Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether his Department plans to mark the centenary of women getting the right to vote in 1918.

The Government Equalities Office is coordinating the Government’s work on marking the centenary. As part of this the Department is working with the Greater London Authority to deliver a statue of leading suffragist Dame Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square to be unveiled later this spring.

We are encouraging existing projects to mark the centenary, and have launched a new nationwide schools-focused project to celebrate inspirational women from the First World War, including suffrage campaigners. We are encouraging communities to mark the centenary locally by raising awareness of the funding available to support local events. More broadly we have been working with the local government sector to understand how we break down barriers preventing women engaging in local politics.