Parties in safe seats should give priority to women, says Jowell

Minister for women fears a return to male-dominated, macho political culture after the next election

Tessa Jowell, the minister for Women, warned yesterday that Labour's long-term drive to boost the number of its women MPs will be in jeopardy unless constituency parties select female candidates for the next general election.

In an interview with The Independent, Ms Jowell appealed to local parties to give priority to women in winnable seats, to prevent Labour's 101-strong band of women MPs being reduced after the election, which is expected next year.

Labour's Millbank headquarters fears the party's traditional male-dominated culture will reassert itself when constituency parties select their candidates in the next few months. Some men who failed to win seats in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly because of rules which helped women plan to take revenge by landing safe Westminster seats.

"We have taken a big stride towards a more representative House of Commons," said Ms Jowell. "The message to constituency parties is: don't let us lose that progress."

Labour's target is to ensure the party has equal representation among men and women after two more general elections, and Ms Jowell says the fate of that goal now lies in the hands of party activists.

"You can't talk about the importance of equality on the one hand and then do nothing about it on the other," she said. "It is in the power of every single Labour Party member to stay true to the party's commitment to be a party for men and women."

Should local parties use positive discrimination by choosing a woman even if a more impressive man is in the running?

"Of course you make decisions on the basis of merit," Ms Jowell replied. "We have a truly outstanding panel of women putting themselves forward. Almost all of them would give any male candidate a run for his money."

Ms Jowell insisted Labour's drive was "not about tokenism or political correctness" and that a representative Parliament was one way of achieving a modern democracy. If the number of Labour women MPs fell at the next election, she accepted that a re-elected Blair government might have to change the law to allow parties to choose candidates from all-women shortlists. In the run-up to the 1997 election, an industrial tribunal ruled that such lists breached the Sex Discrimination Act.

"There are two views on how to get equal representation - by changing the law or, after getting a critical mass of women in 1997, achieving it by exhortation and changing the culture of the party," Ms Jowell said. "If we don't make progress, then I think we will have to look at changing the law after the next election."

Ms Jowell insisted Labour would do more to ensure more women MPs than the Tories, who have only 14 women MPs at present and have so far selected only 32 for the next election - many in unpromising seats. "The Tories are all mouth and no action," she said.

She conceded that the slow pace of reforming Parliament's crazy working hours was hardly an encouraging sign for prospective women MPs, but insisted Westminster's male-dominated culture was beginning to change. "Sitting through the night, hanging around, making important decisions when you have already been on your feet for 15 or 16 hours is not a good, responsible way of running the government."

She criticised last week's ruling by the Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, that women MPs should not breast-feed their babies in Commons committee rooms because non-MPs are not allowed to take "refreshment" in them. "It's absolutely breathtaking," said Ms Jowell. "What does this actually mean - that mothers with tiny babies cannot be MPs? We really have got to move into the 21st century and put some of this archaic view of the world behind us."

Ms Jowell, who is also minister for Employment and Welfare to Work, is one of an increasingly influential group of women in the Government who are persuading it to adopt more "family-friendly" policies such as better maternity and paternity rights. Other key players include Baroness Jay of Paddington, Margaret Hodge, Dawn Primarolo and Yvette Cooper. But some critics of Tony Blair claim he has kept women in the Cabinet's backroom jobs such as leader of the Commons, (Margaret Beckett) and the Lords (Lady Jay). Ms Jowell denied the charge, saying Mr Blair would have been accused of putting them in "women's jobs" if they were responsible for health and education.

However, Ms Jowell admitted that women's concerns over health and education explained why the Government was now less popular among women than men. In 1997, Labour closed the long-standing "gender gap" which helped to keep the Tories in power for so long, but Labour's private polling suggests this might prove short-lived.

"Women trust us now. But they care passionately about delivery," she said. "It is women more than men who deal day-to-day with the children's school, the clinic, the doctor, so they are impatient for change."

Ms Jowell wants to see a cultural change in the way the Government communicates with women - and believes that would also boost its appeal among men. "The tradition of politics is gladiatorial, confrontational and highly aggressive. We know that turns a lot of women off.

"It turns men off too; they see politics as game-playing and point-scoring rather than delivering practical changes to make people's lives better."

She said the Government needed to talk to people in the light of their own experience and should not always use the language of confrontation. "I believe we can improve the public perception of politics in this way," she said.

Her final thought is to issue a challenge to the Blair administration: "We need to make sure the way we deliver and behave as a Government reflects the way the world now works and that we don't look like a hopelessly outdated institution that people come to visit as spectators but simply don't feel engaged with."