Tories in disarray over female candidates

The Conservative Party halted the selection of candidates for the next general election yesterday amid concern that too few women have been lined up to fight Westminster seats.

The Tories, who said no new selections for Parliamentary seats would be made until after the May local elections, will now review how the process should be conducted. One proposal to be considered is whether winnable seats should be "twinned", with one going to a female candidate.

As she announced the postponement, Theresa May, the Conservative Party chairman, said there was "more to do" to improve the Tories' record on selecting women to fight elections. Of the 60 candidates selected so far in the most winnable constituencies, only nine are women.

Mrs May, who is privately frustrated that so few women have been selected for the next general election, will look at using special measures to get women into safe seats vacated by retiring Tory MPs.

She has ruled out using all-women shortlists but will examine whether other quota systems, such as ensuring that one of the final three shortlisted candidates for each seat is a woman, may be used.

The party has employed a psychologist to help ensure that potential candidates are balanced individuals who are capable of listening to voters from all sections of society.

Mrs May said the Tories had made "some progress" but admitted that the number of women selected was still inadequate.

"I fully accept that there is more for us as a party to do in terms of getting more women selected. And we are doing a number of things," she said on Radio 4's Today programme. "We have changed the Parliamentary assessment board that judges whether people are suitable to be on our candidates' list."

The Tories were accused of taking panic measures but Mrs May said the decision not to select any more candidates in coming months gave the party an opportunity to look at the process "in a proper, professional and businesslike way".

About 75 per cent of candidates selected in Tory target seats are "retreads" who fought the general election in 2001. Only 15 per cent are women and only one is from an ethnic minority background.

John Reid, the Labour Party chairman, said the Tories should reopen selections in winnable seats to prove they were "serious" about selecting more women.

"I challenge Theresa May to do exactly that," he said. "She has admitted that the vast majority of Conservative associations have already chosen retreads who supported William Hague last time around."

The Tories have come under fire for blocking Nikki Page, a former catwalk model and Parliamentary aide, from standing in the London mayoral election. Ms Page was stopped from running by the Conservative selection board despite public backing for women candidates.

She said: "I really wanted to show a fresher approach to politics which would attract more people into the party. Unfortunately, seeing what happened to me is unlikely to encourage women to put themselves forward for selection."

Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory leader, is under pressure from Tory modernisers to introduce some form of quotas to ensure that more women MPs are elected. Among the modernisers are Andrew Lansley, the MP for South Cambridgeshire and former director of the Conservative Research Department, and Julie Kirkbride, MP for Bromsgrove.

But their calls are expected to be resisted by traditionalists including Michael Ancram, the shadow Foreign Secretary. There will be pressure to replace Michael Trend, the Tory MP for Windsor, with a woman candidate. Mr Trend has announced he will not stand again in the safe Tory seat after a furore about irregularities concerning his expenses.

Bright, articulate and selected – only to face a 'smear' campaign

By Paul Vallely

In theory, Sue Catling ought to be just what the Tories are looking for. She's bright, articulate, attractive, hardworking and at 44, in Tory terms, young. But most of all she's a woman.

It wasn't surprising, therefore, when last year she was selected to fight one of the few marginals winnable by a Tory, Calder Valley around Halifax in West Yorkshire. The glamorous former actress, who runs her management training business, had been among Central Office's fast-tracked candidates, given preferential selection status because she did so well in the seat last time, cutting Labour's majority by half.

But now, within just six months, she is threatened with deselection. In two weeks she faces a special general meeting called after 40 local Tories signed a petition calling for her to be ousted, amid allegations about her private life, which she denies. No one will say anything publicly, but in private the constituency is abuzz with rumours about how she has "slept her way to the top".

Mrs Catling said yesterday: "It is a very unpleasant smear campaign." The rumours allege she has had affairs with prominent local Tories and spent afternoons in a local hotel where she was "caught in bed" with a man. "It's all untrue," she said, "but it has unsettled many of the older members."

Her critics are publicly taciturn. "I believe she doesn't have the support of the majority of the membership," John Foran, Calderdale Council's deputy leader, who has also signed the petition, has been quoted as saying. One constituency member who asked not to be named, said: "She is not the right person for this area. The main problem is her manner. She comes across as arrogant. People also don't like the way she was selected and want to do something about it."

Her supporters take a different line. "At least three of those who have signed are people she beat for the job or who want to take it from her," said one, also insisting on anonymity. "Many of the others have been misled by the malicious stories."

There is a directness about Ms Catling which you might have thought would have gone down well in Yorkshire. The trouble is not so much that was she born in Lancashire, and lives with her husband and has two teenage sons in Cheshire. It is the target of her plain-speaking.

On the status of women in the party she has said: "Our benches have not changed greatly since Disraeli was Tory leader." She has defended Labour's all-women shortlists: "The fact that they didn't compete against men just won't wash. The electorate finds them credible. Every single one of the 1997 intake who stood again in 2001 was re-elected."

Most alarmingly she has said: "Only when voters begin to associate Tories more with Madonna-style conical bras and less with chalk-stripe suits, will we be on our way to forming the next government."

The campaign against her, she believes, highlights a wider problem. "If a man is capable, direct and assertive he's seen as authoritative. If a woman is, she's a pushy harridan," she said. "Theresa May and others in Central Office are making serious moves to redress the balance but there are processes within the party that militate against that."