According to the Bank of England website, there are currently four Banknotes in circulation and after a very disturbing campaign, we now know that after the Elizabeth Fry image is removed from the £5 note in 2016, that Jane Austen will replace Charles Darwin on the £10 note. The campaign to ensure that at least one banknote should have a womens profile seemed to generate a huge amount of abuse towards some of those articulating this proposal. We clearly don’t want to repeat that experience for anyone involved, but before 2013 recedes into memory, is it too early to press the Bank to accept that the next time a note is redesigned, that we see another womens head on the new note.

Although I am delighted that this years campaign was successful, I had hoped that the name chosen would have been someone whose contribution to our nation was more in the social realm than in a literary vein. I confess that I am very attached to Elizabeth Fry, and feel that her loss, at a time when our prisons are bulging and we are locking up more people than most other nations, will be a sad loss. However I appreciate that we need to mover forward so here are a few of my suggestions for the new £20 note:

Mary Carpenter who opened a school for poor children and helped to begin a series of educational reforms.

Emily Davies who co-founded Girton College, Cambridge.

Florence Nightingale

Susanna Saxton who was Secretary to the Manchester Female Reformers

One of the many suffragettes who have helped to bring democracy to all of us.

I realise that there are many other names that could be suggested, and appreciate that there has been no announcement that the £20 note is to be redesigned. However it will presumably be the next one to change, and it would be worthwhile getting some  agreement in now that in the future, two of our banknotes will always have womens profiles included in the design. If we can achieve equality on our banknotes, then perhaps we can turn our attention to matters such as our Government and our Boardrooms!