Delyth Evans

Margaret Delyth Evans (born 17 March 1958) is a Welsh former politician who served as Deputy Minister for Rural Affairs, Culture and Environment in the National Assembly for Wales from 2000 to 2003. A member of the Labour Party, she was Assembly Member (AM) for Mid and West Wales from 2000 until her retirement from the National Assembly in 2003. Since 2019, she has sat on the board of Sport Wales.

Evans was born in Cardiff, Wales. She was educated at Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Prior to her career in politics, she was a journalist and a management consultant, working for the BBC, ITN, HTV Wales and Sky News. She joined the Labour Party in 1984 where she later became a policy adviser for the Labour leader John Smith from 1992 to 1994, working on policy for the shadow cabinet. In 1999, she became a special adviser to Alun Michael, the first secretary of Wales, and the Welsh Cabinet.

At the 1999 National Assembly for Wales election, Evans was Labour's second top-up candidate on the party list for the Mid and West Wales region, behind Michael. Michael was elected to represent Labour for the seat, but he resigned from the assembly in 2000. As Labour's second candidate, Evans automatically succeeded him as AM for Mid and West Wales. She was appointed to the interim administration of Rhodri Morgan as Deputy Secretary for Agriculture, Local Government and Environment in July 2000, later becoming Deputy Minister for Rural Affairs, Culture and Environment after the office was reorganised in October 2000 with the formation of Morgan's coalition partnership; she continued to serve in this office until the 2003 assembly election.

Evans stepped down from the assembly at the 2003 assembly election to spend more time with her children. She was shortlisted by the Labour Party to stand as its candidate in the 2006 Blaenau Gwent parliamentary by-election but lost out in the final decision to Owen Smith. She was later selected to stand for Labour at the 2015 general election in the House of Commons constituency of Camarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, where she lost to the incumbent Conservative MP Simon Hart.

Outside of politics, Evans served as the chief executive of the charity Dress For Success London, which was later known as Smart Works from 2013, from 2010 to 2014. In November 2009, she was appointed to the board of directors of the Film Agency for Wales. She also served as a trustee at the charity United Response before leaving the organisation sometime before June 2012. She has also worked for the Welsh Government, chairing the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol Task and Finish Group from 2016 to 2017 and serving on the board of Sport Wales since 2019, having been appointed to the organisation by the Welsh Government in August 2019.

Early life and career
Margaret Delyth Evans was born in Cardiff, Wales on 17 March 1958. She was educated at Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen near Pontypridd and at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where she achieved BA Hons in French. She is a native speaker of Welsh. She has said that she grew up in Carmarthenshire and that she was raised in the non-conformist faith. She also has a sister, Carys Evans, who worked in the policy unit of the National Assembly for Wales during the premiership of Alun Michael and has a background in HM Treasury.

Prior to her career in politics, Evans was a journalist and a management consultant. As a journalist, she worked for the BBC, ITN, HTV Wales and Sky News. At the BBC, she worked on The World at One and afternoon programmes. In 1984 she joined the Labour Party, later working on Margaret Beckett's successful deputy leadership campaign in 1992. In the same year, she became an assistant to the shadow chancellor Gordon Brown and a policy adviser, researcher and speechwriter for the UK Labour leader John Smith. Evans also became a member of Smith's policy unit alongside advisers Dave Ward and Pat McFadden, where she drew up policy for the shadow cabinet. She stopped advising the Labour leadership in 1994 before later becoming a special adviser and speechwriter to Alun Michael, the first secretary of Wales, in 1999. In July 1999, Michael employed her as one of four special advisers to the Welsh Cabinet, alongside advisers Julie Crowley, Gareth Williams and Andrew Bold.

National Assembly for Wales
In February 1999, Evans was selected as the Labour Party's second top-up candidate on the party list for the Mid and West Wales region at the 1999 National Assembly for Wales election, behind Welsh party leader Alun Michael. Evans had supported Michael in the 1999 Welsh Labour leadership election over his opponent Rhodri Morgan, stating that he was "very competent" and best placed to stabilise the party and Welsh devolution as a whole following the resignation of previous leader Ron Davies in October 1998. Evans' selection was controversial with Morgan's supporters, who claimed that the Labour leadership was unfairly stacking Labour's top-up lists with Michael's supporters. As the first candidate on the list, Michael was given priority over other list members and elected Assembly Member (AM) for Mid and West Wales under the assembly's additional-member electoral system; as the second candidate on the list, Evans was not elected to the assembly. On 1 May 2000, Michael stood down from the assembly after a motion of no confidence in his premiership in February 2000 had forced him to resign as first secretary. Assembly rules meant that Evans automatically succeeded Michael as AM for Mid and West Wales on the same day because of her place on the Labour party list for that region. A by-election was not required according to the rules, and Evans was sworn into office as AM for Mid and West Wales on 8 May 1999. In this role, she served alongside Conservative AMs Nick Bourne and Glyn Davies and Plaid Cymru AM Cynog Dafis, who represented the same region. Her election to the assembly meant that more than half of Labour's AMs were now women. She was also the only Labour member in the assembly to come from a party list. On the issue of devolution, Evans aligned herself with the devolutionist faction of the Labour group in the assembly.

On 24 July 2000, Evans was appointed to the interim administration of Rhodri Morgan as Deputy Secretary for Agriculture, Local Government and Environment, succeeding Carwyn Jones. With the formation of the coalition partnership later that year, her post was reorganised and on 17 October she became Deputy Minister for Rural Affairs, Culture and Environment, remaining in this role until the 2003 assembly election in May 2003. Her role gave her responsibility for assisting the Minister for Rural Affairs, the Minister for Culture, Sport and the Welsh Language and the Minister for the Environment in their work and in the implementation of government policy related to their portfolios.

In February 2001, Evans asked farmers in Wales to remain alert to the possibility of the spread of England's foot-and-mouth outbreak into Wales and urged them to look out for symptoms of the disease in their livestock. In December 2001, she announced a review into the assembly's grants policy for planting trees. In 2002, she chaired the Task and Finish Group on Publishing of the Welsh Assembly Government on the behalf of Jenny Randerson, the minister for culture, sport and the Welsh language, which recommended a series of measures to make Welsh language books more commercially viable and appealing to the market. It also introduced new financial schemes to enable the Books Council of Wales to support publishers in commissioning well-known authors, appointing creative editors and setting up marketable revenue initiatives. These measures were generally seen as improving the infrastructure of the Welsh language publishing industry and as leading to its professionalisation.

In March 2002, Evans announced her intention to step down from the National Assembly at the 2003 assembly election. She said she felt she was not spending enough time with her children and had therefore decided to resign to spend more time with them. By this time, she was considered a rising star in the Labour Party and had been reportedly earmarked for a role in the cabinet if Labour won the election. She said she was open to returning to frontline politics sometime in the future, but not for the next few years. On the same day of her announcement, two Welsh language campaigners from the Welsh Language Society were arrested for vandalising Evans' constituency office in Llanelli and spraying it with black paint. Evans condemned their actions. After Labour AM Ron Davies announced in March 2003 that he would stand down at the assembly election, Evans was considered as a potential contender in Labour's candidate selection for his constituency of Caerphilly. However, she ruled herself out of the contest. As planned, Evans did not contest the 2003 election, and her seat in Mid and West Wales was taken by Conservative politician Lisa Francis.

In November 2007 Conservative AM Glyn Davies, who served with Evans as AM for Mid and West Wales when she was in the National Assembly, recommended that she receive a peerage. Plaid Cymru leader Dafydd Wigley also suggested that Evans receive a peerage later that same month as part of his plan to prevent the House of Lords from blocking laws passed by the assembly and supported by Plaid Cymru's coalition government with Welsh Labour by appointing peers who had served in the assembly and were "sympathetic" to the coalition's policy objectives.

Professional career
In November 2009, Evans was appointed to the board of directors of the Film Agency for Wales, the public organisation responsible for promoting the Welsh film industry. She also served as a trustee at United Response, a charity for those who have learning disabilities, before leaving the organisation sometime before June 2012.

In 2010, Evans left politics to become the chief executive of Dress For Success London, a charity which aimed to support women who were on a low-income or unemployed by training them for job interviews and donating them the formal wear needed to attend them. In August 2013, the charity rebranded to Smart Works to signify an expansion in operations. Evans said the rebrand would give "us the freedom to build our relationships right across the UK to help low-income women to the very best of our ability." In September 2013, the charity announced a partnership with clothes supplier Kwintet. In 2014, Evans left the charity to resume her political activities.

In November 2016 Kirsty Williams, the Welsh cabinet secretary for education, appointed Evans as the chair of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol Task and Finish Group of the Welsh Government, which was tasked with reviewing the future funding arrangements of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol. The group finished its review in July 2017 and made a number of recommendations, including the continuation of funding of the coleg from the Welsh Government and the expansion of its duties to work-based learning and further education, among others. In August 2019, the Welsh Government appointed Evans to the board of Sport Wales, the public body responsible for promoting sports in Wales.

Parliamentary candidacies
On 1 May 2006, Evans stood in the selection contest for Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate in the June Blaenau Gwent parliamentary by-election following the death of incumbent MP Peter Law. According to the party, Evans had already voiced her interest in possibly standing for Labour in the constituency before Law's death. She was shortlisted for selection by the party on 8 May but lost out in the final decision to Owen Smith, who stood for Labour in the election but lost to Blaenau Gwent People's Voice candidate Dai Davies by 2,484 votes. Evans was also shortlisted for Labour's candidacy in the parliamentary constituency of Pontypridd ahead of the 2010 general election but lost out again to Smith, who went on to hold the seat for Labour in the election with a reduced majority of 2,785 votes.

In September 2013, Evans was selected as the Labour Party's prospective parliamentary candidate for the House of Commons constituency of Camarthen West and South Pembrokeshire at the 2015 general election. Camarthen West and South Pembrokeshire had been held by the Conservative Party since the 2010 general election, when the Conservatives secured a 6.9% swing from Labour MP Nick Ainger. Evans launched her election campaign in April 2015 on the same week as her main opponent, the incumbent Conservative MP Simon Hart, ahead of the election in May. Her campaign launch focussed on Labour's national policies such as the abolition of the bedroom tax and the creation of new apprenticeships for the youth. In an interview with The Pembrokeshire Herald in February 2015, Evans said she would prioritise supporting young people and businesses and tackling voter apathy if she was elected MP. She said the main issue facing Camarthen West and South Pembrokeshire was its regional economy, stating that the government needed to take a more interventionist approach to the economy rather than leaving its management to the market as it presently did so. At the election, Evans lost to Hart by 6,054 votes, with a 4.0% swing away from Labour and 2.6% toward the Conservatives.

Personal life
Evans is married to Ed Richards, the former chief executive of Ofcom. They have two children and live in Penarth.