02/06/2013 Sunday Politics West Midlands

women in power. Margaret Thatcher was one of the first to prove she

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 2446 seconds

could lead to. Now local councils them here first. To prospective

Parliamentary candidate is working hard to persuade voters to send them

to Westminster at the next general election. Afzal Amin who grew up in

the Black Country is standing for the Conservatives in Dudley North

and Kate Godfrey is standing in Stafford for Labour. Parliament has

been in recess for two weeks during which time Drummer Lee Rigby and off

duty soldier was attacked and killed by two men close to Woolwich

barracks. His death was quickly labelled as an act of terrorism by

the Prime Minister who cut short talks with European leaders in

Brussels to return to London to appeal for unity. We will defeat

extremism by standing together, by backing our police and by

challenging the poisonous narrative of extremism on which despite and

spirits. Images of the men arrested for the murder of Lee Rigby

attempting to justify the killing have gone around the world. What

happen next? Afzal Amin you left a career in the army. When Lee Rigby

was killed and called for unity. Has that been achieved? Unity is not

something we can achieve through one then. In this country we have 60

million people living their lives every day without this happening

every day. There are 3 million Muslims who live in Britain with

near perfect harmony. This is not something we should take and say it

can be projected onto everyone else. There was an EDL demo in York, they

went inside a mosque and had tea and cakes. The whole idea of a community

at loggerheads is false. There have been a huge incidence of violence

based on the events after the attack but overall we have seen this

country as one that has pulled together, Muslim leaders have said

this is an Apollo and attack. -- Apollo and attack. We will see a lot

more of those stories emerge into what it means to be a Muslim in

Britain today. Theresa May seemed keen to resurrect the idea of a

snooper's charter of greater access to e-mails and phonecalls. We should

continue to do what we are doing it which is greater awareness of our

diverse country, how they relate to each other. Any sort of knee-jerk to

a one off event will not result in something positive. We need to

address individual communities and their problems. It has two be more

nuanced. I spent most of my working life in the Middle East and I came

back to the UK recently and I found this very shocking because when we

talk about violent extremism, we are kind of playing into what the

murderers wanted. They did not know what they wanted. This was not a

well thought out position. This was violent and frustrated. Was the

Prime Minister wrong to call it terrorism? They were looking for an

excuse and dignity which in this situation with a man who had served

in the Army. The Prime Minister was call it -- was right to call it an

act of terrorism. But we must be careful to keep repeating that in

such a way that it elevates the act to something that it is not. The

Prime Minister was careful to save this was a sickening act and

challenging the ideology of hatred is the way forward. It was wrong of

Theresa May to resurrect the smooth paste charter. MI5 officers said

they did not feel be snooper's charter would make any difference in

this case. You can understand why politicians want to do the best they

can to identify where there may have been shortcomings. Coming up - I am

woman here me roar. We meet the new female council leaders in the

Midlands to talk Power, politics and whether gender really matters. A

development which could influence West Bromwich's under construction,

a shopping centre which could provide 2000 jobs. Plant and

financed before the recession and the rapid decline of many retail

areas. A year ago Wolverhampton became a Portas town winning

�100,000 to try to halt the spread of empty shops.

This is the latest stage in Wolverhampton's plan to revive its

city centre. Businesses are being given empty shop units rent-free for

six months. I wanted to do this 20 years ago but the cost involved was

too great. It's care of a lot of people off but when this competition

came up I very nearly did not enter. But I am glad I did. This project is

a partner ship between the Mander centre and the local authority but

trying to reverse the effects of the recession, tackling the relentless

march of online shopping, that is a tall order. In Stoke they are taking

a bold step. The council is spending �45 million moving its headquarters

to Hanley in the hope that other companies will follow and by

bringing employment, help rejuvenate the city centre. Traders who will be

left behind say it is a disaster. are thinking of closing the business

down because it is not viable. Everything goes to Hanley. We are

just hanging on. We can see what will happen. One in five shops in

Stoke is empty their projects to put the hardback in the city centre are

having an effect but with a recent study predicting 20% of shops could

close in five years, it seems the fightback is only just beginning.

Also joining us another prospective Parliamentary candidate Christine

Tinker standing for the Lib Dems in Shrewsbury and Atcham where she

would need to overturn a majority of 8000 to win the seat from the

Tories. Do you think we need to accept that high streets will never

be the same that they were? I think so because times have changed and

particularly in recession, it is harder to make anything work. I

think all the plans with Mary Portis and the town teams and the bid, that

it is good to have these schemes to try to regenerate the town centres.

We might have to accept that the town centres have to get smaller,

but very active and with really good shops for everyone covering lots of

different needs. These statistics are frightening, won in five shops

could close in five years. Is there any point in trying to halt that or

should we look at high streets differently? The macro we have to do

a mixture. In Shrewsbury there are a lot of small independent shops that

have formed together to make quite a strong grip. Working to make sure

they stay viable. That seems to be working. In other places they do not

have that option but yes you have to look to see if residential partly is

a good thing because that in itself would regenerate footfall in the

town centre, particularly if you put in a couple of late night opening

shops. You have experience in construction. That development in

West Bromwich, is that one of a dying breed? It probably will be one

of the last. My understanding was it was Tesco under the planning. There

are structural changes, the high street will not go back to what it

was, the Internet will not disappear but against that, there are things

we can do in terms of moving towards residential. The key problem is the

economy, people do not want to spend money because we have won million

people out of work long term, it is difficult to justify discretionary

spending and what we will happen is we will see a slight return in

confidence. That will not happen if we do not change the employment

situation. One of the key things is the nature of who goes to high

streets. If you look at the demographic changes that our country

is going through, we will see more people over the age of 60 who go to

the high Street because they want to socialise, access other types of

services. These are the kind of changes we will see. It is about

using the space differently? Evolution is natural. Change is

something to be embraced, entrepreneurs are embracing that

change, it is perhaps taking longer than we would like. Saving the high

Street, that English character of it, . Throwing �10,000 at a limited

number of small town centres was not going to make a difference. The chap

who said 20 years ago he would have done this, people like that have a

dream of having a business and to give them six months rent-free space

to build their business, to build it up, that is a very positive idea. It

is a brilliant start. The business secretary said to be considering

whether to take legal action to ensure that FTSE 100 firms meet a

target of having a quarter of their board jobs held by women in 2015,

but while business may struggle to promote business -- women to the

top, two local councils are experiencing for the first time what

it is like to have a woman at the top.

One woman in a sea of men. It is easy to forget that not too long ago

this was the norm but now things are changing. Here in Coventry the

number of female councillors was just nine in the 80s and has risen

to 15 today. Those numbers might still seem small but for the first

time, a woman is now in charge. fought those battles back in the

60s. We thought about than is but there are still battles that are

more nuanced but they still have to be fought. I can only talk for the

Labour Party and any meeting I went to there were always lots of women.

But women were, I cannot believe this, women were happy to do the

fates and the brewing and buys and make the tea. Over in Warwickshire

and unexpected rise to power for council at Izzi Seccombe. I like to

include people and this is cross-party. I think your

personality should be able to overcome situations and the

confidence that you can bring forward. What are these new leader

is going to do? It is important that we introduced the living wage and as

a woman, it is women who tend to be paid the less. How can I as a leader

of one biggest businesses in the city go out there and tell people

they should pay their workers better rates and give them better

conditions if I do not do it? can say we have delivered against

our spending review, if we have a sense of achievement within the

people Warwickshire, if they feel services are good still and they are

happy about that, that will be powerful for me. Out on the streets

of Coventry, how many care who represents them? I do not think

women will do any different than men do. I did not know we had a lady to

be frank. I do not think gender has anything to do with politics.

things are changing in local politics, nationally only 22% of MPs

in Westminster are women and only four have cabinet positions.

Here in the Midlands we have 11 women MPs out of 59. Kate, does that

bother you? It does. But we recently went up to 14 councillors in the

Labour Party. There is a real issue with this. Won in three Labour MPs

are female, won in five Tory MPs are. In Birmingham, more than won in

five was female. You have 15% of the people in parliament being MPs who

are female, you are not getting the best because that is not

representative. The cuts we have had have hit women hard. One of the

reasons that has been possible is because of lack of female

representation. Why do we not have more women in politics? This is

something which needs to be handled carefully. I salute the promotion of

these two leaders leading their councils. It is great that this kind

of success is promoted. I do agree that being of a particular gender is

not a qualification. The qualification is how good you are as

a leader and sometimes the competition has been on affair.

do you change that? I am not a fan of shortlists. We need to have good

and fair competition to get these important posts because we want the

best person in the job and by promoting where women have

succeeded, what we are doing is highlighting that to others. Won of

the greatest prime ministers we have had was Margaret Thatcher. She was

often referred to as having very male like qualities. Christine,

there was an interesting line from and Lucas, she said there are still

battles to be won. I was in the Army and I knew that I had to be better

than all the men there doing the same job because for some reason

people are much harder when you are the minority. As the only woman in

the regiment, if I made a mistake... It is less in politics in

my own party which is the only ones I can talk about. We are running a

leadership programme which is for women and minorities and the idea is

to work very hard giving them extra support and training to ensure that

first of all they get selected in winnable seats, and that is already

happening, and also to make sure that we get more women elected

because Nick Clegg has said... based on meritocracy. It is not

based on gender but the party is firmly based on quality. Although

only one in five of your members is female, you are not confident in

their capabilities? As someone else who was identified as a minority I

recognise what you are saying but in the air and the cream does get to

the top. After 11 years service in the military... I agreed there are

structural issues. I train a lot of female staff who are talented and I

know that when it is in the case of the guys and girls it is different.

Having these quotas is the wrong approach. The right approach is

based on meritocracy. These two ladies are running the councils

because they were the best leaders. That should be celebrated. We need

the best people in our country running the best jobs. But you have

to allow people the chance. We must leave it there. Here is our round-up

of the political week in the Midlands in 60 seconds.

Preparing for the Badger call here by looking to Ireland where farmers

have cold since 2004 and the number of bovine TB cases has fallen. The

after-shocks from the closure of Daw Mill Colliery continue. Steam

railways are struggling to buy coal and miners fear losing redundancy

payments. While managers at Birmingham airport say a new report

about the UK's future aviation needs concentrates too much on the

south-east. A couple are campaigning to get fertility treatment on the

NHS. Corrie Walker became infertile after being given an experimental

treatment for cancer but he is not being classed as an exceptional

case. It is not a fair situation so I will not be giving up in the long

term. And it is one year since the torch relay came to the Midlands.

Here in Lynch, more reasons to look back fondly than most as baby Alfie

arrived 12 days later. Some businesses have benefited as a

result of the Olympics. The Coventry business that made the torches has

been booming. Has the legacy happened? In the feeling of what it

meant to be British... In Afghanistan where I was during the

Olympics, we felt it. That spirit really is a great legacy. There was

a concern that outside London it would not mean a lot. We are still

talking about it. It was a huge cultural moment, the opening

ceremony, and there is another great cultural moment which is the support

staff at hospital. We have to protect the A&E in Stafford. We have

to stop the NHS being affected as it has been. Thank you. Next week on

the Sunday Politics, Patrick will be back in his chair. He will be joined

by MPs Christopher Pincher and Emma Reynolds to discuss changes to the

gun licensing system. BBC W M are starting a month long tour of the