International Women’s Day

Julie Minns Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

We have had an excellent debate, with so many brilliant contributions, but I would like to single out three in particular. The hon. Member for Gorton and Denton (Hannah Spencer) made a brilliant maiden speech. I am sure she will continue to make many colourful and inspiring contributions in her years ahead in this place, and it is always a joy to welcome another northern woman to the Chamber.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) should pick whatever lane she would like—I will gladly follow. The important thing is that she keeps driving ahead.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) reminded us that whatever our differences, we always have more in common than that which divides us. Madam Deputy Speaker, you were not in the Chair for her remarks, when she talked about strike action by women, but I caution the three Deputy Speakers not to go on strike, as I really dread to think what would happen to this place—with the greatest respect to Mr Speaker.

I put on record my thanks to my senior caseworker Megan Redhead who week in, week out strives to deliver great results and improve the lives of the people of Carlisle. In the last couple of weeks, she has achieved the most remarkable outcome for one woman in Carlisle in particular.

It is my privilege in this International Women’s Day debate to speak about another remarkable woman: Angela Burdett-Coutts, an overlooked figure from the Victorian era whose compassion, generosity and determination helped shape modern philanthropy. She was a woman who embodied “Give to Gain”. She was born on 21 April 1814 in Piccadilly, the youngest daughter of Sir Francis Burdett and Sophia Coutts. She inherited not only her family’s name but, in 1837, her grandfather Thomas Coutts’s immense banking fortune, making her one of the wealthiest women in England.

Burdett-Coutts, deeply influenced by leading social reformers including Charles Dickens, with whom she collaborated for many years, dedicated her fortune to education and tackling poverty and social injustice, earning her the name “Queen of the Poor”. Her philanthropy was extraordinary in its breadth: she helped to fund ragged schools, built model housing in the east end and developed the Columbia Market to bring wholesome but affordable food to the poor. She co-founded innovative projects such as the Urania Cottage, a home for vulnerable and homeless women seeking a new start in life.

In 1884, Burdett-Coutts co-founded the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which later became the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. She championed the protection of animals, becoming president of the ladies’ committee of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and commissioned the fountain and commemorative statue of Greyfriars Bobby. Her humanitarianism reached far beyond Britain, endowing bishoprics in Cape Town, Adelaide and British Columbia. Back home, she funded drinking fountains and animal troughs right across London. She also financed Charles Babbage’s early computing efforts and contributed significantly to hospitals and churches.

I first came across Angela Burdett-Coutts when I discovered that she had funded the building of St Stephen’s church in Carlisle in 1864. Having learned that she had financed the new St Stephen’s church in Westminster—just a stone’s throw from this place—the then Bishop of Carlisle wrote to her to inquire whether she would fund the building of a new church in one of Carlisle’s poorest areas, Wapping. Not only did she agree, and personally select the stained glass for the church, but she gifted a peal of eight bells, which on the church’s demolition in the 1960s were installed in the new St Elisabeth’s church in Harraby, where they remain to this day. In 1871, Queen Victoria recognised Angela Burdett-Coutts’s immense contributions by granting her a peerage, making Baroness Burdett-Coutts one of the few women of her era to receive such an honour in her own right.

Like all female pioneers, Angela Burdett-Coutts was unafraid to challenge convention. Possessing considerable wealth, she was beset by suitors. Many men proposed marriage to Miss Coutts, and she declined all of them. She did, however, propose marriage to her friend and adviser the Duke of Wellington when he was 79 and she was 33; he gently declined her. But that was nothing to the scandal her eventual marriage caused. When she was 66, she married a 29-year-old American, William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett. In doing so, she not only caused an outrage in Victorian society, but she triggered a clause in the will of her grandfather’s second wife, which stipulated that she must marry an Englishman, and in doing so lost much of her multimillion pound fortune.

Since discovering Angela Burdett-Coutts, I have mused not just on how stories such as hers deserve to be more widely known, but on how we should celebrate the female philanthropists and changemakers who did so much for people and wider society. So in closing, I invite you, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Minister and all colleagues from across House to support not simply a statue or a plaque to female changemakers, but to support an audible celebration, featuring the Coutts bell from St Stephen’s church Carlisle, in a new national monument to the social change that women like Angela Burdett-Coutts and so many who we have heard about today have made possible.