Clause 1 - Exclusion of candidate selection from 1975 act
Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Bill
12:00 pm
Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local Government), Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
My hon. Friend makes a valid and apt point. The only real test of the success of a policy, and of whether the remedy is proportionate to the problem being dealt with, is the outcome in terms of the number of elected candidates. The great advance that our party made in women's representation was as a result of our adoption of all-women shortlists during the run-up to the 1997 general election. As we did not feel able to adopt a similar approach for the most recent general election in 2001, it came as no surprise to those of us who believe that positive measures are necessary to deliver the right outcome that we did not even sustain the same number of women representatives as we had in the previous Parliament. The number of women Labour Members fell a bit, although not by much—the figure is still far better than those for the other parties represented in this place. Nevertheless, we recognise that there was a fallback from the position achieved in 1997.