All-male committee set to welcome women MPs

Why are women MPs to keen to join the all-male select committee on Welsh affairs? Some of the potential new recruits aren't even called Davies.

Shortly after I reported the row over the original line-up, and over the reluctance of Welsh Labour MPs to join it, Gower MP Tonia Antoniazzi tweeted "both @AnnaMcMorrin and myself are on the committee".

Well, up to a point. They are not members until they've been approved by the House of Commons. That may be a formality but they missed the new committee's original meeting on Tuesday.

Men only: the original line-up of the new select committee on Welsh affairs.

At that meeting the six men agreed to hold inquiries into Brexit, tidal lagoons and hydro-energy, and rail electrification.

The failure to nominate MPs is, behind the scenes, being put down to the traditional chaos that accompanies the end of the parliamentary summer term. Although that doesn't appear to have stopped other committees from assembling full teams. I have heard a sentence featuring the words "whip's office" and "cock-up".

The two Welsh Labour MPs won't be the only women joining the committee. Plaid Cymru's parliamentary leader Liz Saville Roberts will become her party's second member.

There is also talk of a Conservative MP, Mims Davies, joining although she, like Glyn Davies, is a junior member of the government the committee is expected to scrutinise.

She is clearly not a Welsh MP but as a Swansea University graduate and, more significantly, a Davies, this is one committee where she should feel at home.