SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS
AND RECOMMENDATIONS
| 1. | Nearly all Members of Parliament are elected to the House of Commons on a party ticket. This makes the political parties, effectively, the gatekeepers to the House of Commons. It means that if the House of Commons is to become more representative the political parties will, in large part, have to be the agents of change.
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| 2. | When the leaders of the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, the Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP and Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg MP, gave evidence to us on 20th October 2009 they each agreed that the diversity of representation within their parties was neither what it should be, nor what they wanted it to be. We welcome this important acknowledgement.
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| 3. | Each of the parties monitors its progress on candidate selections internally. The fact that this information is not collected and placed in the public domain, however, means that there is no public accountability; unless the performance of the different parties can be compared with each other (and with the performance of parties throughout the world) there is likely to be insufficient pressure for the political parties to pursue the cultural change which is needed from them before we can have a House of Commons "fit for the 21st century".
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| 4. | The leaders of the three main parties also gave us their agreement in principle to publish future reports on the results of candidate selections.
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| 5. | We shall table a draft new clause to the Equality Bill which, if enacted, would require registered political parties to report every six months, according to specified criteria, on the diversity of their candidate selections; and to publish those reports online. We hope that this proposal will have the support of the House.
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Introduction
1. The Speaker's Conference (on Parliamentary Representation)
was established by the House of Commons in November 2008. We were
asked to examine the reasons why women, people from BME (black
and minority ethnic) backgrounds and disabled people are under-represented
in the House of Commons, and to recommend ways in which barriers
to their representation can be removed. We have also agreed to
look at issues relating to representation of the LGBT (lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transsexual) community.
2. In our first interim report we noted that there
are three reasons why we should seek to make the House of Commons
more representative of the society we live in. These are:
- Justice: the representative
body of our society should have a place within it for all sections
of society;
- Effectiveness: the
House of Commons will work most effectively if it holds within
its membership the same diversity of life experiences as is present
in wider society; and
- Enhanced legitimacy: although MPs work
hard to represent the breadth and depth of their constituents'
concerns and experiences, the absence of a wide cross-section
of society in the House of Commons means that it can appear to
disregard the needs and concerns of specific groups. As a result
its decisions and actions may be considered less legitimate than
they would otherwise be.
The role of political parties
3. Nearly all Members of Parliament are elected
to the House of Commons on a party ticket. This makes the political
parties, effectively, the gatekeepers to the House of Commons.
It means that if the House of Commons is to become more representative
the political parties will, in large part, have to be the agents
of change.
4. The record of the political parties in promoting
diversity of representation is uneven. Each of the main parties
has taken steps to make its selection procedures more objective
and professional and to reduce the incidence of openly discriminatory
practices such as asking women applicants whether they plan to
have children, or unmarried men whether there was anything in
their past "that might cause the party embarrassment".[1]
We are told that, increasingly, women and people from BME backgrounds,
if not disabled people or open members of the LGBT communities,
are putting themselves forward for selection in sufficient numbers
to make a difference.[2]
Yet the fact remains that at present the House of Commons continues
to be largely white, male, middle-aged and middle-class: people
from under-represented groups who are putting themselves forward
for selection are still proportionately less likely to be selected,
or to be selected for a seat the party thinks it can win, than
their counterparts.
5. When the leaders of the Labour Party, the Conservative
Party and the Liberal Democrats, the Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Gordon
Brown MP, Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP and Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg MP,
gave evidence to us on 20th October they each agreed that the
diversity of representation within their parties was neither what
it should be, nor what they wanted it to be.[3]
We welcome this important acknowledgement from the party
leaders. We also note the Prime Minister's request that the House
authorities investigate whether civil partnerships could be celebrated
on the Parliamentary estate." [4]
Performance monitoring
6. Working to create real change, we were told,
entails "not just a stated commitment but a proactive approach,
involving transparency, accountability and monitoring of both
progress made and difficulties encountered."[5]
Similarly, Trevor Phillips said that:
"if we are actually going to address this
issue then we should address it from a point of strength, knowing
what the truth is … it would be helpful for the political
parties to understand, for example, what proportion of different
ethnic groups are putting themselves forward, what proportion
of women are putting themselves forward, because once you know
that you can work out what is actually the problem." [6]
7. Each of the parties monitors its progress on
candidate selections internally. The fact that this information
is not collected and placed in the public domain, however, means
that that there is no public accountability; unless the performance
of the different parties can be compared with each other (and
with the performance of parties throughout the world) there is
likely to be insufficient pressure for the political parties to
pursue the cultural change which is needed from them before we
can have a House of Commons "fit for the 21st century".[7]
8. It was for this reason that in our first interim
report we asked all of the political parties to report to us "by
12 October 2009 the result of selections by constituency giving
the date of selection, the method of selection, the candidate's
gender and the candidate's ethnicity and reporting in accordance
with candidates' identifications of disability and sexual orientation".[8]
We were pleased that four parties—the Labour party, the
Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru—responded
to this recommendation, sending us initial three months' data
at the beginning of October. Recognising that parts of the information
we had sought could be personally sensitive, and that the small
sample size made it relatively easy to identify individuals within
the reports, we published only parts of this information online.[9]
9. The following week, the leaders of the three
main parties also gave us their agreement in principle to publish
future reports on the results of candidate selections: Rt.
Hon. Gordon Brown MP said "You are absolutely right, unless
people know what is happening, then the public opinion that is
being shaped about this cannot put the pressure that is necessary
on the parties";[10]
Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP said that the Conservative party monitored
"in terms of gender, BME candidates and those who register
themselves as disabled" already and would be "very happy
to publish" the data;[11]
Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg MP told us that the Liberal Democrats already
provided "very full reports" to its party Conference
twice a year and "would be very happy to make that public".[12]
Accordingly, we have written to request two further monitoring
reports from each of the main parties, to be delivered on 11 January
and 15 March 2010, if Parliament is then still in session.
10. These reports will, we hope, provide a baseline
for future accountability. The information we have published so
far is not statistically significant, but each future report that
is made will help to clarify where a particular approach is proving
successful in tackling under-representation, and where difficulties
remain. As there are problems across the parties on this issue
of diversity, so there should be common benefits in sharing this
information.
11. In the long term, however, a more formal mechanism
for making these reports will be needed. Our Conference will cease
to exist at the dissolution of the current Parliament and will
not therefore be able to continue to act as monitor and publisher
of the data.
The Equality Bill
12. Recent policy developments seek to encourage
fairer representation. Part 7 of the Equality Bill, which is currently
before the House, contains clauses which, if passed, would extend
by another fifteen years (to 2030) the existing provision in law
which allows political parties to use all-women shortlists. It
would also enable political parties to take further steps "to
reduce inequality in the party's representation" through
selection arrangements for elections to Westminster, to the European
Parliament, to the Scottish Parliament, to the National Assembly
for Wales and certain local government elections.[13]
These enabling provisions are another aspect of the solution to
the problems of under-representation which all parties face and
they should be supported by a regular supply of accurate and up-to-date
information. We shall seek to propose a new clause to the Bill,
which would formalise and build upon our existing agreement with
the main political parties to report on diversity in candidate
selection.
13. We shall table a draft new clause to the Equality
Bill which, if enacted, would require registered political parties
to report every six months, according to specified criteria, on
the diversity of their candidate selections; and to publish those
reports online.
14. The proposal we shall table does not follow precisely
the pattern of reporting which we sought in our first interim
report. To monitor progress properly requires data from all stages
of the selection process, from the initial call for applicants
to the final outcome. Otherwise we will only ever know about the
individuals who are successful. Further, our experience of the
initial party reports (discussed at paragraph 8 above) demonstrated
for us the potential difficulties in disclosing parts of the information
we had sought; we believe that the slightly different approach
we shall set out in the draft new clause will be more effective
in enabling relevant data to be gathered for the purposes of monitoring
and accountability while providing better protection for the individual.
15. Our proposal is a modest one. It requires comparatively
little effort from the parties, who already gather much of this
data. It builds on an existing consensus, which recognises that
greater transparency and accountability can help to support and
justify the priority which is given to the issue of fair representation.
It may help, over time, to secure a House of Commons which is
more effective, more representative of our society and in which
the public feels better able to place its confidence. We hope
that this proposal will have the support of the House.
1 Ev 82 Back
2
Women at the Top 2005: changing faces, changing politics? The
Hansard Society, 2005 p 26; Ev 3 Back
3
Qq 434, 447, 460 Back
4
Q 434 Back
5
Ev 17 Back
6
Q 94 Back
7
Q 434 Back
8
Speaker's Conference (on Parliamentary Representation): Interim
Report, Session 2009-10, HC 167-I, paragraph 22 Back
9
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/spconf/memo/contents.htm Back
10
Q 446 Back
11
Q 457 Back
12
Q 468 Back
13
Equality Bill [As amended in Public Bill Committee] Bill 131 clause
101 Back
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