Simon Hughes's reply to our joint challenge

Below is the response we received to our letter from Simon Hughes MP.

Dear Jenny and Katherine,

Thank you for your letter raising the important issue of the lack of women MPs in Parliament, including among the Liberal Democrats.   I take very seriously the problem that our parliamentary party does not look like the country that we seek to represent, not only in terms of under-representation of women, but also as regards the lack of Black and Minority Ethnic MPs.

I have said publicly during our leadership campaign that tackling this issue will be one of my priorities as leader. I propose that one of my first acts as leader will be to call a summit meeting involving campaigners from all levels of our party to work out a strategy for tackling this problem. I am also attaching below extracts from a speech that I made at a hustings of Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats earlier this week may also be of interest and which stresses my commitment to effective action.

I hope that this is helpful and am grateful to you for getting in touch.

Best wishes,

Simon

Extracts from a speech made by Simon Hughes to the Ethnic Minority Election Task Force on 14/02/06.

"The Liberal Democrat Party has not been great in recent years in promoting women in to senior roles. In the House of Commons the number of female Liberal Democrat MPs has not been as great as I would wish it to be, although the 2005 General Election result went a part of the way to improving what has historically been a poor position. By agreeing to this rule change and appointing two deputy leaders, one of which had to be a woman, my colleagues in Westminster would demonstrate both to the Liberal Democrat party at large, but as importantly the wider general public in the country, that the Liberal Democrats were serious about increasing the number of women in parliament.

"This rule change, together with real concerted action by the whole party to make sure that women and people from the black and ethnic minority community are supported and encouraged in first getting chosen as a candidate, and then in standing for parliament in seats where the Liberal Democrats have a real chance of making gains at the next General Election, will start to help in ensuring that after the next election the Liberal Democrat benches in the House of Commons start to look more like the make up of the general British population as a whole."

"The Liberal Party in the 19th century had the proud achievement of electing the first non-white British member of the House of Commons.

“During the 20th century we failed abysmally to develop our representation of black, Asian and minority ethnic Britons.
“In the 21st century we have seriously started the urgent task of reflecting the diversity of Britain again. With the election of Lord Dholakia as my predecessor as Federal President, Saj Karim as Member of the European Parliament for the North West of England and Parmjit Singh Gill as Member of Parliament for Leicester South in the last parliament, we started the breakthrough.

“We selected a record number of parliamentary candidates from the BME communities. More and more black, Asian and ethnic minority members have become councillors around the country. More and more black, Asian and minority ethnic Britons have become Liberal Democrat members and more and more black, Asian and minority ethnic Britons have voted for us than ever before.

“But much more needs to be done.

“As President, I have initiated a diversity and equality review of our party which will complete its work and make recommendations this year. As Leader, I will early after this May's local elections convene a summit of all senior elected party colleagues to agree new methods, procedures and proposals for ensuring much better gender and ethnic mix amongst our parliamentary candidates. As Leader, I will propose any necessary changes to our constitution at our conference in Brighton in September.

“We must monitor precisely our membership and council and parliamentary candidacies. We must proactively recruit new people to be members and candidates, and recruit members to be new councillors and MPs. We must have revamped organisation, federally, nationally and regionally to support women and black and minority candidates. We must raise more money to support our women and BME candidates in winnable seats. And we must appoint senior members of the party to be responsible nationally and locally for relations with the ethnic and faith communities.

“There is no better time for us to win the hearts, minds and support of multi-racial, multi-faith and multi-cultural Britain. I know we can do it. I am determined we will do it. We must all be determined to succeed."