Vaz renews calls for all ethnic minority shortlists
3 09 2007
The Guardian reports today of senior Labour backbencher Keith Vaz’s call for the introduction of all ethnic minority shortlists for Labour parliamentary selections.
Vaz, who was amongst the original gang of four ethnic minority MPs elected for the first time in 1987, is the Black Socialist Society’s representative on Labour’s National Executive Committee and chair of the party’s Ethnic Minority Taskforce.
At present all ethnic minority shortlists would contravene the provisions of the Race Relations Act. Vaz intends to introduce a new bill in parliament to allow all ethnic minority shortlists of candidates to be declared in constituencies, in the same way as all women shortlists.
Vaz’s move comes after Skills Minister David Lammy (pictured right with Barack Obama) made the same call in early May for all ethnic minority shortlists, which brought the issue to the fore during the Labour deputy leadership contest. During the deputy leadership race, Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears and Jon Cruddas all came out in favour of the measure.
Commenting on the move, Vaz said,
“It’s the only way we’re going to increase representation. The fact is the party needs to do more. We have to ensure we get more black and Asian MPs into parliament at the next election. That means we have to positively discriminate in favour and have all ethnic minority shortlists. I think all three parties have failed.”
Aside from sitting MPs, the Conservatives have so far selected six ethnic minority candidates in winnable or safe seats, whilst Labour has only selected three in Bolton South East, Bethnal 
Green & Bow and Ealing Central and Acton.
On 30 May 2007 at a Labour Party event in Leicester, Prime Minister Gordon Brown (pictured left with Lord Paul) said that it was wrong that there were so few ethnic minority MPs and pledged to address the issue.
Simon Wooley, director of Operation Black Vote, said,
“Labour historically has won 80% of the black vote, and the Conservatives 10%, so something is drastically wrong. Labour are taking the black vote for granted and the Conservatives are, finally, falling over themselves to get ethnic minority candidates and win support in urban area they need to stand a chance of getting back to government.”
