Half of our MPs will be women, say Tories after porn scandal
Party seeks to reassure voters it can contain sleaze as backbencher quits
HALF of the Conservative MPs returned at the next election must be women, the party’s chairman has said, as he warned that substantially increasing female representation would be key to tackling Westminster sleaze.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Oliver Dowden said the Conservatives were committed to a goal of equal gender representation in the Commons. As a first step, he pledged to ensure that the party’s candidates list “reflects the fact that half the population are women”.
The intervention comes after Neil Parish, the Tory chairman of the Commons environment committee, said he was quitting as an MP as he admitted watching pornography twice in Parliament. The 65-year-old said he first visited a graphic website accidentally while looking at tractors online, but then returned to the site deliberately, in a “moment of madness”.
This weekend, allies of Lord Frost urged him to consider standing in the by-election that will be created by Mr Parish’s departure from the traditionally safe Conservative seat in Devon.
Separately, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, called for a review of working practices in Parliament and a “Speaker’s conference” of the political parties to consider whether it was right that MPs continued to employ staff directly. Concerns have been raised that staff feel unable to complain in cases where grievances are against the MP.
“I take recent allegations of bullying and sexual impropriety, comments and advances very seriously, which is why it is time we reviewed our working practices; particularly whether it is right that individual MPs are the employers of their staff,” Sir Lindsay said.
Yesterday, Caroline Nokes, a former minister, said that women in Parliament were “tolerated rather than valued”, adding: “It still very much feels like it’s run by an old boys club.”
Baroness Morgan, the former MP and culture secretary, said: “We need more women to occupy senior roles in the House of Commons.”
Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, told the BBC: “I always thought that if we get more women, then things will get better. But sadly I don’t see that happening at the moment.”
Mr Dowden is understood to have made a similar private pledge to the female grouping of the 1922 Committee last week, at which an MP first aired concerns about Mr Parish’s actions. One parliamentarian is said to have pointed out to Mr Dowden and Chris HeatonHarris, the Chief Whip, that as two of a small handful of men vastly outnumbered at a meeting attended by more than 40 women, they should understand that “this is how we feel in every meeting”, with female Tory MPs always in the minority.
Mr Dowden said: “I think the single best thing I can do as chairman of the Conservative Party is make sure that we select more good female members of Parliament so that the membership of the [parliamentary] Conservative Party reflects the wider country.
“It has been my privilege to ensure that somebody like Anna Firth – brilliant MP in Southend West – got elected as a member of Parliament. And I want to make sure that we get more good women like that, because I think the single best thing you can do is increase that diversity and make sure that we don’t allow any practices or conduct in Westminster that wouldn’t be acceptable in any other workplace.” Mr Dowden said that increasing female representation would be a particular focus of the party’s general election roadmap, which is due to be launched within weeks. Currently, slightly less than a quarter of Tory MPs are women, compared with more than half of Labour MPs.
“We will be launching the road to the next general election and part of that is getting the best-quality members of Parliament,” Mr Dowden said. “I’ve reopened the candidates list and I want to get the brightest and the best.”
While the 2019 intake of MPs “reflects the whole country ... we need to make sure our candidates list also reflects that and also reflects the fact that half the population are women”.
In November 2020, Boris Johnson appeared to commit the party to equal gender representation in a video for the 50:50 Parliament campaign.
Today, Mr Dowden says: “The Prime Minister set out the 50:50 goal and that starts with making sure that we get the really strong female candidates, so then associations are picking the very best as well.” Mr Dowden insists that the party has already made “huge progress”, having almost doubled the number of female MPs elected in 2010, with the help of the Women2win campaign founded by Baroness Jenkin of Kennington and Theresa May. The Cabinet
the east of the country for almost a decade. In the March issue of RMT News, the union’s official newsletter, Mr Dempsey, who is paid a basic annual salary of £85,282, told members: “The union is looking at industrial action and even civil disobedience if we have to in order to alert the membership and the general public about the effects of the cuts coming down the line.”
In a separate address to a fringe meeting of the Communication Workers Union’s annual conference last Monday, Mr Dempsey said: “We are going to try to create a culture of civil peaceful disobedience in this country.
“We’ve got to get out there with industrial strategies to make sure every depot, every workplace, is a fortress for the trade union movement and people are ready to come out and defend their rights.”
Network Rail has urged the RMT to “work with us, not against us”.
A union spokesman said: “RMT has at no time suggested its members will glue themselves to any railway tracks during this dispute with Network Rail and the train operating companies.”