I see the Speaker's Conference is looking at ways to increase the number of women in parliament.

  My idea is simple, but maybe too radical for the current membership of the Commons, being mostly men, as around 200 of them would automatically lose their seats.

— Double the size of constituencies by merging adjacent constituencies

— Let each new constituency elect two members

— Have two candidate lists for each constituency, one containing male candidates, the other female candidates

— Let each elector vote for one person on each list

— Straight away you get a 50/50 male/female parliament.

  This maintains the link between members and their constituencies, while allowing voters to vote for candidates of whichever party they choose. It may mean that some constituencies have members on opposite sides of the house, but any such local difficulty would be insignificant when compared to the overall benefits