Labour pressure to agree half-and-half quota plan

THE PRESSURE to split Labour's Commons representation 50-50 between men and women will be stepped up by the party national executive's women's committee tonight, writes Anthony Bevins.

Clare Short, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said that she hoped for agreement on a regional quota scheme under which a fixed proportion of vacant, winnable seats in each region would be allocated to women candidates.

Although some Labour and trade union men will resist that proposal, it has received the broad approval of many of the party's MPs and shadow ministers, who are committed to the parity policy agreed by the Labour conference for the end of the decade.

At the current rate of progress, that half-and-half target will not be achieved by 2000 under the regional quota scheme. But the drastic alternative, dubbed the 'wipe-out option', would not get the support of either the national executive or parliamentary party.

Under that scheme, all vacant and winnable seats would be allocated to women, in effect wiping out a generation of new male MPs. Tonight's meeting is expected to go for the compromise.