Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey & Wood Green, Liberal Democrat)

How nice to see you in the Chair this morning, Mr. Benton.

We agree with the Government that enabling political parties to discriminate positively in elections is a good thing, because that changes representation, and, as we know, there has been woeful under-representation of women and ethnic minorities. Amendment 203 is about extending that permission in enabling legislation to internal party elections.

Women are under-represented not only in political assemblies as mentioned in subsection (8), but sometimes in the upper echelons of those assemblies. Obviously we would not seek to bind the hands of a leader to appoint, all on their ownsome, a representative Cabinet. However, in internal party elections and on other occasions it would be helpful, in such cases as under-representation in federal committees, to be able to extend positive  discrimination, should there be a need for that. We hope, obviously, that there would be no such need. The idea is simply to apply the same rights in internal party elections as are applied in external elections.

See this speech in context