Chris Huhne's reply to our joint challenge

Dear Ms Watson and Dr Rake,

 Thank you for your letter concerning the promotion of equality for men and women. The equalities agenda – for women, ethnic minorities and members of the gay community – has been a key theme of my campaign since I became the first leadership contender to raise it as a priority in the first hustings speech at the London School of Economics on 14th January. It was not an accident that of my 22 Westminster supporters when I launched, exactly half were women and half were men including our only gay MP. Sandra Gidley MP, who is the chair of our Gender Balance Task Force in the Liberal Democrats, is also supporting me for leader.

 I set out various commitments early in the campaign, and in my manifesto, and on the “Reflecting Britain” website that I hope and trust will lead to a further increase in the representation of women. You are right to point out both that we made substantial progress at the general election – half of our gains were women – but that more still needs to be done as just 16 per cent of the parliamentary party are women. The party is already committed to providing training, support, and mentoring to encourage more women to stand for parliament in a framework overseen by a Gender Balance Task Force. We are also the only major party in the UK committed to electoral reform, which means that all parties would have an incentive to put up a list of diverse candidates rather than choose one person least likely to put off the average voter.

 However, I believe we need to do more. I support a specific target of at least 40 per cent of the new intake and a quarter of the parliamentary party being women. At the moment, we are not encouraging enough women to take the first steps to civic involvement through local councils. We then need to head hunt community leaders and potential women candidates aggressively, and I have said that I will personally help with this task. Once selected, we need to make it clear to selection committees in winnable seats that there is a great stress on the need for more women, and then we need to back women with financial and staff resources to win those seats. Lynne Featherstone MP, who overturned a Labour majority of more than 25,000 in two elections, provides another model for successful women candidates working in their area to build support. We should be open-minded about encouraging such unorthodox targets. I would also like our MPs and MEPs to mentor one candidate from the list to ensure that they have advice from a successful practitioner.

 If elected, I will also monitor each stage of the process – women on the candidates’ list, in winnable seats, and in support for those seats – to ensure that there is no back-sliding. If we are not able to ensure substantial further progress, then I will back further measures to change our constitution and selection procedures to introduce a formal tilt towards women, ethnic minorities and the gay communities. Although all-women shortlists were voted down, and opposed by many leading women in the party, I think there are ways in which we can help short of that such as a higher proportion of reserved places on short lists.

 I am also committed to expanding on our traditional support for gender equality more generally. We have a proud record, as in the recent Equality Bill debates, of support for improvements in gender equality. We need extensions of maternity and paternity rights, and more flexibility to allow families with young children to decide for themselves on the burden of child care. Flexible working is a part of the solution, as is the right of employees to refuse extra hours and enforced overtime as a way of making it easier to meet family commitments. The rights of part-time workers need to be reinforced as well. In general, the two-earner couple need to be assured of greater support in helping to balance work and life commitments.

 You can be assured of my commitment both to improving the representation of women at all levels of our party, and in helping women make their place equally in British society.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Huhne MP

Leadership candidate for the Liberal Democrats