International Women’s Day

Baroness Morrissey Excerpts

Friday 6th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morrissey (Con)]

My Lords and fellow Baronesses, I add my sincere congratulations and a very warm welcome to the five noble Baronesses who have all made such wonderful and inspiring maiden speeches today. I thank the Minister for holding this debate and the House for continuing to mark International Women’s Day every year.

As we have heard, there is still so much to be done, both here in the UK and around the world, to achieve even basic levels of safety and security, as well as opportunity, for women and girls. It is vital that we keep the spotlight on these issues but, of course, actions speak much louder than words, so I applaud so many Members of this House across all Benches for their hard work in so many areas. Collective efforts are absolutely critical, because these issues are far too numerous to be solved by any single person or initiative. Whether we refer to “Give to Gain” or “Rights, Justice, Action”, both those themes are clearly renewed calls to action for all of us.

My own efforts currently focus on encouraging girls to be more ambitious and on helping women fulfil their career potential. I am afraid that, on the latter in particular, we often seem to take one step forward, only then to take one or even two steps back. I know that puzzles many people because, obviously, we know that women are, on average, more highly qualified than men—although not necessarily the men here today.

Companies run plenty of special programmes to help women progress, yet the results speak for themselves. We are going backwards in Britain, certainly in terms of female CEOs. As the noble Baroness, Lady Martin of Brockley, told us in her maiden speech, just eight FTSE CEOs are now women, down from a not-too-high peak of 10 two years ago. Progress is also achingly slow in the broader index and on executive committees. People often describe the problem as one of childcare costs and societal attitudes, but I do not think that that explains it completely. Sweden has had equal parental policies for 50 years, for example, but still just 14% of its CEOs are female; that is the highest of all western nations but, obviously, it is still an awfully long way from parity.

I appreciate that this might not seem to be the most important issue affecting women today, but I believe that a key root cause has much in common with the tragedies and travesties such as Sarah Everard’s murder five years ago and the grooming gangs—which really should be called rape gangs. I believe that that root cause is a pervasive tendency for many people to turn a blind eye to bad behaviours against women.

There is little point in having wonderful corporate programmes to develop women’s careers if at the same time there is a culture of “Hear no evil, see no evil, say no evil”. As Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey put it about the Epstein scandal:

“the very fundamental question … for all of us, is how is it that we live in a society in which this happens—and the cover-up happened as well?”

I want to look specifically at what was said at the time of the appointment of Jes Staley as Barclay’s CEO in 2015. The Daily Mail first ran a story about Staley’s links to Epstein on 25 October 2015, alleging that Epstein had “backed him for the” Barclays CEO job three years previously. Barclays announced Staley’s appointment just two days after the Mail ran its story, with the then chairman describing Staley as

“a man of enormous integrity”,

even though he said he knew him only through the recruitment process.

Four years later, even as the regulators were raising more questions about Staley’s relationship with the convicted sex offender—and after they had fined him over £640,000 for trying to uncover the identity of a whistleblower—a second, new chairman of Barclays did not judge that the Epstein matter warranted a full board discussion. In February 2020, by which point a regulatory investigation was fully under way, Barclays was still insisting that Staley had the board’s “full confidence”. Staley eventually resigned in November 2021 after regulators concluded he had mischaracterised his relationship with Epstein and, as your Lordships will know, he is now subject, finally, to a lifetime ban from UK financial services.

There have been far too many serious misconduct scandals in recent years involving financiers, business leaders and politicians whose behaviours were hidden in plain sight, with people not asking the right or perhaps even any questions. It is hardly surprising that the behaviours persisted, and it should certainly come as no surprise that there are so few women who are willing to stay and battle their way to the top where they might be able to improve things.

Sexism in the City and beyond will never end as long as people turn a blind eye to sexual harassment, but I am more optimistic now that the tide could start to change with the powerful combination of new regulations around “non-financial misconduct” and the restrictions on companies’ use of non-disclosure agreements to cover up bad behaviours as set out in the Employment Rights Act.

There may also be a silver lining from Epstein’s very dark cloud and how it has enveloped so many who were previously regarded for so long as “the great and the good”; that is, that “everybody knew”—and chose to turn a blind eye—really does become a thing of the past. On International Women’s Day, that surely would be something to celebrate.