The bill, which could face legal battles, says at least half of political candidates must be women, but candidates are expected to declare their own genders.
The coalition government in Wales has published its new bill to introduce gender quotas in elections on Monday after the plan was put on hold last year.
If the Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill becomes law, at least half of a political party’s candidate list will have to be women, at both the constituency level and national level.
However, the future of the bill has already been thrown into doubt after Llywydd (Presiding Officer) Elin Jones MS said she believes the legislative area is reserved for the central government in London.
If Ms. Jones is correct, the Senedd can still proceed with passing the bill, but Westminster can seek to block it as it did with Scotland’s plan to allow gender self-ID.
Defining the Word ‘Woman’
Oppositions have also criticised the government for not defining the word “woman” in the bill.It comes after a previously leaked draft said a woman can be a transgender male who identifies as a woman.
In September 2023, the Welsh government introduced a wider bill to reform the Senedd, including plans to increase its size from 60 members to 96 members, shorten the term of the legislature from five years to four years, and change the electoral system so that all Members are elected via closed list proportional representation.
The government was initially going to publish the gender quota bill on Dec. 4, but the plan was cancelled at the last minute, with the government saying it was still working on the bill.
The cancellation came a month after
a draft was leaked to campaign group Women’s Rights Network (WRN).
In a
photo shared by WRN, the draft appears to say “woman” includes a biological male who has undergone, is undergoing, or is proposing to undergo a process to change his physical or other attributes of his sex, and a constituency returning office may not challenge or make any inquiry in relation to a statement made by a candidate that states the individual is a woman.
The section did not appear in the
bill published on Monday, although an
impact assessment published with the bill says, “candidates will declare whether or not they are a woman as part of the nominations process.”
A 78-page explanatory note of the bill says political parties will submit candidate gender statements to the Constituency Returning Officers so they can check compliance with the quota rules.
It also says the offence that involves providing false statements in nomination and other papers will not include making a false gender statement.
50 Percent or More
Under the proposal, when there’s an even number of candidates on the list, at least half of them must be women.When there’s an odd number of candidates on the list, the majority of candidates must be women.
The bill also stipulated that any man’s name on the list, except the last one, must be followed by that of a woman’s.
When more than one list is submitted, first or only candidate on at least half of the lists must be a woman.
Jane Hutt, minister for social justice and chief whip, said in a declaration that she believes the proposals are “within the legislative competence of Senedd Cymru,” meaning it is a devolved matter for the Welsh legislature.
However, Ms. Jones said in a
statement that in her view, the bill “would not be within the legislative competence of the Senedd” because it “relates to the reserved matters of equal opportunities,” and “modifies the law on reserved matters, namely the Equality Act 2010.”
It’s the first time the llywydd has said she believes that a bill being introduced into the Senedd would be wholly outside of its legislative competence,
according to the Senedd.If the bill is approved in Wales, it could then be mired in legal battles.
In January 2023, the UK government used its power to
block a bill passed by a devolved parliament for the first time after Holyrood approved the Scottish government’s plan to allow people to change their legal gender without medical diagnoses.
Scotland’s highest civil court ruled in December that the UK Government’s blocking of the bill was lawful. The Scottish government gave up on further legal actions.
Reacting to the bill, the Senedd’s Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies said the policy is “extreme, divisive and ideologically motivated” on social media platform
X.
In a separate
statement, Mr. Davies said: “Labour politicians continue to prove that they can’t define a woman, in this case directly harming Welsh democracy. We should be electing people by merit & on the content of their character—we will fight these gender quotas.”
In a thread on
X, WRN Wales labelled the bill as “another botched attempt at self-ID in Wales by a government that doesn’t listen and values ideology over female representation.”
