Nick Clegg: Lib Dem MPs are ‘too male and too pale’

The Daily Telegraph reports:

The Deputy Prime Minister said he was ‘ashamed’ at the lack of women Lib Dem MPs and their absence from the Coalition cabinet.

“It is a very serious problem,” he told an audience at Cheltenham Literature Festival.

“It is a source of endless shame to me that the Liberal Democrat party I lead, which believes in the diversity of Great Britain in gender and everything else does not represent contemporary Britain in Parliament.

“We are too male and too pale.”

Only seven of the current 57 Lib Dem MPs are female. The Conservatives have 49 women MPs, while Labour have 81.

Earlier in the year the Lib Dems created a “leadership programme” to ensure more women and members of ethnic minorities become MPs.

Mr Clegg said having quotas to ensure there were equal numbers of men and women candidates would be a ‘sticking plaster solution.’

“Personally, however, I think the situation is now so bad that I am prepared to use pretty well any sledgehammer to solve it,” he said.

“We have an intensive programme to help female candidates, mentor them and make sure they get selected.”

You can read the full story about Nick Clegg here.

The mention of the Cabinet is, of course, a mention of something over which Nick Clegg has fairly direct control. Yet all his Cabinet appointments have been male, and although his appointments to the House of Lords have had a much better diversity balance, that’s still not been sufficient to make big inroads into the inherited biases.