Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:53 pm on 6 February 2018.
Well, I'm more than happy to pay tribute to great Anita Gale. I don't know if it's a mystery to people on the other benches why we all started to smile when Joyce said 'persuasive' and 'influential', but we all remember Anita's persuasion and influence—in my case, fondly. In other cases, perhaps people might still be twitching a little. But it shows the power of somebody with a determined vision and the strength of character to pull it through. So, she was absolutely determined that we were going to have gender equality in our constituency representation for this place, and her determination shone through and won the day. That's the real message of Anita. Two things: have your vision, pursue it formidably—I think that's the right word—and actually, to this minute, persist in your struggle to make sure that the vision that you have for gender equality stays firmly on the agenda.
Joyce is right also to pay tribute to the many women who came to this place right at the beginning and set some of those standards, and I want to mention one as well, which is Val Feld, who everybody will know was extremely determined to get equality onto the agenda of this place, and I think we'll all agree that she did a very good job in that. But I also want to pay tribute to my colleague Jane Hutt, who is, of course, the longest-serving Minister in any administration in the UK, and was one of the original women here, and I think also herself played a very large role in making sure that this place treats equality with the seriousness that it deserves, and with the prominence that it deserves in our national policy making.
In terms of the availability of the grants, though, we will be making that available. I'll be making sure that every Assembly Member gets a letter explaining how it works. We will be writing out to all of the community organisations that we support already, but if any Assembly Members want us to do anything specific in their area or highlight it in a particular place, I'm more than happy to do that as well.