Jess Phillips MP, Chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party and MP for Birmingham Yardley said:
“Councils must make sure that they adopt parental leave policies, I think the average citizen would be stunned to hear that a woman councillor is not entitled to any maternity leave or any support for her after having a baby. Gone are the days when our democracy was about older men making decisions in grand rooms. We need to make sure the people who make the decisions about our local childcare, our youth services, our domestic abuse prevention and sexual health services represent the people who use them. We need to make being a councillor attractive to women, because we have a lot of work to do in this area.”