Chamber and committees

I will move on to a question about the future, which I will address to Jessie Duncan initially, although everybody is welcome to contribute.

What would you like to happen over the next few years? We are taking evidence and trying to address the issue. What would you like to happen in the next few years to ensure that we do not have the same conversation in the lead-up to 2027?

I think that Paul McLennan has a question about data.

It does not look like anybody does.

I thank all the witnesses very much for joining us and giving us thorough responses. I have pages of notes on things that we can follow up.

I suspend the meeting for five minutes to allow a change of witnesses.

Thank you. You have touched a little on some of the issues that we are going to cover, but it is good that we have an opportunity to get into a bit more detail. I will begin by focusing on the slow progress towards increasingly equal gender representation among councillors. Given the steps that various organisations have taken over the past 10 years, what are the barriers? You pointed to remuneration as one, but do you have a sense of other things that might be barriers that contribute to the slow pace of improvement in the number of female councillors in Scotland?

I am heartened to hear that the barriers to elected office group has reconvened. I look forward to hearing what it comes up with.

We will move on to questions from Mark Griffin.

Thank you. I have been inspired by the point about needing to interact more with high schools. Maybe we can do something about that.

Looking to the future—this is a question that I asked in the previous session—what is COSLA doing to ensure that we do not have the same conversation in 2027?

Thank you for that very thorough response. I appreciate the work of Engender, Elect Her and Women 50:50. Last week, a couple of MSP colleagues and I participated in a wonderful event on raising confidence and inspiring women to consider stepping forward for Parliament.

I will move on now, because we have a range of questions about issues that you have touched on. The first of those questions is from Annie Wells, who joins us online.

To pick up on the point about representation, do you think that young women and young people in general face further barriers to standing for office?

I think that Annie Wells is asking about the rates for women candidates across Scotland.

Thank you for that response. It is good to hear about the work that you are doing to gather what data can be gathered. Hopefully we will be able to get better data down the line.

I call Marie McNair, who has a couple of questions.