Speeches by Brewer.

“I want to follow up on your comment about focusing on growing the whole economy and then addressing the inequalities if they still persist with female-led businesses. I just want to push back on this slightly, because the evidence shows that investing in female-led businesses will grow the economy. I am struggling to u…”

“I understand that, but the figures would imply that the current investors are seeing that, to use your word, “self-evident” best place as being male-led businesses in 98% of cases, which I fundamentally believe could not possibly be the case.”

“Thank you. Kristen, if I can come to you. What proportion of the bank’s finance went to supporting female entrepreneurs in 2025?”

“Are you confident then that meaningful change can be achieved without a dedicated Minister or office responsible for addressing the structural failures that are hampering female entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs of colour, and so on?”

“You talked about this being a structural problem, a vast and widening inequality and about making interventions that would proactively address this. The implication there is that those would need to be explicit, yet this is not explicitly mentioned in the industrial strategy. Therefore I am going to ask again, do you s…”

“No, I understand that.”

“This has been fascinating; thank you all. Zoe, do you think age diversity and inclusion features strongly enough in our EDI strategies, given high youth unemployment and the UK’s ageing workforce and the opportunities and challenges those bring?”

“Do you think there should be equal pay legislation?”

“Ama, I wonder if this is an area that you address in your business and what the key features of an effective approach to maximising the benefits of a multi-generational workforce might be.”

“I do not want to labour the point, but I want to dig a little into your evidence around that £10 billion. You mentioned several court cases—including a pay dispute case with Asda—as costing those companies money and contributing to an EDI cost. Given that this is legislation based on the Equal Pay Act and that those ca…”

“Given that the retirement age is 67, if the definition is 50-plus and if you take the first 17 years as you being a younger worker, there is not much left in the middle, is there?”

“I want to briefly address learning disability because it is very much at the bottom of everyone’s pile of things to look at when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Only 6% of people with a learning disability are in any kind of paid employment, and this has been the case for a very long time; it is an intractable pro…”

“Yes. How could that be encouraged and brought in?”

“Interesting, thank you. Nina, have you seen any other wage gaps around ethnicity, disability or anything like that?”

“I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. As the representative for North East Hampshire, I know all too well the premium that many rural households face when it comes to bills and expenses. Rural households already have a really heavy burden, as he has outlined, including higher rates of fuel poverty,…”

“Potentially, does a national body or something like that need to be set up?”

“Interesting, thank you. Rachael, do you think the comedy sector is accessible to people from working-class backgrounds?”

“That is interesting, thank you. Are there any other barriers or difficulties that different groups might find that we have not covered in this section?”

“That leads nicely to my questions. In the interests of time I am going to ask each question to one person, but if any of you want to add to it please just indicate. Ola, digging into the gender pay gap a little, do you think there is a gender pay gap in the live comedy sector?”

“So, it is likely there.”