Speeches by Brewer.

“You talked about the industrial strategy being the main vehicle for driving this change and the economic benefit that could result, yet the industrial strategy did not mention women once. Do you think it should have?”

“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…”

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

“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…”

“Where you are saying it has not been called out separately, I am saying put it front and centre. We have a £250 billion economic growth opportunity here, which is potentially vast for the whole country and will benefit men, women, and our economy as a whole. I am struggling to understand why this is not front and centr…”

“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.”

“Would it make a difference if the British Business Bank had a specific strategic objective of increasing the amount of equity invested in female entrepreneurs from, say, 2% to 10% by 2030, or something like that?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“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?”

“Thank you all for your time today. Ministers, all-female teams received just 1.75% of UK equity investment in 2025, down from 2% in the previous two years. Why do you think the Government’s stated commitment to women-led businesses has not led to an increase in the proportion of equity invested in them?”

“I would argue that giving women equal opportunity in business is not self-righteous, but I hear you. You have talked about interventions and the Government have said they will, “Not rule out interventions if investment in women founders fails to improve.” Given that investment has declined, what new interventions are t…”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“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…”

“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?”

“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…”

“No, I understand that.”

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

“Given this culture of secrecy, how can we start to address this?”