4. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on the Talented Women for a Successful Wales report? OAQ52181

Yes. Work to implement recommendations from the report is under way across the Government, business, education and academia, and good progress is being made in a number of areas.

Thank you. You may be aware that the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee is undertaking an inquiry into pregnancy and maternity and returning women back to work in Wales. It is fair to say—if any committee members are here—that we're having some very startling findings, really, about the lack of support for women and getting back in the workplace. The 'Talented Women for a Successful Wales' report makes a number of recommendations for the STEM sector, including the development of keeping-in-touch strategies for those away from work or research while on maternity or parental leave. We found too many examples where people were not kept in the loop whilst they were off looking after baby, and then it was a long time afterwards that they were expected to go back to work and pick up where they left off. That is not a good way to operate in any business.

The Welsh Government has responsibility to encourage and facilitate the recommendations and actions, and I wonder if you could update the Chamber on progression as regards this 'Talented Women for a Successful Wales' report, and advise us as to how your Government is facilitating improving the conditions for pregnancy, maternity and paternity in STEM workplaces across Wales. Because one thing that did come out of the evidence we took: men have a part, fathers have a part to play in the bringing up of their children too. They want to, but the mechanisms there are not as easy for them. So, it's not just about a women's issue.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

No, I couldn't agree more with that. This is about parents, not mothers, as we keep saying. I chair the board that implements the report, the women in STEM board, and there've been two meetings so far. At the last meeting we broadened the membership of the board, particularly with a view to bringing in more than academia and public services, and to include a range of other people as well. As you rightly said, I accepted all the recommendations from the report and did a written statement to the Assembly to that effect.

The Cabinet Secretary for Education provided a progress update to the board at its last meeting on actions taken within the education sector to implement the recommendations. We recently wrote to all Welsh universities requesting a further update from the one that they gave us in September, at the first meeting of the board. We've also written to all anchor companies and key business networks to request feedback on their progress with the 12 recommendations from the report. We're following that up at the moment. And we have a cross-departmental working group of officials leading the co-ordination and implementation of the recommendations directed at the Welsh Government itself—although there weren't that many for the Welsh Government itself—to support and facilitate those by outside organisations.

My colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport has written this into the new economic contract as well, and we're also working on the fair work criteria, which will also have that. One last thing to mention to you is that we also have our Sêr Cymru programme, which we're very proud of indeed, one of which is specifically aimed at returners to STEM—returners into the academic world, but for STEM. And you'll be amazed to discover that, of course, about 98 per cent of those have been women going back into it. So, that's particularly aimed at returners, and we're looking to see how we can roll that successful programme out in other areas of economic activity, such as our big anchor companies.