Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:34 pm on 22 March 2023.
I'd like to begin, really, by joining Mark Isherwood in recognising the importance of mentoring schemes. I've been a mentor myself in one of the schemes, and I found that probably as valuable to me as to the mentee, so I would absolutely encourage all colleagues to look at opportunities to support those kinds of schemes. One of the things that we have been doing is trying to widen our evidence base, looking at protected characteristics, and we undertook a survey of members of the public about their perceptions of local councillors, but then, also, our candidates surveys. And those surveys do show that there is a real lack of diversity, and they did give us some kind of insight, really, as to what the barriers are, in terms of allowing people with protected characteristics—often, one or more of those protected characteristics—being able to participate fully in local democracy. So, building on that suite of research, we've been able to hold a range of workshops, whereby we invited elected members, but also representatives of a range of organisations representing diverse, protected characteristics, to talk in a bit more depth about the barriers that there are to people becoming involved in elected politics. And I think that those workshops have been really helpful. They've recently concluded, so now we're looking at all of the learning that we had from those workshops in order to try and help us set out the next steps in this important agenda.