Women’s Equality Party leader Sophie Walker: Mainstream political parties have failed to tackle gender inequality

'Equality is not a manifesto detail to be bickered over. It’s not politicians’ property, to be doled out as they see fit'

Britain’s mainstream political parties have failed to tackle gender inequality, with men outearning women by hundreds of billions of pounds every year, the leader of the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) will announce on 20 October.

Sophie Walker, who was elected as the WEP’s first leader in July, will launch the party’s policy platform in an address to members and supporters in London this morning. “Last year, men earned £516bn, while women earned just £271bn. That’s a difference of £245bn,” she is expected to say.

Ms Walker will single out the leaders of both the main Westminster parties and argue that the Conservatives and Labour have been talking about delivering equality for “far too long” but have not followed up with meaningful action to back up their promises.

“It seems to me that they are more interested in claiming the right to deliver equality than actually [delivering] it,” Ms Walker will say. “Their only action is to shoot down any other party’s talk about how they might deliver equality – reducing our right to participate to a cynical messaging contest.

“Equality is not a manifesto detail to be bickered over. It’s not politicians’ property, to be doled out as they see fit,” she will argue.

Earlier this week, The Independent on Sunday revealed that the WEP would call on the Government to scrap the married couple’s allowance, just six months after its introduction, and use the £800m of savings to help victims of domestic and sexual abuse.

The party was launched in March this year by the writer, presenter and comedian Sandi Toksvig and the author and journalist Catherine Mayer. It currently has 45,000 members and supporters across 65 national branches, and plans to stand candidates in the spring local elections.