Things are changing for women at Westminster. Why has it taken so long?

No one should have to pick between their job and their desire to have children, writes Marie Le Conte

Michelle Donelan and Julia Lopez are both soon to become ministers on leave (AP)

Politicians sometimes whinge that journalists only ever care about things going wrong and never about things going right. They do, on occasion, have a point – not often, but still.

In this spirit, I’d like to take a moment to celebrate a small piece of good news. On Friday, Rishi Sunak conducted a mini-reshuffle to fill the space left by Dominic Raab’s resignation. Alex Chalk is justice secretary, James Cartlidge a minister of state at the Ministry of Defence, Gareth Davies is the new exchequer secretary to the Treasury.

All three are men, which is both disappointing and does little to address the pre-existing gender imbalance in government, but that has already been discussed elsewhere.