My wife’s 13-year career as a Flintshire councillor was too often characterised by misogynistic bullying. In her first week there, she had a private meeting with the monitoring officer, asking him to ask officers to stop referring to women councillors as ‘Mrs’, when they referred to all male councillors as ‘Councillor’. The next day, she was on the front page of the local paper: ‘Don’t call me “Mrs”.’ More recently, the deputy leader of the council resorted to social media to make misogynist, bullying comments against her, and then reneged on the remedies agreed under the ombudsman’s local resolution procedure.

In the recent local government elections, a supposedly independent chief executive and returning officer e-mailed her with a threatening e-mail, stating if she didn’t remove evidence-based, party-political content from her leaflet, he—quote—would not want to be in the position of having to place a corrective piece in the press and on social media. This, and much more, made her ill, subject to anxiety attacks and no longer able to fight back. Will you agree that this sort of political culture must end if we’re going to bring more women forward into local government, and if you do agree that, what action—what party-blind action—are you going to take?