Ms Billie Sparks:

I will touch on just a couple of points related to the questions raised. As I stated in my opening remarks, the Labour Party absolutely supports the notion of councillors having independent legal and financial advice. That is crucial to enable them to make their decisions.

I would like to talk a little about women in politics, in particular. All the general secretaries of the political parties present would be keen to focus on this. In the Labour Party, including Labour Women, the section of the party that works with women members and candidates, we provide a lot of training, including resilience training and training on preparing for election, and we make sure people go forward for positions within the party, even if they are not elected positions.

The notion of the 5 Cs - the Cs regarded as obstacles to women who wish to get involved in politics - is well rehearsed. There is a sixth C that has come around of late: cyber. I know "cyber" is not the perfect word but, in order to make all the words begin with C, it kind of works. I am referring to both the cyber issue and cyberbullying, in addition to the abuse people get online. There is only so much that we as political parties can do to shelter people from this or help them in how they respond to it, or do not respond to it, as is often the case. However, a big body of work needs to be done to regulate social media companies and platforms in this country. Cyberbullying is having an impact on people stepping forward into political life, and that is not good for any of us. We want community activists to put themselves forward to run for office and represent the people. They are doing what they are doing for the right reasons but they are turned off because they know they will expose not only themselves but also their families to online abuse. That is something we really need to address. I hope the committee will deal with this strongly in its report. It affects all in society, not just candidates or elected representatives.