Ethnic audit of would-be MPs call

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Political parties have been urged to publish how many women, ethnic minority, gay and disabled people are putting themselves forward to be MPs.

An inquiry by MPs into making the House of Commons more representative says it is currently "largely white, male, middle-aged and middle class".

The report says parties should be made to publish, every six months, results of their candidate selection processes.

That way they can be compared to each other and other parties worldwide.

An interim report from the Speaker's Conference - a special type of Commons inquiry into electoral law and reform - was published on Wednesday.

It recommends a new clause in the Equality Bill - currently going through Parliament - to require political parties to report twice a year on the diversity of their candidate selection procedures.

Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru provided the inquiry with results of past selection procedures - including gender, ethnicity and whether they had indicated sexual orientation and disability.

The Speaker's Conference has already requested two further monitoring reports from parties by 11 January and 15 March next year.

But it says, to find out about everyone applying - rather than just the successful candidates, it would be better to have information from the start of the selection procedure.

The committee's vice chairman, Labour MP Anne Begg, said: "Unless the performance of the different parties can be compared with each other, or with the performance of parties throughout the world, there is likely to be insufficient pressure for the political parties to pursue the cultural change which is needed from them before we can have a House of Commons fit for the 21st Century."