Motion #19

Diversity Criteria for Local, Regional and General Election Candidate Selections

Synopsis

This motion introduces diversity criteria for local, regional and general election candidate selections.

Background

• There is no climate justice without social, racial and economic justice.
• Society is not structured equally, meaning there is not equal access to opportunities.
• This is not to limit our targets for diversity but to aide being representative of the areas we stand in, having diversity amongst our candidates, and to encourage the representation of marginalised groups as set out below.
• Politics is under-representative of global majority individuals, disabled people, LGBTIQA+ people, women and young people under 30.
• Our internal policies must match external policies for social justice.

Motion

Delete the following from the Record of Organisational Statements under the section titled ‘Elections Coordinator to undertake:’:

Together with the Equality and Diversity Coordinator/ Committee, to set targets for the proportion of candidates and proportion of target candidates in respect to self-identified gender, race, disability, socio-economic status, age and sexual orientation based on their respective proportion of the England and Wales population. Selecting more diverse candidates [Spring2017, D08].

And replace with:

Together with the Equality and Diversity Coordinator/ Committee, support local and regional parties to select diverse candidates. Nominations for local, regional and general elections will be reopened for two weeks if the diversity of the original nominated target and non-target candidates are not reflective of the area’s latest Census data. This is in respect to self-identified gender, race, disability, socio-economic status, age and sexual orientation.

Also delete the following from the Record of Organisational Statements under the section titled ‘Equalities and Diversity Coordinator to undertake:’:

Together with the Elections Coordinator, to set targets for the proportion of candidates and proportion of target candidates in respect to self-identified gender, race, disability, socio-economic status, age and sexual orientation based on their respective proportion of the England and Wales population. Selecting more diverse candidates [Spring2017, D08]

And replace with:

Together with the Elections Coordinator, support local and regional parties to select diverse candidates. Nominations for local, regional and general elections will be reopened for two weeks if the diversity of the original nominated target and non-target candidates are not reflective of the area’s latest Census data. This is in respect to self-identified gender, race, disability, socio-economic status, age and sexual orientation.