David Cameron has said that the Conservative Party must look more like the country it wishes to govern by increasing the numbers of MPs who are women, or from ethnic minorities, or with disabilities. The party has made this its objective and has tackled the task with enthusiasm and commitment. We have taken many steps to encourage such candidates to come forward and we have taken much positive action in altering our selection procedures in pursuit of this objective. We believe we are the only Party to use Primaries in its selection process. We supported the introduction of the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act and support the extension of this legislation. We have altered our candidate approval process, with expert advice, to make it more professional and objective. We are piloting a new selection method based on the same idea. We actively encourage our associations to select women and people from ethnic minorities. We have taken various steps to make sure that such candidates are properly and fairly considered. As a result, we are confident that there will be more Conservative MPs who are women and/or from ethnic minorities and/or with disabilities after the next election.

1.  APPROVED LIST OF PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES

  The Party maintains an Approved List of Candidates, from which individual constituency associations in England & Wales must select their candidate. A similar list is maintained by the Scottish Party for Scottish seats. We have taken active steps within the Party and more widely to encourage more women and people from ethnic minorities or with disabilities to come forward as potential candidates.

  There are currently over 1,000 candidates on the list, of whom about 74% are men and 26% are women; of these, 278 have been selected. Many candidates are from ethnic minorities and several have disabilities.

2.  PARLIAMENTARY ASSESSMENT BOARD PROCESS

  Application for admission to the List is open to anyone who has been a Party member for at least three months. Applicants are assessed at a Parliamentary Assessment Board.

  Applicants may then be admitted to the List, admitted but restricted to a particular geographical area, or type of seat, failed and invited to come back in the future, or failed and not invited back.

  The Party also maintains a European List for European Elections. Any candidate on the UK Parliamentary List can automatically go on the European List; other candidates who are only interested in Europe can apply to go on that List and go through a similar assessment process to that described below.

  Recognising the need to be objective in the assessment of an individual candidate's qualities, we have worked with an occupational psychologist to identify relevant competences and methods of assessing them. We now use a new assessment process, involving an objective and professional attempt to assess those particular competences. Assessors are MPs and senior party volunteers who have been specially trained. They do not know the candidates they are assessing, or have access to their cvs. The candidates are put through a series of exercises over a six hour period. These are designed to assess the competences which we believe successful candidates and MPs need.

3.  PRIORITY CANDIDATES

  As part of our effort to get more women and ethnic minority candidates selected, the Party has also designated some candidates as "Priority Candidates"; there are currently about 100 Priority Candidates, of whom half are women and 20% are from ethnic minorities. Suitable candidates are separately interviewed for designation as Priority Candidates, looking again at their competences.

  We encourage target and Conservative held seats to select from these Priority Candidates. We also allow these seats to choose from the general List instead, provided that they agree to have 50% women at each stage of the selection process described below. Either route helps achieve our purposes.

4.  SELECTION METHODS

  Seats are advertised by e mail to the general List or Priority Candidates as appropriate. Candidates have about two weeks to submit applications for seats in the form of a cv in a standard format and without photographs.

Target and Conservative held seats

  The constituency association chairman and two deputies then "sift" these applications and decide which (approximately) 20 candidates they wish to interview, in consultation with Party officers. The interview panel consists of 15 party members, nominated by the association, who interview each candidate for 30 minutes and vote which candidates they wish to take forward to the next round. The number taken forward depends on the format for the next round as described below. There would be four to six candidates taken forward for a Primary and between seven and 15 for a Big Event.

The second stage can take one of two forms

  "Primary". This is based on the primary process used in the USA. The association executive (about 20-40 members) interview each of the 4-6 candidates again and vote to put two, three, or four through to the Primary final, including at least one woman. The Primary is open to all party members in the constituency and anyone on the voters register for the constituency who pre-registers. The association will advertise for people so to register. Each candidate will be interviewed separately by a moderator for up to 10 minutes, followed by a question and answer session for a maximum of 20 minutes. There are no set piece speeches. After the meeting has heard all the candidates, those present vote exhaustively until one candidate achieves over 50%.

  We believe that we are the only political party in the UK to use a primary process, which has the advantage of involving in the selection process people from outside the Party's membership.

  "Big Event" in which a general meeting, open to all association members, sees each candidate interviewed and questioned through a moderator. Associations can choose to put candidates through practical exercises such as canvassing; they can also choose to use a "citizens panel" of non members who have positions locally such as a doctor, teacher, businessman etc who will interview the candidates separately and report their views to the meeting. The objective of all this is to get a broader input than would occur solely through a formal speech and questions process with members alone.

  Those present will vote for the four they wish to take through to the final, two of whom at least must be women. In the final, which is a meeting of the association's executive, each candidate will make a presentation of up to 10 minutes and be questioned from the floor. Those present will then vote exhaustively until one candidate achieves 50% of the vote.

All Women Selections

  Constituency associations can choose to use an all women process and only interview women candidates.

Non Target Seats

  These use a two stage process. The seat is advertised in the same way. The "sift" puts forward 8 candidates for interview by the association executive, who in turn put forward up to 4 for final selection by a meeting of all members by exhaustive voting.

City Seats Teams

  Some non target seats have been grouped into City Seats Teams, where a team of candidates will campaign in a group of seats, before a selection process similar to that for non target seats allocates one candidate to each seat.

5.  EUROPEAN SELECTION PROCESS

  Each Region has a Regional Selection College (RSC) consisting of the association chairmen of the constituencies in the region, plus regional officers and leaders of Conservative council groups in the Region.

  A sitting MEP automatically goes back on the List if approved at a meeting of the RSC. Aspirant candidates can apply for up to two Regions, where a sift and interview process take place. The RSC then puts forward a number of candidates equal to the number of vacant places on the Regional List, after the sitting MEPs, for a postal ballot of all party members in the Region, who first rank the sitting MEPs in the top slots and then the other candidates below them. The top ranked woman among the non MEP candidates automatically gets the first vacant slot below the sitting MEPs.

6.  DVD AND BRIEFINGS

  Wherever possible, constituency associations are briefed and shown a DVD about the selection process and the importance of selecting more women and candidates from ethnic minorities.

7.  DISABILITIES

  We have consulted SCOPE, both in an effort to encourage people with disabilities to come forward as potential candidates and to ensure that our PAB and selection processes do not create difficulties for them, or in any way discriminate against them.

  Representatives of SCOPE attended a PAB and we accepted their recommendations.

  A number of candidates, both selected and unselected, have disabilities.

8.  RESULTS

  We have so far selected candidates in 278 seats of whom about 30% are women and 6% are from ethnic minorities. At present there are 17 women and two ethnic minority Conservative MPs. On any projected share of the vote, after the next election the proportion of Conservative MPs a who are women, from ethnic minorities, or both will increase.

9.  SELECTION PILOT

  We have recently worked with an occupational psychologist to develop and pilot a new selection process, in which the qualities being sought are agreed with the association and the process then attempts to assess these qualities in each candidate. The sift is the same. At the interview stage, candidates are put through three exercises in front of the 15 person selection panel who give marks to each on a scorecard of the characteristics being assessed. There is no questioning of candidates by members of the panel. The marks are given immediately after each candidate has been seen and before the next candidate enters the room. The 4-6 with the highest marks go forward to a meeting of all party members of the association.

  Each candidate is then interviewed and questioned from the floor through a moderator (with each candidate being asked exactly the same questions and having exactly the same amount of time). Members present mark each candidate immediately they have seen them against each agreed quality being assessed. The candidate with the highest mark is selected. We plan to pilot this in a few more seats and may then adopt it more generally.

10.  FUTURE

  We will be interested to see how other parties have approached these issues and with what success; we are sure that we each have lessons to learn from each other both in persuading more women and people from ethnic minorities or with disabilities to come forward as potential candidates and increasing the rate of their selection.