Equality Act 2010: Diversity of Political Candidates

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend the Leader assures me that the Front Bench on this side is pretty good. I am afraid it is not within my power, but I see in the other place that considerable progress has been made since 1997, when I was elected, which was equally a big jump in women’s representation. Then, however, it was just over 18% women—it now stands at 40%, which is the sort of progress that we would all like to see.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the Conservative Party has led the way on diversity when it comes to our party leaders? I know we have had a few. We have had our first Asian leader, when Labour has had none, and our first black leader, when Labour has had none—all, I add, chosen on merit.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right that there has been an enormous diversity of leaders of the Conservative Party—some of it good, some of it less good. Given the noble Baroness’s understandable wish to talk about the diversity of leaders, I find it slightly more difficult to understand why the party opposite, during its 14 years in government, was not as keen to enable that, through Section 106 of the Equality Act, to be something that all political parties should do and why it is not willing therefore to say more about its candidates and their diversity. What we know is that, when it comes to real progress in broader representation, the fact that there are now more Labour women in the House of Commons than Conservative MPs in total tells us something about which party has made the most progress on gender.