It has been observed elsewhere that this website has not been updated in a while. Mea culpa. Worse, it would unfortunately be wholly mistaken to assume that no news is good news. In fact, personally speaking, it has more been a case of what to say if you haven’t got anything nice to say.

Taking things in turn, the Gender Balance Task Force / Campaign for Gender Balance (as it is now known) has been without an administrator for six months. Technically, this has not been because of a lack of funding, but it has been subject to the Party’s Finance and Administration Committee dragging its feet over whether to approve the advertisement of a vacancy. On the positive side, the new administrator has begun working today.

The motion on ethnic diversity debated in the Spring at the Party’s conference in Harrogate was passed overwhelmingly. However, a rider was added at the insistence of the Party’s President (Simon Hughes) that most of the substantive parts of the motion would only be ‘considered’ by the party’s Diversity and Equality Review.

That review met for the first time as recently as July. The motion that it has presented to Party Conference is, in my personal opinion, both entirely unobjectionable and entirely unsubstantial. In short, more warm words.

Meanwhile, the Party Leader has appointed Steve Hitchens to serve as his ‘Diversity Czar.’ As leader of the Lib Dem council group in Islington, Steve was extremely successful in helping to create a council group that was both gender balance and diverse in terms of ethnicity, sexuality and disability status, so I’m not dismissive of this move. But from what I’ve been told it is to be mainly focused on ‘head hunting’ strong candidates rather than working to increase the number of candidates from under-represented groups overall.

In my view, the party’s fundamental problem is not in finding strong candidates from under-represented groups or in local parties discriminating against them. The main problem is we don’t have enough of them. The approach of both the Campaign for Gender Balance and the Ethnic Minority Election Task Force was to provide a mechanism for proactively going out and finding candidates in significant numbers. Replacing it with a ‘favoured sons and daughters’ approach will have limited success. It is also open to the charges of ghettoisation - selecting (eg) BME candidates for areas which are ethnically diverse rather than supporting them wherever they choose to stand - an approach which the party overwhelmingly opposed last year.

It isn’t entirely bad news. The party has launched a new website - LibDems4Parliament - which aims to better co-ordinate the work of the candidates’ office and other stakeholders. The party has had a welcome recent spate of female candidates selected in winnable seats. My problem is that any attempt to set up a large scale and adequately resourced campaign to proactively find, train and support candidates from under-represented groups has been resisted and democratic attempts to introduce such measures have been bypassed by senior party officials for their own purposes (about which, please read my article in the last issue of Liberator).

Personally, I am intending to speak and vote against the “Diversity and equality” being debated on the Monday of Conference. It calls for almost nothing, and only the embarrassment of a defeat is likely to stir the party at a senior level into action on this issue. I would be grateful if others would join me.

Finally, there is the question of what to do about this website. It is wholly owned and paid for by myself. Would people be interested in continuing the website in some form - either as a focal point for campaigns or as a networking website for potential candidates? Add your comments below.

James Graham is writing in a wholly personal capacity and his views should not be inferred to be shared by those supporting the Reflecting Britain campaign set up earlier this year.

With the new Lib Dem leader due to be announced in just a few hours time, this is just a short note to thank everyone who has supported this campaign and made it a success.

We have been delighted by positive response we have received, not least of all by the leadership contenders themselves. It has been generally recognised that one of the key things that the new leader will be judged on is to what degree he manages to ensure that the Parliamentary Party after the next General Election is significantly more diverse and gender balanced.

The petition will be closing in a few hours time, but there is still time to sign up. The new leader will be presented with the signatures we receive.

The website will continue to be available for the foreseeable future as a public record and to chronicle progress as it develops. In addition, we are still encouraging people to nominate their diamonds and will continue to develop the do it section.

Thanks again for your support!

The MP for Cheltenham had this to say:

I’d like to add my support to Reflecting Britain. There are too many MPs in here who look rather like me. How much talent must we be missing out on from the rest of the population?

London MEP Sarah Ludford comments:

The principle of non-discrimination has always been at the very core of Liberal Democrat values, so we have to work harder to get Liberal Democrat ethnic minority MPs (as well as more MEPs and councillors) elected. The alienation of some of our British black and Asian citizens is deeply worrying, and political representation is a crucial contribution to ensuring the better participation of minorities in every aspect of society. All three leadership candidates have signed up to this campaign, so we have reason to believe that there will be marked improvement in ethnic as well as gender diversity of our successful candidates. I urge all party members to help in changing “Reflecting Britain” from a slogan into an accurate description of the Liberal Democrats in the 21st century.

Liberal Democrat leadership hopefuls last week revealed radical measures to encourage more ethnic minorities to become involved in the party’s politics.

On the hustings on Valentine’s Day, candidates Sir Menzies Campbell, Christopher Huhne and Simon Hughes unveiled a raft of measures including a minority-only shortlist for peers, a trust fund for BME candidates, and a policy of “headhunting” BME activists.

Read the full report here.

The Times today reports how a third of Conservative Party candidates so far selected are women, as part of a strategy which heavily borrows from Liberal Democrat campaign techniques:

Seven of the 19 hopefuls selected to fight the most winnable seats for the Tories are women and most of them just missed out on Westminster in the 2005 election, The Times has learnt. They were selected at such an early stage in the electoral cycle — another election is not expected until 2009 — after an analysis of new MPs who won with the biggest swings at the 2005 poll.

Ming Campbell has a new video on his campaign website, in which Nicola Davies (candidate for Birmingham Hodge Hill in the 2004 by-election) and Baroness Barker interview him about the women who have influenced him in his life and about his desire to see a more representative House of Commons. In it he commits to establishing a trust fund to help female and ethnic minority candidates.

MP for Northavon Steve Webb lends his support:

I am pleased to write in support of the campaign for a Liberal Democrat parliamentary party that more fully reflects modern Britain. I have been pleased to support previous initiatives such as mentoring women PPCs, and will be happy to do what I can to further the goals of the campaign.

Northern Region MEP Fiona Hall comments:

I’m lucky - I’m a member of a parliamentary party which does reflect Britain. In the Liberal Democrat European Parliamentary Party, the 12-member Lib Dem European Parliamentary Party we have seven women and one person from an ethnic minority. I think that makes us a much stronger group and one which more people can relate to.

We should reflect on the various actions we took as a party in order to achieve a representative group of MEPs, and consider what actions we now need to take to make sure that all our groups of elected representatives truly reflect Britain.

Ceredigion MP Mark Williams adds his support:

Participation and involvement are the key to a vibrant democracy. In eight short months in the House of Commons, it has become very clear to me how unrepresentative of women and the ethnic minorities Parliament really is. That’s why ‘Reflecting Britain’ is such an important initiative, so whatever your background, whoever you are, get involved.