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Women, Justice and Gender Equality

I would like to move on and comment on two particular subjects. The first is the role of local government and how important it is to ensure good representation of women at local level. Secondly, I want to speak about women entrepreneurs and the need to support women in management and senior management and ensure that their voices are heard. Local government is obviously important because it is the closest government to local communities. It is often a way for women to enter politics. I have found around my constituency that lots of women are involved in the community and voluntary sector. They stand as chairs or treasurers and they have important roles to play. However, there is still quite a lot of work to do in getting them to think about the next step up and about standing for local government. The figures show—the Minister put this on the record earlier—that about 29 per cent. of our councillors are female. That is still too low. It was 27.8 per cent in 1997 and 28.5 per cent. in 2001, and now it is 29.1 per cent. Progress is slow. If we look at the range of women who hold positions on local councils, we can see that they tend to be older and, often, retired women. To have a healthy democracy, we need a range of young, middle-aged and older people. We need to recognise the skills and experience that they bring to the job at various stages in their life. There is a lot of work to do when it comes to encouraging women to think about standing for the local council. As has already been pointed out, it is a launch pad. If someone gets on to a local council and finds that they enjoy the cut and thrust of politics, they may want to think about standing for a regional assembly or for a national position as a Member of Parliament. It is vital to the health of all political parties that women are encouraged into local government. However, if we analyse the role that women play in the new structures that many councils have—the cabinet structures—the findings are rather disappointing. In my city of Hull, we have a cabinet of 10 and only one member of it is a woman. That is disappointing. In Barnsley, it is one of nine; in Leeds, it is one of 11. York is slightly better with three of nine. Those are disappointing figures and we need to keep under analysis how the cabinet structure is working and whether it is really serving the needs of women councillors.