1.  A Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate is selected by a vote of all eligible Party members in the constituency in question. The selection is held subsequent to a hustings meeting (although postal votes are also accepted) and is by a Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. Selections are conducted according to a set of rules, which uphold principles of fairness and best practice. A trained Returning Officer from another Local Party oversees the selection process, and is assisted by a Local Party selection committee, constructed to reflect the electorate in the constituency in terms of geography, gender, ethnicity and age, the members of which receive diversity training. The selection committee are responsible for agreeing selection criteria, which they use to draw up the shortlist of candidates who will compete for the votes of the membership. Shortlists must be between 3 and 5 members long and must contain a minimum number of candidates from each gender. Only candidates who are on the Party's list of approved candidates are eligible for shortlisting. Admission to the approved list is by means of an assessment centre, usually run regionally, where applicants are assessed in a range of exercises against an agreed competency framework. The assessment centre has recently been entirely revised and diversity has been mainstreamed throughout, with all assessors receiving diversity training. Anyone who has been a Party member for at least 12 months can apply for assessment, and every effort is made to make the assessment accessible to all applicants, by means of a comprehensive reasonable adjustments policy. There is a fee of £50 to cover costs, which is waived if an applicant indicates they are not able to pay.

  2.(a)  The 2005 British Representation Study http://www.bbk.ac.uk/polsoc/research/projects/british-representation-study conducted by Dr Rosie Campbell, Dr Sarah Childs and Professor Joni Lovenduski came up with the following results:

"On average Liberal Democrat candidates spent £178 on selection expenses since the last election and £70 on their most recent selection. On average women applied for 1.99 seats compared with 1.46 seats for men; women were on average interviewed for 1.8 seats compared with 1.31 for men; women were on average on the shortlist of 1.84 seats compared to 1.36 for men. Men spent on average £96 on selection expenses between the 2001 and the 2005 election, women spent on average £434 over the same period. Women spent an average of £129 on their most recent selection compared with £48 for men. A regression analysis was conducted on candidates' spending and when a control for being a parent of a child under 5 was included the sex difference in spending was reduced dramatically. We can infer from this that childcare costs account for women's high selection expenses".

  (b)  In theory there is no cost to the candidate personally for running a campaign for election to Westminster. Campaign costs are the responsibility of the local party and may be assisted by national funding. In practice, however, the relative lack of funds available to the Liberal Democrats means that candidates will tend to contribute more to their campaign costs than may be the case in other parties—especially if they are seeking to win. There are also many "out of pocket expenses" and also the potential loss of significant earnings often required to be a successful Liberal Democrat candidate. A number of candidates have given up full-time work in order to have to campaign. It is not, however, possible to really quantify the costs involved.

  3.  The funds available to all parties in general are disclosed in the annual accounts reported to and published by the Electoral Commission. All parties can organise their budgets according to various categories of expenditure including candidate support. Limited funds within the Liberal Democrats mean that the party is not able to provide cash funding for "personal support" for candidates. The party does endeavour to help support campaigns costs in some constituencies but this is very limited.

  4.  We do not have any funds to support candidates financially on a personal basis. We do, of course, provide support in terms of things like training and their local parties may receive some support for campaigning purposes and this is determined by party HQ.

  5.(a)  47% of the party membership is female (b) (c) we do not have any reliable data on the proportion of our members of bme origin or considering themselves to be disabled. We are currently putting in place a diversity monitoring framework and will be establishing diversity targets for all necessary elements of the party organisation (including membership services) through the work of the Diversity Engagement Group (DEG). DEG currently has two working groups supporting achievement of this particular objective:

(1) Diversity Monitoring Group.

(2) Setting Diversity Targets Group.

  The new diversity monitoring framework will be operational with agreed targets in place within the next three months.

  6.  We are collecting this data at present.

  7.  We have organised several regional events with BME communities to meet Nick Clegg, promote the party and to improve the diversity of our membership. We have a very limited professional staff compared to other parties, but we employ a full-time member of staff for the "Campaign for Gender Balance" and a part-time National Diversity Advisor. A significant amount of training and mentoring is offered.

  Much more detailed information would be available from the Campaign for Gender Balance Organiser and our National Diversity Adviser, as well as our Candidates Office should this be helpful to you.