International Women’s Day Q&A with Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development NOW CLOSED TO NEW QUESTIONS

[JustineMumsnet]

[EDITED BY MNHQ: Questions have now been collated and sent over - new questions may not be answered]

Hello all,

We’re very pleased to announce a Q&A with Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development and Minister for Women and Equalities.

Please post your questions on this thread by lunchtime on Wednesday March 6. We’ll send on a selection to the Minister and we will post up written answers from Penny on this thread this coming Friday (March 8), International Women’s Day.

In her role as Secretary of State for International Development, Penny Mordaunt oversees DFID’s work ending extreme poverty overseas, including programmes focused on girls’ education and women’s health. DFID has been in the news recently, facing calls for its budget to be spent partly on encouraging projects that would aid British business overseas, and for it to be folded into the Foreign Office instead of being a standalone department.

In her role as Minister for Women and Equalities, Penny is also responsible for work including gender pay gap reporting and possible changes to the law concerning gender recognition.

Penny campaigned for Brexit in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum and is a Royal Naval Reservist. She has previously been Minister of State for Disabled People and Minister of State for the Armed Forces.

Please add your questions for Penny here by Wednesday lunchtime. And although it’s not a live webchat please stick to the spirit of our webchat guidelines and keep it civil.

If one topic is overwhelmingly dominating responses we might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. Rest assured we will ALWAYS make the recipient aware that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Thanks
Justine

Nb existing members will be able to post on this thread. Thanks.

RowanMumsnet

Any chance of being a bit more specific? Are we talking 10 minutes or an hour?

@Datun

RowanMumsnet

Any chance of being a bit more specific? Are we talking 10 minutes or an hour?

Ah no sorry - more like some point today

Ah okay.

Cheers.

Keep in mind that Penny lives on Venus, so a day is 2784 hours hours long.

Penny's built up too much suspense now - it's like waiting for the release of a totally hyped up movie only to be utterly let down when you finally get to see it and discover that it's total pants.

She's either going to say something significant, because otherwise what's the hold up?

Or she's having to run what ever it is she is saying, past a zillion people. Because, you know, petrified of trans lobby.

I suspect we’re going to be horribly disappointed. She’ll have cherry picked questions and ignored anything too tricky to answer. Much like the NSPCC.

Or she's having to run what ever it is she is saying, past a zillion people. Because, you know, petrified of trans lobby.

There are also significant internal party issues which intersect.
With divisions re Bexit/Remain and the Government's lack of majority all issues such as this have especial significance.

I think we’ve got the message from Penny already, and she didn’t even have to put pen to paper.

I suspect we’re going to be horribly disappointed. She’ll have cherry picked questions and ignored anything too tricky to answer. Much like the NSPCC.

Which would be one massive own goal. Penny's met with Justine before. I can't believe she'd have agreed to this without knowing exactly what most of the questions were about.

Brexit or no, ask yourself would she have done this to Stonewall?

If all answers are being run through the LGBTQIWTF lobby for censoring and permission to speak first then I can answer the questions myself, we probably all could.

It will be along the lines of that bewilderingly confused release about Women and Girls And Men And Boys equality, She/He/They/Xe Decide, with right to both privacy AND gender identity, which in practical effect means privacy only protected for women with penises.

And I'll just add that as a lesbian, I feel wholly entitled to be disparaging about a lobby that in no way represents me and has become deeply homophobic.

And I'll just add that as a lesbian, I feel wholly entitled to be disparaging about a lobby that in no way represents me and has become deeply homophobic.

Be as disparaging as you like. I came out as lesbian back in the days of Section 28 and I'd take that over coming out now any day.

You could ask if David TC Davies MP is available instead? He seems to be more clued up on women's issues than Penny.

Don't you worry about getting back to us, Penny dearest. Mumsnet only has '14 million unique visitors' a month, and I bet a few of those aren't even UK voters. Your party is doing such a brilliant job of leading the country into Brexit that you're not going to need our votes. Just you sit tight and eventually get one of your minions to post some anodyne rhetoric about valuing diversity and it'll all be fine.

My new theory is that Penny's waiting for Teresa May to resign and there to be a reshuffle so that she can pass the nasty questions from all the "purported" feminists on MN to the new minister. She saw what Maria Miller did yesterday and thought it looked like a great idea.

We are "hot potatoes" ... and yet, simultaneously, Adult Human Females

Is it Meaningful Webchat 3?

(By meaningful, I mean substantive answers to questions women have been asking for five years at least.)

I suspect we’re going to be horribly disappointed. She’ll have cherry picked questions and ignored anything too tricky to answer. Much like the NSPCC.

Of course she will.

And when we get angry and frustrated about being fobbed off, MNHQ will tell us that we're not in the spirit because frustration leads us to be less than polite about it.

Perhaps, rather than Meaningful Webchat 3, in which we continually vote the wrong way ask the wrong questions, it's actually Webchat Groundhog Day?

MilletSentToForceIt

Brexit or no, ask yourself would she have done this to Stonewall?

Ain’t that the truth?

A very clear message confirming that women don't matter.

Does anyone else find it ironic that this is the advert showing for me at the bottom of the page?

Goodness it’s 3 o’clock already!

The problem here is that the purported feminists have rather awkwardly presented questions that are well considered, based in fact, with links to hard evidence and in relation to quite a lot of previous rather revealing statements quoted directly from her good self.

Now if we’d only given forth a tide of emotive and subjective guff it would have been so much easier to respond in kind.

What’s the guidance re delayed response to web chats? Do we get a gin voucher to sustain us if it’s more than a week?