 Hello, my name is Ann Abel and I'm a member of the Independent Remuneration Panel for Wales and I've been doing this job now for about two years. When I left full-time work in public service, I've been in public service all my life. I wanted to carry on using a lot of the skills I've developed and I saw an advertisement for the probation board and I joined the probation board and I served on that through its time as a trust and then eventually moved to the police authority, which again was another public appointment I thoroughly enjoyed. But when the police authority ended, I didn't want to give up then my public work and as has often happened to me in my life, a friend said, have you seen this and told me about the advert and I looked at it and I thought, remuneration panel didn't kind of grab me immediately as being very exciting but then when I looked at it and thought about the implications of the work, I realised I actually had quite a lot to give because I'd been involved in local government all my life and I'd done a lot of work with elected members and I'd designed training packages for councillors and I'd actually delivered a lot of those training events to councillors so I felt I knew quite a lot about their job and what their interests were. The panel itself is easy to work in, they're a great bunch and we have terrific support from the Secretary here so the actual meeting time is always interesting and fun but what I'd I think pick out most of all is the opportunity to go and meet with councillors and last year we went to visit every local authority in Wales, we didn't all go to each one but I went to quite a lot of them and we talked to councillors, the what you'd call back bench councillors as well as leaders of authorities, deputy leaders, we talked to the mayors and we had a wonderful experience because we had first hand experience of what it's like to be a councillor. We were able to say, well what do you think of our remuneration package? What are the issues for you? Some of the things that came up we were able to bring back and have a think about. For example we found that quite that very few people were taking up the care allowance that was that's available and so we were able to collect up some of that information and that's something that we're working on to see how we can encourage more people to take advantage of the care allowance so I think it's that interaction with people, the reality of what we do in our report and how that affects people out there on the ground doing a job for all of our local communities. Huge numbers of people in our country are from different backgrounds, different cultures, different races and we also have a lot of people who have all kinds of disabilities so we are a diverse nation but that tends not to be represented in our public committees and that's why it's important. I think that different people have different experiences and bring something different to it and I feel as a woman, I mean the only woman on this rather small panel there are only five of us and I think I bring a different point of view it's no better and no worse than the points of view of everyone else it is different and that's why it's important we need to encourage more and more people who've had a different life experience to come forward and take part in public life. I think as you probably realise I've very much enjoyed my time on the panel so if there's anyone who is interested in joining our panel stop and think about all the things you can do that you've done think about your skills make a list of what I can do don't be persuaded to think you can't do it and I think this sounds very gendered but it does seem that often women in particular and I think it may well be true for people from from other ethnic groups I think sometimes people think well I can't do it I haven't done it before I think the key is to say I probably can do it what you can also do is talk to someone else who sits on a public committee and get a sense of what it's like sometimes I think it can sound a bit scary as I said to you in the beginning when I looked at the remuneration panel I think something about the language sometimes the jargon that can put people off don't be put off talk to somebody talk to someone who's done the job before and have the confidence to go ahead and do it because we need more and more people we need more women we need more people who from different backgrounds in this country to come forward and serve and it is serving and it's it's something that's worth doing so don't be afraid to apply come forward