Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

Absolutely. Again, my right hon. Friend makes a good observation. It is important that we encourage people from all backgrounds, including women and young people, to feel that they can get involved and that there are opportunities to get involved, participate and contribute to public life. To do that, they need to feel safe in that environment, and that is largely down to the political parties delivering it.

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

With local elections taking place in May, it is vital that we have a diverse set of councillors representing our communities. However, only 33% of councillors in England are women, which represents a rise of only 5% in the past 20 years. There is a clear contrast with progress in the House. Does the Minister agree that the progress in improving women’s representation in local government has stalled? What are this Government doing to address that failing?

[Brandon Lewis]

One of the key things to having more women involved in local government is political parties encouraging more women to get involved. Conservative Members will certainly be doing that, and I hope the hon. Lady will join me in calling for these local elections to have a respect pledge—the Labour party should step up and do that—to make sure that people feel they can have robust debate, but with respect. The Labour party has simply failed to do that.