Luke Evetts, 29, is a Lawyer & Political Campaigner from Newport (originally from Ceredigion)
To mark three decades of the IWA’s role in making Wales better, we decided to look forward to ‘the next thirty years’ by introducing some of the people who will be shaping ‘the Welsh agenda’ as the future unfolds. We have teamed up with PricewaterhouseCoopers and their #GreatWales campaign, which celebrates the ideas and people who contribute to the Wales of the future.
Luke Evetts, 29, is a Lawyer & Political Campaigner
from Newport (originally from Ceredigion)
I am a lawyer by profession and specialise in employment and commercial law. I work for law firm DAS Law and am also a Director of Evetts Legal (a company providing specialist legal consultancy services to the pharmaceutical sector). I have been involved in campaigns focused on creating a fairer business rates system for rural Welsh businesses and for better support for those with learning disabilities in education. I have acted as a pro-bono legal advisor to a mental health charity and also been a Trustee of a self-advocacy charity supporting people with learning disabilities.
I stood as the Conservative candidate for Ceredigion for the 2010 General Election and the 2011 Assembly Election. I now live in Newport where I’ve continued to be heavily involved in local politics, including acting as an Agent for the 2015 General Election and standing as a candidate in the city centre Stow Hill ward for the local council elections. I am one of the founders of #GlobalNewport, a concept aimed at challenging division following the Brexit vote and encouraging Newport to be an open, outward looking city that embraces the modern world.
I’ve always wanted to help people. That’s why I decided to go into the law and why I later got involved in local politics. I first became involved in politics in 2007 when I felt that many elected representatives were too inward looking and lacked the drive and ambition to look to the future and change things for the better.
I have enjoyed the experience of campaigning in a city centre ward over the last few years and while some of the issues are naturally different from what I experienced growing up in rural Wales, we are all united by caring about issues like health, education, job creation and infrastructure. The Welsh Assembly is responsible for making decisions about the things that matter to us day to day; over the next 30 years the role and powers of the Assembly will only increase and I would love to be a part of that. In the long term, I would like to help shape future policy in Wales using my personal experience of the issues facing both rural and urban communities, and seeking innovative, outward looking ways to make life in Wales better.
Each day, throughout the month of June, we are celebrating the exceptional people on the Next 30 list by publishing a short pen portrait here on Click on Wales, as well as raising their profile on Twitter using #IWAnext30 and #GreatWales to highlight the exciting contributions these people are making to Wales’ future.
