9. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on the Welsh Government's efforts to ensure the fair representation of women in elected roles? OAQ51434

The Welsh Government is committed to improving the diversity of decision makers in Wales. The diversity and democracy programme closed in March and we'll undertake a full evaluation of it with a view to learning from it and taking the diversity agenda further forward in the light of the evaluation.

Thank you. Less than a third of all candidates in the 2017 local government elections were women, and only 27 per cent of those who were elected were women. The Government has consulted recently on electoral reform in the area of local government in Wales, but they were very disappointed to see that there was no mention at all in the consultation paper about the Government’s attempts to ensure fair representation for women in elected roles upon councils in Wales. Of course, political parties have a responsibility to ensure that there is fair representation of women and minority groups on councils within our internal processes of selecting candidates, but do you agree that the Government has missed an opportunity to lead here by not including this as part of the consultation process that was recently held?

Well, no, I think it's up to all of us to encourage the skilled women we all know to stand for election, and actually to make sure that our own political parties step up to the mark in encouraging as many women as possible to be involved at grass-roots level in terms of activism, and then leading them on through leadership programmes or whatever into proper democratically elected or democratic roles in that process.

You will know that my party has long had a very good record of having all-women shortlists, for example. I myself was elected off an all-woman shortlist. Positive action of that sort is necessary if we're to make any real inroads into what's been very slow progress on women accessing serious leadership roles.

As a result of the diversity in democracy programme, we did have 51 individuals from underrepresented groups participating. Sixteen of them stood as candidates in the local government elections, and four—all of whom were women—were successfully elected. So, there was a very positive outcome from that. Also, the number of female leaders in local authorities in Wales doubled following the local election in May, with four councils now being led by women. I'd certainly like to see that grow in the future. I'm very delighted that the leader of the WLGA is female—an excellent role model in this regard. We will be looking at an evaluation of the programme, though, because we want to be able to understand what we could have done to have got more people to come forward, and what we can do to improve political life—public life, actually—for women.

Far too often, the roles of women cross against the roles in public life. So, for example, provision for elder care, child care, support for family care and so on is absolutely essential to enable a woman, who is very often the carer—let's face it, it hasn't moved very much in my lifetime, that's for sure—is very often the primary carer, to make sure that they can be supported both in their caring roles and in their public role, whatever that might be—elected public role or voluntary public role or whatever. I'm very committed to making sure that that happens so that we can address the inequality that's lasted for so many centuries.

Neil McEvoy is not in attendance to ask question 10 [OAQ51407]. Question 11—Steffan Lewis.