Robert Washington Shirley, 13th Earl Ferrers, PC, DL (8 June 1929 – 13 November 2012), styled Viscount Tamworth between 1937 and 1954, was a British Conservative politician and member of the House of Lords as one of the remaining hereditary peers.

[1] Ferrers received an emergency commission as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards on 27 November 1948,[2] serving in Malaya.

If one looks at a cross-section of women already in Parliament I do not feel that one could say that they are an exciting example of the attractiveness of the opposite sex.

Why then should we encourage women to eat their way, like acid into metal, into positions of trust and responsibility which previously men have held?

If that is so, I would offer to the most reverend Primate the humble and respectful advice that he had better take care lest he may find himself out of a job.

These examples may sound a little excessive, but I fail to see any reason whatever why, if one allows women to become Peers, this form of emancipation should not extend into those other positions of trust and responsibility which in the past have been carried out, and to such good effect, by men.

There is another reason: in this age of science and statistics, where everything has to be accounted for and tabulated, where even the atom and the molecule are no longer a mass of red and green balls attached by pieces of wire which no well-intentioned student could ever understand, there are nevertheless three virtues which evade such tabulation: common sense, intuition and judgement; and I do not believe that the common sense, intuition and judgement of the public will allow women to be taken into those positions of trust of which I have spoken.

"[5]In the event, a small number of women came into the Lords as a result of the Life Peerages Act 1958.

Ferrers served as a Lord-in-waiting (government whip) from 1962 until 1964 under both Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home.