You will need more popcorn.
Darren Millar Tory MS raised a bunch of stuff in the Senedd today.
In terms of the purpose of the Bill, it quite clearly is to promote opportunities for women. It sits firmly within the equalities section of law, which is reserved to the UK Parliament, and it doesn't actually deliver on the promise that was made by the former leader of Plaid Cymru and the First Minister when they said very clearly that they will introduce mandatory zipping on lists. There's no mandatory zipping required on these particular lists according to the Bill that's in front of us today, because, as you will know, Minister, the Bill provides for lists to be entirely made up of women but not entirely made up of men. There's no equality there. There's no requirement for it to be zipped in a particular way. The one thing that it does prevent is two men appearing in succession on a list. That's the only thing it prevents. It doesn't introduce any kind of zipping, which is against the principle that was set out by the First Minister in the joint statement with the leader of Plaid Cymru back in May 2022, and, indeed, just last year, when the First Minister was wanting to make progress on the whole issue of Senedd reform. The Bill also does not even define what a woman actually is, and I would ask you, Minister—perhaps you can tell us what a woman is, because, as far as I can see, it is allowing people to self-identify whether they consider themselves to be a woman or not. There’s no sanction on the face of the Bill for those who claim to be a woman who clearly are not, for example, which also seems to be extraordinary.
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So, it amounts to self-ID via the back door. We don’t have the competence to be able to deliver. You’re curtailing the scrutiny, even though you say you’re trying to improve the scrutiny processes of the Senedd. You’ve put in here no requirement for—and I believe that we should have this requirement, by the way—. There’s no statutory requirement for diversity strategies on political parties. I’d welcome that. I think that’s a good, positive thing you could have put into the Bill, but didn’t bother with, in spite of the fact that that was also a recommendation from the Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform. So, this is all over the place. I don’t think that it should see the time of day. I would question the Welsh Government’s rationale for bringing it forward.
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And one final question if I may—and thank you for giving me the opportunity to scrutinise this, Llywydd—and that is on the subject of costs. I’ve looked through the explanatory memorandum and it suggests minimal costs will be associated with this, but we all know that certainly won’t be the case, because there’ll be significant legal challenges if this Bill goes forward, not least, probably, in the Supreme Court, and we all know how expensive those things are. So, can you tell us whether there’s an estimate of the costs, whether you’ve made any provision as a Welsh Government for those sorts of costs? And can you also tell us what the costs of bringing this forward today have been so far, in terms of the costs of legal advice and other work that has been undertaken by the Welsh Government around the legislative competence? Because when I look in the explanatory memorandum, it is very telling. There’s no information on legislative competence other than a single sentence—a single sentence—on an otherwise completely blank page. And given that that’s the biggest question mark that people have over this Bill, you would have thought that you’d set out a little bit more information than a single sentence saying that, in your view, it’s in competence.
https://record.senedd.wales/Plenary/13743#C575491
No answers to any of it really in reply. Especially the fact the Welsh Government will be taken to court and will lose.
However, this clown car continuing is definitely going to help in the end because like in Scotland and Eire eventually it will crash into the big barricade women will build.