Welsh Government scraps gender-balanced Senedd Bill

Martin Shipton

The Welsh Government has withdrawn a Bill that would have introduced a legal mechanism aimed at ensuring the Senedd was gender-balanced.

Instead it will issue voluntary guidance to political parties in advance of candidate selection for the next Senedd election in 2026.

The decision does not come as a great surprise, given that there were serious doubts about whether enforcing gender balance was within the Senedd’s competence. Laws relating to the policy area of equality are reserved to Westminster.

Presiding Officer Elin Jones refused to issue a statement confirming that the Senedd was empowered to pass the Bill, after receiving legal advice telling her that it wasn’t.

Another matter of contention concerned a section of the Bill that would have allowed anyone to identify as a female. Gender critical feminist groups like the Women’s Rights Network objected to the Bill because of the self-identification section, arguing that it could in theory lead to a situation where 100% of Senedd Members were biologically male.

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Timely 

A written statement by Jane Hutt, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Chief Whip said: “Members will be aware that the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Act received Royal Assent in June this year, which will deliver a major series of reforms to our institution, including expanding to 96 Members from 2026.

“A separate Bill, the Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill concluded its Stage 1 scrutiny in the Senedd in July, and I am grateful for all the contributions from Members to those proceedings.

“Tomorrow, the First Minister will set out her policy and legislative priorities for the remainder of this Senedd term, indicating those areas where the Welsh Government will now focus its full energy in delivering tangible outcomes for the people of Wales.

“As a result, we are looking across the government at areas where we can implement our policy and legislative objectives in a more practical and timely way.

“Following consideration, we have decided to table a motion to withdraw the Bill from further Senedd consideration, which will be debated and voted on in plenary on September 24.

“During the Stage 1 debate, representatives of all political parties in the Senedd made clear their commitment to the important area of women’s representation in the next Senedd. We remain committed to a gender balanced Senedd and getting more women into politics, but have reflected over the summer and decided the best way we can achieve practical change for the 2026 Senedd election is to address this issue in a different way.

“The withdrawal of this Bill does not prevent political parties considering what action they can implement through their candidate selection processes.

“As Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, I am pleased to report that I will accelerate progress on new guidance for political parties in relation to diversity and inclusion, including representation of women, but also across a broader range of characteristics and circumstances.

“This work is already underway, and we will consult publicly on it shortly. The guidance will therefore be available in advance of candidate selection processes by political parties for the 2026 election.

“I anticipate this approach will assist delivery of practical, tangible outcomes across the political spectrum with the aim of returning a strong and diverse Senedd which can properly represent the whole of Welsh society.”

Bitter disappointment

The decision to withdraw the Bill will come as a bitter disappointment to campaigners who have argued for years in favour of a legal requirement for gender balance. In 2017 an Expert Panel on Assembly Electoral Reform chaired by Professor Laura McAllister of Cardiff University strongly recommended such a move, stating: “[Women] constitute 52% of the adult population and are, therefore, an underrepresented majority.

“International evidence suggests that the use of gender quotas in parliaments across the world is increasing, and over half of the world’s nations use some form of electoral quota.”

However, the expert panel recognised that achieving a gender balanced Assembly could be problematic, and its recommendation on the issue stated: “In order to safeguard the achievements of the Assembly and political parties in Wales in relation to gender-balanced representation, we recommend that a gender quota is integrated within the electoral system put in place for 2021 [the reform was delayed until 2026].

“If this does not happen - whether through lack of political consensus or the limits of the Assembly’s legislative competence -we propose that political parties be expected to take steps to ensure their candidate selection processes support and encourage the election of a gender-balanced parliament for Wales. This should include voluntary adoption by parties of the quotas we have outlined.”

The quotas would involve 50% of a party’s candidates being male and 50% being female, with candidate lists being zipped, alternating female and male candidates.

Cathy Larkman of the Women’s Rights Network in Wales said, “We welcome the scrapping of this critically flawed Bill. It was clear from the very outset that the setting of mandatory ‘gender quotas’ for electoral lists would run into serious trouble and we explained the obvious problems when we gave evidence at the Stage 1 Reform Committee consideration of the Bill earlier this year.

"Legislative competence was always going to be an unassailable hurdle and the Bill would have inevitably failed at the Supreme Court. We were not alone in pointing this fact out to them – the Llywydd did too, and the temporary Counsel General designate also made clear her views on this during the consultation.

"It is a great shame that the Welsh Government, under previous First Ministers Mark Drakeford and Vaughan Gething, did not listen to the warnings from ourselves at the Women’s Rights Network and other groups such as Merched Cymru. In addition, Jane Hutt, the Minister responsible for the Bill, would also not listen to any voices that weren’t uncritically supportive.

"We are glad that the new First Minister does at least appear to be listening now and we congratulate her on that. At least she has now saved the Welsh public any further unnecessary expenditure, and the focus can now turn to more meaningful and productive work that will actually help women take part in political life.

"This Bill, far from helping women, attempted to introduce self-identification into Wales. Any candidate could have announced they were a ‘woman’, without any challenge or repercussion for them whatsoever.

"An earlier version of the Bill, leaked by ourselves, laid bare this scandalous overreach. Men are not women and never will be women. It is an insult to women to pretend otherwise. Self-identification is not the law in the UK and would have negative consequences for the rights of women and girls.

"This has been a chapter in the history of the Welsh Government in which they have not covered themselves in glory. We hope it will not be repeated at any time”.