my senior leadership team were women. I am also a father of three girls, two of whom are chemists, so I recognise the importance of women working in science.
Currently, women make up less than 30% of the STEM workforce. That is why I welcome the Government’s industrial strategy, which aims to increase women’s representation in the sector to 35% by 2035. I also welcome the equality charter set out by the Government, which ensures that firms’ diversity data is publicly available. It is disappointing that previous Governments failed to capitalise on this issue. I am reassured by the Government’s approach and intention to unleash the skills, abilities and passions that many women have in this field.
As we remember Ada, let us appreciate her efforts as an inspirational figure for women in STEM, let us recognise the dedication, passion and the resilience of many women in STEM today, and let us commit to educating, training and employing many more women in STEM.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for securing this debate—she beat me to it; I am absolutely delighted.
It is wonderful to be here to speak in this debate commemorating Ada Lovelace Day, which was earlier this week, and was founded by Suw Charman-Anderson—it is wonderful to see her sitting in the Public Gallery. Ada Lovelace was the world’s first computer programmer—a woman who saw long before her time that technology could be both analytical and creative. She reminds us that progress in science depends not just on logic, but on imagination—on putting the “a” for arts in STEAM, because when creativity meets science, innovation truly thrives.
It would be remiss of me not to mention that I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for diversity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and the APPG on financial technology. I also speak today as the founder of Labour: Women in Tech, a network that brings together women from across the tech sector—and our male allies, which is super important—to push to get more women into the tech sector. We certainly need progress.
I am going to talk at a rate of knots. The recent Lovelace report, published by WeAreTechWomen and Oliver Wyman, found that the UK’s tech sector is losing between £2 billion and £3.5 billion because women are leaving the industry or being pushed into non-technical roles. That is a huge waste of talent and potential. Keeping women in tech is not just a question of fairness; it is about what is right for the economy and for innovation. When women are not in the room, the consequences show. Too often, products and systems that are designed mainly by men deliver the best for men—from voice-recognition software that fails to understand women’s voices to health apps that ignore women’s biology and car safety testing still based on the male body. If we want technology for everyone, it must be designed by everyone.
Right across the country there are great organisations such as InnovateHer, Stemettes, Tech She Can and Code First Girls to name just a few, which have been fighting for change for years in this field, mentoring, training and inspiring the next generation. They deserve our thanks and continued support. It was wonderful to be asked to be on the front row at the Labour party conference recently as the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology announced that she was creating a women in tech taskforce. That is a real step forward, and I look forward to it being resourced and empowered to deliver.
The priorities are clear: we need inspiration and education of the next generation, and existing people who would perhaps like a career switch; greater transparency on gender data; action to retain women mid-career; incentives for firms to embed inclusion in design and innovation; and an intersectional approach that recognises every barrier of race, class, disability and sexuality. Ada Lovelace taught us that imagination is the engine of invention, and if we apply the same imagination to how we build our industries, we will create not only fairer workplaces but better technology, and deliver greater economic growth for Britain.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) and many others have so expertly touched on Ada Lovelace’s story, I thought I might—with your indulgence, Ms Furniss—touch on another champion of 19th-century science who has always inspired me: Mary Anning, a pioneering palaeontologist renowned for her significant geological discoveries on the Dorset coast. Mary’s findings heavily influence how scientists now understand prehistoric life. She discovered the first complete plesiosaur skeleton—she could say it better than I could—and the ichthyosaurus, but she was held back from the proper recognition she so badly deserved because she was working class, because she was uneducated and because she was a woman.
I have always been inspired by her story, and I know that many girls and women across the country have too, including Bracknell’s all-girls robotics team, the RealTech Bots, who were crowned world champions at the FIRST Lego League international open earlier this year. The team, made up of school pupils aged between nine and 15, beat 96 teams and 11 countries, flying the STEM flag for Bracknell and the UK, and we are all extremely proud of them.
According to BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, if we continue at our current rate, it will take women 283 years to make up an equal share of the tech workforce. Given the rapid development of AI and the fact that it is ultimately shaped by its designers, this lack of diversity should worry us all. That is why it is so important that the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology has set up a new women’s tech taskforce to, in her words—because the words of a woman here are more important than mine—
“finally smash those glass ceilings. Because Britain’s future shouldn’t just be shaped by the Tech Bros in Silicon Valley but our Tech Sisters—right here, in the UK.”
While other parties are arguing against diversity initiatives, it is important that this Government are recognising that economic growth must be underpinned by shared economic benefits to everyone.
Finally, I turn to the remarks made by the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) and others about the important intersection between Ada’s mathematical legacy and the arts that so influenced her. She often blended mathematics with art, predicting the use of computers in music and visual art, as well as other things. She wrote:
“We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
Several hon. Members rose—
Gill Furniss (in the Chair)
There are three more Members left to speak, and I can only allow two minutes each, if we are to get everyone in.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to be here and to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for securing the debate.
We are here to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day—a day to celebrate women in STEM across the country and across the world. When I spotted this debate on the Order Paper, I was reminded of 12 July last year, when I received a Facebook message, of all things, from a former pupil— I have no idea how she found me. She had just that day passed out, getting her doctorate in astrophysics, and had placed a note in the acknowledgements section of her thesis thanking me
“for being so inspiring and enthusiastic…and planting the seed by asking me the all-important question once after a class: Have you ever considered studying astrophysics at university?”
That does not sound like an exact quote—I suspect there was possibly more sarcasm when I said it—but it made me reflect on the fact that we should never miss the opportunity to ask such a question of a young person.
We need to go further and faster. We need women working in STEM and women teaching STEM. We also need to change the way we do this. We need to talk about adjectives, not just verbs. We need to talk about the beauty of mathematics. It is hard to describe to a non-mathematician, but it is so beautiful. We need to talk about the creativity of physics. We need to talk about how caring some of the life sciences can be. We need to talk about the adjectives, not just the verbs.
We also need to make sure we have a cross-governmental response to encourage more people into STEM. It is the Department for Transport, DSIT, the Department for Work and Pensions and further afield. We need parity of esteem for vocational courses in STEM. We need access to triple sciences for more kids, not just the highest achievers. We need the measures in the Employment Rights Bill. We need the women’s tech taskforce. Here’s hoping that, soon, every day can be Ada Lovelace Day.
Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for giving us all the opportunity on Ada Lovelace Day to celebrate not just a brilliant mathematician but a trailblazer who, remarkably early, smashed a glass ceiling and proved that women could and should shape the future of science and technology. Ada wrote the first algorithm for a computing machine in the 19th century. Imagine that: while many were telling women to stick to sewing, she was coding the future. That message is so important for every young girl to hear, so that they dream big.
I speak as someone who spent 25 years teaching chemistry, encouraging girls to explore their natural intellectual curiosity and excel in STEM with confidence. Unfortunately, over the years I have also seen talent stunted not by ability but by stereotypes and lack of role models. Too often, brilliant girls quietly sideline themselves from physics or computing because culture says that it is not for them—well, I have always said nonsense to that.
Research by the Royal Society shows that the scale of the challenge continues. Interest in science among girls in years 7 to 9 has dropped from 75% to 65%, while boys’ interest remains steady. We must continue to challenge and tackle gender inequality and the enormous barriers faced by girls, especially those from working-class backgrounds.
Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)
I think we will need a longer debate next year. I am hugely positive about our technological future, but I also recognise that we are grappling with serious questions that will define our future. Like it or not—trust it or not—information technology defines our age. There is not an off switch, and it is a dereliction of duty to pretend that there is, or to blithely insist that we can roll it back or that halting progress would mean that we somehow protect a version of our lives. If we do not endeavour to understand and take control of this industrial revolution like we mastered the last one, it will inevitably assert unacceptable influence over our lives and our national sovereignty.
Ada Lovelace’s legacy presents profound opportunities for us all, but there are risks that we must mitigate. Those risks are undeniable, but there are benefits to the industrial revolution that we are living through. We must all work together to ensure that Ada’s computational legacy benefits all, with women and girls, and diverse communities, included by design, not as an afterthought. That is why I was so proud to support my constituents Hazel McPherson and Jess Matthews to develop a national first in Weston-super-Mare: the CSIDES coastal cyber event at our awesome conference venue, the Grand Pier. Hazel and Jess brought internationally renowned cyber experts to join over 300 local business leaders and educators and 80 students to talk about cyber knowledge and resilience. Cyber is not just for the city—it is for the seaside as well. Such events are how we embody the spirit of Ada Lovelace, how we innovate and how we engage our communities—nothing about us, without us.
If the UK hopes to fulfil the ambition of the AI opportunities action plan, we have a lot of work to do to encourage women into STEM. BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, found in its annual gender diversity report, which will be published next week, that if gender representation in the tech sector was equal to the workforce norm, there would have to be an additional 530,000 women working in the UK’s tech sector. The gap is huge, and closing it will take a whole-system approach from schools, apprenticeships, universities and lifelong learning. There is loads more to say, but I have run out of time.
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) on securing this fantastic debate marking Ada Lovelace Day, which I am delighted to contribute to as the Lib Dem spokesperson for science, innovation and technology, and the daughter of a woman who studied engineering. In today’s increasingly technological world, Ada’s vision is more relevant than ever, and it is vital that we celebrate her achievements and the opportunities they continue to inspire.
In honouring Ada Lovelace’s legacy, we must also confront the challenges that have been put forward during the debate. In 2024, for every woman working in STEM there were three men. Women are less likely to be encouraged to study physics at school, to start coding or to pursue engineering at university. There may have been an upward trend in the proportion of women in STEM, but the workforce is still not equal. Stereotypes in education, lack of female role models and biases at university act as systemic barriers to inclusion for women in STEM, as many Members have mentioned.
As has also been mentioned, failing to empower women in STEM is a loss not just for women, but for all of us, and for science, innovation and the economy. That is why, when I started a tech company, the very first thing I did was look for mentors, because I felt that I could not do it without them. It was by interviewing and talking to so many great women that I felt inspired and able to move forward.
Ada Lovelace stands as a shining example of a woman who shattered barriers, paving the way for modern science and innovation. However, far too many women like her have been erased from history. Rosalind Franklin’s image of DNA was crucial, yet the Nobel prize for that discovery went to three men. Esther Lederberg made breakthroughs in genetics that were overshadowed by her husband’s receipt of the Nobel. Dorothy Hodgkin’s scientific achievement was reported in the press under the headline “Oxford housewife wins Nobel”. She remains the only British woman to win a science Nobel prize. That is not good enough. The instrumental role of women in STEM needs to be celebrated everywhere.
Rothamsted Research in my constituency of Harpenden and Berkhamsted stands as a strong example of inclusion. Pioneers like Katherine Warington and Winifred Brenchley, who worked at Rothamsted Research, are considered the first women in the UK to break into the field of agricultural science. It has been wonderful to hear about so many women’s initiatives from Members in the debate today.
However, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) mentioned, in 2014 the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee stated that the lack of women in STEM was a “leaky pipeline”. Women have the talent and want to pursue a career in STEM, but along that journey, systemic forces push them out at every stage of their career. More than a decade on, the problem remains. We must recognise that more must and can be done to fix the leak of female talent.
We need to start challenging the core assumptions that push women out of STEM. For example, as the hon. Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) mentioned, childcare policy must be reformed so that nobody has to choose between a career and starting a family. Doubling the statutory rate of shared parental leave would be a significant start. The Liberal Democrats’ policy of six weeks’ use-it-or-lose-it leave for each parent at 90% of earnings would support women who want to work. In the long term, a committed vision of universal childcare is a lasting solution that would break down those barriers.
It is not just childcare. Awfully, a UNESCO report stated that women in STEM are more likely to be a target of gender-based violence and sexism than those in other fields. We need stronger protections for women. More must also be done to include women and under-represented groups. As was mentioned by the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), we need better transparency on pay gaps and progression in the workplace. We need stronger support and career guidance from primary school onwards so that girls are always taught that women are in STEM. This also means talking about women in STEM that history has forgotten. Days like Ada Lovelace Day, International Women’s Day and the International Day of Women and Girls in Science are important. They start crucial and wonderful conversations like the one we are having today. They allow us to reflect not just on what women are doing today, but what women have done in the past.
It is important to take these opportunities to push back and show that not enough has changed. There are still gaps that need to be filled to ensure that women are able to fulfil their potential. From Ada Lovelace to the countless women who have made significant contributions, history reminds us that barriers, not ability, have held women back in STEM. As my party’s spokesperson for science, innovation and technology, and the proud female MP for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, I want to ensure that every woman in the UK can imagine herself at the forefront of discovery and innovation. I look forward to working with the Government on such issues. By breaking down these barriers today, we can honour the pioneers of the past and empower the scientists, engineers and innovators of tomorrow.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I feel I should donate some of my minutes to some of the other hon. Members present, who, by the time they had finished their contributions, had effectively given a rap to the audience. [Laughter.] It was highly skilled. I loved the potted, warm biography of Ada Lovelace and the tribute to her own beautiful daughter by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge). I was glad to hear of another father who has three girls, including chemists. My dad has three girls, but unfortunately one of them became an MP rather than a scientist—and this MP has not even got the brainpower to remember everybody’s constituency names, so I apologise.
This morning I had the special privilege of visiting the Royal Society in St James’s, and I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of its incredible archive. Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is the world’s oldest continuously existing scientific academy. It was established by natural philosophers and physicists, including Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle. Its motto, “Nullius in verba”—“Take nobody’s word for it”—reflects the commitment to evidence and experimentation that has defined British science for over three and a half centuries. Archivist Keith Moore brought out the most incredible selection of gems, including the society’s founding register, which has the original signatures of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Francis Crick and Stephen Hawking. It is simply extraordinary.
The first female signature comes only after 1945, the point at which women could be admitted as fellows. Since then the register has included the Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin, who revealed the structure of penicillin; Dame Anne McLaren, whose research laid the foundations for IVF; and Dame Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford scientist behind the covid vaccine. Margaret Thatcher, a chemistry graduate, is also listed, and this month we mark her centenary. These are utterly remarkable scientists, who stand on their own merits and happen to be female. Keith also shared with me a letter from Ada Lovelace herself, who happened to be born at the wrong time to be admitted as a fellow. It reads:
“You were quite right to make your letter mathematical. I can understand that language better than any other.”
Today, we mark Ada Lovelace Day, not only to highlight women’s contributions to science, but as an opportunity to encourage more women into STEM—and my goodness, what can be achieved by them if we do. Just recently, I found myself walking in the middle of a three-carriageway road junction next to the M25 as the junction 28 works neared completion. My guide was an inspirational young female engineer, around 30 years old. She had completed a degree apprenticeship in civil engineering, gone straight into the workplace and was now building the bridges and roads that impact thousands of my constituents’ journeys daily. That is a practical, clear example of success in getting women into STEM careers. Other examples have been cited today, including that of women in nuclear technology by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour).
Right now, however, there are too many young people leaving university to a very tough job market. At the same time, too many employers in STEM industries are wondering how to get people with the right skills into their businesses. We have to get much better at matching those two challenges so they can solve one another.
Since 2010, successive Conservative Governments have worked on those challenges. Education reforms have raised standards, with a focus on maths, science and a knowledge-rich curriculum. Apprenticeships have been expanded, the apprenticeship levy introduced and skills bootcamps launched to support retraining in digital and technical skills. In my constituency, New City college has been awarded a prestigious accreditation as a STEM centre of excellence with strong industry partnership. I also have local job fairs to match companies such as AstraZeneca to young jobseekers in my constituency—other Members, including those elected in 2024, may wish to do that as they get more experienced.
We have things such as the Women in Innovation programme to support hundreds of female entrepreneurs, with women-founded tech firms raising £3.6 billion in 2022. The STEM ambassadors network reaches thousands of schools, providing role models in science and tech. The STEM returners programme helps women resume careers after a break, which has been discussed by a number of hon. Members. Indeed, the hon. Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) made an excellent point about free childcare for PhD students. I fully understand as a working mother the unbelievable costs of childcare but had not been aware of the issue in relation to PhDs. Will the Minister touch on that? We also have the Turing scheme, which funds international placements for students in STEM subjects, and we have heard about many other initiatives today.
The former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), made mathematics a personal focus, recognising numeracy as the foundation of opportunity. The importance of maths was also referenced by the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom). There are still challenges, however, and we have heard some of the stats today, including from the Lovelace report and those cited by the Royal Society, which show the disparity between girls and boys in their interest in STEM subjects.
Teacher recruitment in STEM subjects is an enduring challenge. The hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) highlighted an example where he had provided inspirational leadership to a student simply by asking whether they had considered going into astrophysics at university. That is an incredibly insightful moment. What steps are the Government taking to get inspiring science and maths teachers into the classroom to encourage the next generation of female scientists and mathematicians?
I am also keen to know what is being done to combat youth unemployment, especially among graduates, and on a new skills policy to match skills gaps, especially for those seeking to work in STEM subjects. Also, what are the Government doing to make sure that, in the long term, we retain our position as a leading science and technology nation, especially in the life sciences? We have seen particular challenges in that area in recent weeks, with the loss of important investments such as that of Merck in King’s Cross.
From Ada Lovelace’s letter in the Royal Society archive to that young engineer I met building our infrastructure, I have seen what incredible scientists and engineers can do. I hope we will see many more young women with fantastic science and tech careers ahead of them, who will utilise their talent not just for themselves but for the good of others.
Jade Botterill (Ossett and Denby Dale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss, and to respond on behalf of the Government for the first time in such an inspiring debate.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) for securing today’s important debate. Her touching tribute highlighted many things about Ada Lovelace’s pioneering spirit. A daughter of the arts, she studied widely and passionately and grew up to become the mother of an entire field. Without her insight into the possible applications for computers, who knows where we would be today? An 1836 portrait of Ada proudly graces the walls of No. 10, but her legacy is about much more than a picture hanging on a wall. It is a legacy of determination, achievement and inspiration that we should honour by giving women and girls every opportunity to follow in her trailblazing footsteps.
I thank all hon. Members for their powerful contributions today. It was good to hear about the girls enjoying maths summer schools in the constituency of the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), and about working-class women like Cat and Emily; I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) that northern women are some of our very best. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), who has spent much of her time in this place championing women in tech. I may not be a woman in STEM, but I am a woman in politics, and there are nowhere near enough of us in this profession either. It is great to see so many women in this Chamber giving this issue the debate that it deserves, and I am proud to see some of our male colleagues supporting us too.
Gender equality in STEM is not just about fairness, but about unlocking the full potential of our society. As this room shows, when women and girls are empowered to lead in any field, we gain richer perspectives, stronger teams and smarter solutions. STEM must reflect the world that it seeks to improve. It is wrong that women made up only 16.5% of the engineering workforce in 2024, and that only 22% of those in occupations developing artificial intelligence were women. That is especially troubling as we celebrate the legacy of Ada Lovelace, a pioneer in the field. A report by the Royal Academy of Engineering notes that more diverse and inclusive research teams in the United States generated 121% more patent citations than those that were not diverse—clear evidence that we work better when we work together.
Diversity in tech is not just about fairness, however, nor is it a question of patent citations. It is estimated that £2 billion is lost annually as a result of women leaving the tech sector or changing jobs because of barriers to their work. The reality is simple: talent exists everywhere, but opportunities in the tech sector do not reach everyone equally. That is why the Government fully support increasing the number of women in STEM and supporting those who already work in those areas to thrive.
That work begins in schools. The Department for Education supports a range of initiatives, including the I Belong programme and the advanced maths support programme, which aims to improve girls’ progression into advanced maths post 16, and which received £18.2 million in investment from this Government in May this year. That sits alongside our groundbreaking new £187 million tech skills programme, TechFirst, which creates the opportunities to inspire tech talent from early school age to entering the industry and beyond.
The Government support women who currently work in STEM roles in the civil service. The Government science and engineering profession is working to help women with peer support and mentoring specifically targeted at those working in science in Government. This work unites Government. A recent series of talks by women scientists about their work in the public sector attracted over 1,400 attendees from 55 Departments across Government.
It is important to recognise the work of our arm’s length bodies in supporting women in STEM. For example, UK Research and Innovation encourages participation through the STEM ambassador programme—a network of over 28,000 volunteers, about half of whom are women, that reaches more than 3 million young people each year. The brilliant CREST awards recognise pupils undertaking project work in STEM subjects, with more than 50,000 young people in the UK gaining an award each year.
It is important to mention the great work of Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, which supports women in the process of creating ideas through to commercialising products, providing targeted funding, mentorship and opportunities for women entrepreneurs and researchers. Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation programme has increased the number of women-led applications from one in seven to one in three, and an exciting new competition for Women in Innovation awards will open next year.
The UK’s national academies also play a part in encouraging and supporting women in STEM, with the Royal Academy of Engineering working closely with partners across the sector to address the persistent under-representation of women and other groups in the engineering workforce. The academy’s diversity impact programme, inclusive leadership programme and Culture+ platform all help to foster inclusivity in what has traditionally been a male-dominated field.
However, we know that there is much more to do. The fabulous female Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology was clear in her conference speech that one of her top priorities is getting more women into tech, and she has announced a brand-new women’s tech taskforce with BT Group’s Allison Kirkby and the Stemettes founder Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon. The taskforce will bring together leading voices from across industry to identify interventions for Government and industry to attract and retain more women in the sector.
Crucially, women in tech are also women in the workplace—women who are being supported by new rights on gender pay gap publishing, protections for pregnant workers and an ongoing consultation on mandatory menopause action plans. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) has already beaten me to this line, but together this work will ensure that progress and innovation is led by more tech sisters right here in the UK, not just tech bros in silicon valley.
In conclusion, I pay tribute to all the women in STEM who have pushed the boundaries of knowledge in our societies forward, which of course includes Ada Lovelace herself, whose pioneering work forms the basis of so much of the technology that we use today. I reiterate the Government’s support for the women who are currently working to make the United Kingdom a scientific powerhouse and encourage those currently in education to follow in their footsteps. Women in STEM is not just a slogan; it is thousands of girls in classrooms right across the country and countless women working across the sector as we speak. From listening to all the passionate contributions today, it is clear how we as leaders have a role to play in inspiring the next generation of women and girls in science, technology, engineering and maths. The talent is there in schools and laboratories across our country, and this Government are committed to unlocking its full potential.
Lizzi Collinge
I thank colleagues across the House for their wonderful contributions. I am very pleased to welcome our visitors from Ada in Porlock and of course Suw Charman-Anderson, the founder of Ada Lovelace Day, along with others who have travelled here today.
We heard from the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) that maths is the worst topic for gender inequality—an inequality that opens up very early—and I am thankful to him for highlighting solutions. I also want to highlight the work of the Good Thinking Society on identifying talented mathematicians at a young age and nurturing them. We have heard today about many such excellent schemes across the whole of the UK, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out, but the question is how to link them up, including with museums such as the Northwest Computer Museum, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) mentioned.
I was fascinated to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) about the Complete and Utter Chaos team at Sandbach high school building EVs at school. We also heard about Bracknell’s RealTech Bots and about Hazel and Jess at CSIDES in Weston. We heard more fascinating facts about Ada from the hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), but also about the practicalities needed to truly realise potential, such as financial equality and transport access.
My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner), for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) and for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) spoke of Ada’s belief in poetical science and the false split between science and humanities. We heard about hon. Members’ personal and professional experience of boosting women in STEM from my hon. Friends the Members for Mansfield (Steve Yemm), for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) and for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge), as well as the need for good role models. My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) also made excellent points about realising the full potential of this new industrial revolution.
All those contributions have showed the strength of support across this House for Government support for women in STEM. They show that women’s potential is not being realised, just as Ada’s was not, and that that is damaging our country and our economy. It was an absolute pleasure to welcome the Minister to her place, and I am very grateful to her for outlining how this Labour Government are supporting women in STEM, and how together we will make sure that no future Adas are lost.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Ada Lovelace Day and Government support for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.