STATISTICS ON REPRESENTATION IN POLITICAL LIFE

— Women now account for just under 20 per cent of the House of Commons, more than double than in 1996 when they made up just 9 per cent.

— There are currently:

— 148 Female Peers (20% of the total)

— 5 women Cabinet Ministers (21.7%) compared with 30.43% before the recent reshuffle (full members)

— 46.7% of the Welsh Assembly are women

— 34.1% of the Scottish Parliament are women

— 20 women MEPs (25.6%)

— 15 MPs are from BAME communities

— The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly each have only 1 BAME politician.

— One in three of those who live in the nation's capital are from BAME communities, yet there are only two BAME Assembly Members out of a total of 25, and again no Asian women.

— In the whole of Great Britain, there are only two BAME Chief Executives of a local authority and only one BME Council Leader.

— At the European level, there are only 5 BAME MEPs, only one of whom is a woman.

— Women in general are under represented as councillors; despite making up 51% of the population they represent 30.8% of seats in England. However, for BAME women there is even a greater imbalance.

— There are around 149 female councillors from ethnic minority backgrounds in England which represents under 1% of all councillors.

— There are about twice as many councillors aged over 70 (2778) as there are under 40 (1417)

— There are 1222 councillors in Scotland, 22.6% of them are women. There are currently between nine and 11 BAME male councillors but no BAME women councillors.

— In Wales, 21.8% of councillors are women (2004 data).

EUROPEAN COMPARISONS

  The UK is ranked 16th within the EU by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS

  The UK is ranked 60th out of 189 countries listed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in terms of the percentage of women holding office in the lower or single House of the national Parliamentary body. The top ten are: