Party leader tells committee he backs all-female shortlists and is determined to have 50/50 representation by next election

Four white men arrived to give evidence to a group of influential MPs yesterday. The subject? The under-representation of women in parliament, of course. Even Jeremy Corbyn, one the aforementioned witnesses - alongside Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, Conservative party chair Sir Patrick McLoughlin and SNP’s parliamentary group leaderAngus Robertson - pointed out it did seem “slightly odd”.

The riposte from the chairman of the women and equalities committee Maria Miller came before he’d even finished the sentence: “With respect,” she said sharply, “That’s your fault, not ours.”

And while after more than an hour and a half of grilling all four party representatives agreed on the need for gender parity in the house of commons, exactly when that might happen remains a moot point.

Questioned by the select committee Jeremy Corbyn said he was determined that half of all Labour MPs following the next election would be women.



Labour – which has 43% female MPs – risks losing 23 sitting MPs as a result of the 2018 Boundary Commission review, while more than 20 female Labour MPs could face deselection, according to the committee.

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“I fully understand the danger of the situation,” said Corbyn. “We are determined to achieve 50% representation and our national executive will be considering this urgently at my request […] It may well be we intervene to ensure there are all-women shortlists or, in some cases, make sure women are added to shortlists to ensure there is that choice there.”



Corbyn said the party would take steps to achieve “50% of women’s representation in the next parliament”, leaving open the possibility that all-female shortlists will be put in place in safer seats.

A Labour spokesman later confirmed the party’s support for all-female shortlists, but said decisions on how to achieve parity in the party would have to be resolved at the national executive committee.

Corbyn indicated that Labour could introduce all-female shortlists for mayoral elections – in 18 Labour mayoral selections, only two have been women, said Gavin Shuker, the Labour MP for Luton South.



“It is not acceptable to have the vast majority of our mayoral candidates being men when we want to achieve the same as we want to achieve in parliamentary representation,” he said. He had “sympathy” with the idea of further positive discrimination -such as ensuring places on shortlists - for black and ethnic minority and LGBT representatives with current equality laws, he said.

Whoever he is, Labour’s next leader must set right the party’s women problem | Rachel Holmes Read more









BBC Parliament (@BBCParliament) Jeremy Corbyn tells @Commonswomequ it's "strange" to interview just men for inquiry. @Maria_MillerMP tells him "that's your fault, not ours" pic.twitter.com/npQTPW0FCj

The fact that all party representatives giving evidence at the select committee were male “said it all”, said Jess Philips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, who accused both parties of resting on their laurels. “Labour have done much more but rely on their body count in parliament, while the conservatives rely on the prime minister. Both have a cultural problem [with women] and both have found a tick box to try and disprove they have a problem.”

Sir Patrick McLoughlin, the Conservative party chair, said the Tories had made progress, going from having only 17 female MPs in 2005 to 68 in the last election. It was “not enough but a good move forward”, he said. Currently, 20% of Conservative MPs are women.



Challenged as to why only two out of ten directors at Tory HQ were women and only one of the officers of the influential 1922 committee, McLoughlin said: “If we are awarding points I hope we get a bonus for the prime minister. It is sometimes that people don’t want to put themselves forward and we can’t force them to do that.

“We don’t impose all-women shortlists because we do try and give local associations as much freedom as possible in the way they go about selecting their candidates before a general election.”



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Imposing restricted shortlists on Conservative associations “would possibly risk a resentment which would not help that candidate once they were selected”, he said.



Conservative historian Tim Bale said that sentiment was in keeping with party membership. “There is a feeling that it is tokensim and anti-meritocratic,” he said. “In spite of the evidence that shows it’s basically the only thing that can work.”

Anne Jenkin, who founded the conservative Women2Win network with Theresa May, said the Tory party had made “significant ground” on women’s representation at the last election. “I would prefer not to have [all-women shortlists], that’s just not the conservative way - and most women candidates don’t like it, they don’t feel women have got there on their own merit.” But she added: “you have to make sure you become ever vigilant to make sure you don’t go backwards.”

The house of commons is 71% male, with 459 men and 191 women. More than 50 other countries have proportionally more women in their Parliaments than the UK, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, while according to a 2011 report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, it would take 70 years - or 14 general elections - to achieve an equal number of women MPs.

“The fact that there are 140% more men that women in the House of Commons is not only a democratic deficit it is a democratic disgrace,” said Frances Scott, founder of 50:50 parliament, which has a petition calling for gender parity. “If the diverse majority that are women are having such difficulty breaking through many minorities must and do face insurmountable hurdles too. Addressing this issue is the key to making Parliament more representative and diverse generally.”

Tim Farron, the leader of the Lib Dems, and Angus Robertson, the SNP’s parliamentary group leader told the all-party select committee that all-female shortlists were necessary to change the status quo. Farron said the Lib Dems’ record in parliament had been “lamentable”, but added the party had passed a motion in the spring in favour of all-female shortlists, all-disabled shortlists and had committed to ensuring places on shortlists for black, minority ethnic and LGBT candidates.

Robertson said he was “proud to be the leader of the gayest parliamentary party”, and added that when the SNP decided to tackle the lack of representation of women in its ranks it found role models and encouragement were not enough. “There needs to be a mechanism,” he said.





“It’s impossible to explain to the electorate why there have been fewer than 500 female MPs in 90 years,” said conservative MP Maria Miller, chairman of the women and equalities committee. “It’s inexcusable and we can no longer say things we change by osmosis, something has to be done.”

• This article was amended on 13 October 2016 to remove an incorrect paragraph that was meant to have been removed during the editing process.