United Kingdom

Half of our MPs will be women, Tories promise after the porn scandal with Neil Parish

In November 2020, Boris Johnson seems to have engaged the party with gender equality in a video for the 50:50 campaign in parliament.

Mr Dowden said: “The Prime Minister has set a 50:50 target and this starts with making sure that we get really strong women candidates, so the associations also choose the best ones.

He insisted that the party had already made “huge progress”, almost doubling the number of women MPs elected in 2010 with the Women2win campaign, founded by Baroness Jenkin of Kennington and Theresa May.

The cabinet minister said that in order to attract more women to the party, “we need role models, and we also need to ask for”.

He added: “Too often we say ‘apply’ instead of going out there actively looking for and finding the best and telling people ‘you may not have spent all your time winning debates in the Oxford Union to knocking on doors’ . for 20 years. This does not mean that you cannot be a very effective and capable MP.

“I think men will often think, of course, that I will be a good and effective MP.” While I think that sometimes women can come up with reasons not to, and that requires us to say, “No, you’re going to be brilliant.” In all my experience, I think we have rarely regretted electing women to parliament.

Mr Parish’s decision to leave came two days after the resignation of Imran Ahmad Khan, a Tory MP from Wakefield, who was found guilty of sexually abusing a teenager. The episode caused considerable embarrassment for MPs and party volunteers campaigning for councilors.

But in a letter to parliamentarians, the director of the Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Complaints Scheme (ICGS) seems to insist that the number of cases dealt with by the body is significantly lower than the 56 incidents reported to its staff.

Joe Willows wrote: “Last year we confirmed in our annual report that there were 15 ICGS cases against MPs for harassment, harassment or sexual misconduct from July 2020 to June 2021. This year we are seeing a similar trend in disclosure. ”