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A record number of women are set to stand in next month’s general election, making up around a third of the overall number of candidates.

Labour are making history as the first major UK party to have women standing in over half its seats for the December 12 poll.

Women standing for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats make up less than a third of their candidates.

Around 1,120 women have registered to become MPs – 34 per cent of the total, provisional analysis by PA news agency has found.

This is the highest proportion of women candidates in a general election in history, up from 29 per cent in 2017 and 26 per cent in 2015.

The overall number of candidates in December’s poll is currently 3,322. This is a very small increase on the 3,304 candidates in the 2017 general election.

The total for 2019 could be revised slightly in the next few days, after PA has completed its final verification of candidate data.

Labour is fielding 631 candidates in this election (not including Speaker Lindsay Hoyle), and 333 of these are women - 53 per cent.

This is a big jump from the 2017 election, when the equivalent figure for Labour was 42 per cent.

For the Conservatives, 190 of their 635 candidates at this election are women, making a total of 30 per cent.

This is a very small increase on 29 per cent in 2017.

Of the 611 Liberal Democrat candidates, 188 (31 per cent) are women – up from 29 per cent last time.

Two of the smaller parties have higher levels of female representation at this election than both the Tories and the Lib Dems.

The Greens have 498 candidates and 204 (41 per cent) are women. For the SNP, 20 of its 59 candidates (34 per cent) are women.

Meanwhile, exactly a quarter of Plaid Cymru’s candidates are women: nine out of 36.

Female candidates comprise 54 of the Brexit Party’s total of 275, or 20 per cent.