5. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on efforts to improve diversity levels in Welsh local government in light of the council elections? OAQ(5)0143(FLG)

I thank the Member for her question. As I just mentioned, prior to the local government elections, the Welsh Government ran a number of projects as part of the diversity in democracy programme. We now intend to undertake a full evaluation of the programme, looking at the people who participated in it and their success in elections, with a view to learning from it and taking the diversity agenda further forward.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. I know we’ve already discussed this issue here today—I just want to highlight the achievements of RCT council, where 43 per cent of councillors are women, as are four out of nine cabinet members, and, in fact, in my own constituency more female councillors were elected than male. Clearly, however, from the comments that we’ve heard here today, there is need for progress to be made elsewhere. Is there anything else you can add to the answer that you’ve already given to my colleague Dawn Bowden about how we can take more practical steps as well as urging local councils to follow best practice?

I thank the Member for that question and I share her congratulations to RCT and to the women who stood successfully there, and as I said in my original answer to Dawn Bowden, we are still some way from where we would wish to be in terms of diversity of representation across Wales. But there is some good news in that the number of women elected for the first time to local authorities in Wales in May of this year rose right across Wales, and there are some very talented—and often, young—new people coming into local authorities in Wales, and I think we are fortunate to see that new generation of politicians willing to come forward to do those important jobs. We will work, through the local government data unit, to analyse the patterns of people who are willing to stand and how people were elected in the elections that took place last month. We will look to build on our diversity in democracy programme, working directly with individuals, taking messages into schools, providing information on social media, to try to reach further into communities, to attract a wider range of individuals willing to put themselves forward for these very important responsibilities.

My wife’s 13-year career as a Flintshire councillor was too often characterised by misogynistic bullying. In her first week there, she had a private meeting with the monitoring officer, asking him to ask officers to stop referring to women councillors as ‘Mrs’, when they referred to all male councillors as ‘Councillor’. The next day, she was on the front page of the local paper: ‘Don’t call me “Mrs”.’ More recently, the deputy leader of the council resorted to social media to make misogynist, bullying comments against her, and then reneged on the remedies agreed under the ombudsman’s local resolution procedure.

In the recent local government elections, a supposedly independent chief executive and returning officer e-mailed her with a threatening e-mail, stating if she didn’t remove evidence-based, party-political content from her leaflet, he—quote—would not want to be in the position of having to place a corrective piece in the press and on social media. This, and much more, made her ill, subject to anxiety attacks and no longer able to fight back. Will you agree that this sort of political culture must end if we’re going to bring more women forward into local government, and if you do agree that, what action—what party-blind action—are you going to take?

Well, Llywydd, let me put it positively: I think that there is an obligation on all local authorities, political leadership and professional leadership, to make sure that a context is created in which people from all sorts of backgrounds feel comfortable in taking on the responsibilities of elected office, and that the contributions that they make are properly recognised and respected. In the White Paper that I have published on the reform of local government, we propose new obligations to be placed on leaders of political groups within local authorities to uphold the standards of conduct that we would expect to see, and to make sure that respectful relationships between elected members that recognise diversity and celebrate it rather than attempt to eliminate it are put at the heart of the way that we conduct local government here in Wales.