The campaign for the leadership of our party is now underway and I am excited by the prospect and humbled by the many messages of support and encouragement I have received.

However as a party we need to look at how we operate and what we look like to the outside world. One issue, in particular, now has an urgency to it which we can’t ignore. We have danced around gender imbalance at the highest levels for too long ….. and I am not prepared to wait a further five years before women are able to feature at the leadership level. Given that there were no women elected to the House of Commons and so no woman can stand for the leadership, I believe it is essential that the deputy leader is a woman.

Consequently, as leader I will immediately propose to the federal executive that we should move to elect a Deputy Leader who is not required to be a member of the House of Commons, but who will play a major role as one of the party’s leading voices and campaigners. She could be one of the former or future colleagues mentioned below; a peer, a member of a devolved chamber or the European Parliament; a leading councillor or seasoned campaigner.

The need for action was forcefully brought home to me on Tuesday when our much diminished parliamentary party met for the first time. Amongst the many absent faces were brilliant ministers with fantastic records of achievement in international development and employment rights such as Lynne Featherstone, and Jo Swinson and dynamic campaigners such as Tessa Munt, Jenny Willott and Lorely Burt. I had also started the campaign expecting to be joined by a host of new, talented colleagues such as Dorothy Thornhill, Lisa Smart, Jane Dodds, Christine Jardine, Vikki Slade, Julie Porksen, Layla Moran and many others – who could have doubted that amongst this group were future leaders of the party?

So we must put in place the mechanism to let our members – including the fantastic avalanche of new members — to make the choice.

Some might say that putting this special election in place will have a cost. But failing to act will have a greater cost, not just in image and reputation but also in terms of the insight and perspectives that a female deputy leader will bring to our collective task of renewal and recovery.

I want to have the benefit of that wisdom on a daily basis, and want to work in harness with a deputy whose presence ensures that our party is starting the process of becoming properly representative of liberal Britain.