Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:48 pm on 10 January 2023.
I'm really grateful for those points. I just want to recognise the amazing work that our youth councils do across Wales and just reflect on some discussions I had recently with One Voice Wales about the potential role for youth town and community councils; we have some already starting to pop up across Wales. What I was told is that, as well as engaging young people with the local issues, it really does provide you with a pipeline of talent and enthused, engaged people within the community who will be the future town and community councillors. So, I think that the more that we can do to promote and support that work, the better. The work that you've done with Chwarae Teg has been really important. I've been a mentor myself in the past and I got lots from that experience as well, and I hope that the person that I mentored did, but I found it really, really valuable. I know that we're all keen to continue to support those kinds of initiatives.
And in terms of gender quotas—so, this has been raised by Llyr Gruffydd, and I didn't respond to that at the point—we are exploring how they could be introduced into the electoral system for the Senedd, obviously, and we continue to work with the political parties to encourage and support candidates from more diverse backgrounds to stand in devolved Welsh elections. But town and community councils and county councils are different, in the sense that they are held on a first-past-the-post basis. So, it would make it more difficult, I think, for us to find a way in which we could introduce those quotas. There's certainly something that we need to explore to its fullest extent, but I think that that really gives us the need, really, to be thinking about what more we can do on a party political basis as well.
And I think that the last point, really, which was about how we engage with young people—we need to do it all year round in all of our different roles. So, for me it's really important that I engage with young people and hear their views through various different forums when we're setting the Welsh Government's budget. In the past, I've engaged with economics students and have had discussions with them. My officials have gone into schools and talked about budgets. I've gone into a school as well and talked to them about Welsh rates of income tax and things like that. So, all of that sort of thing, I think—just the year-round engagement—is really important as well.