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Parliamentary Representation

The hon. Gentleman is right. That point is vital, and I shall refer briefly to parties later. Progress has been less good on other recommendations. Recommendation 4 is that Parliament's education service should have its objectives changed so that it explicitly encourages a wider range of people to become candidates. Unfortunately, that recommendation has not been accepted by Parliament; a response to a parliamentary question was that it could be effected under existing objectives. That does not go far enough. When someone comes here for a tour of the House it is one of the most opportune times to ask them why they do not consider standing for Parliament and becoming an MP. That is the moment when there may be the most inspiration, and we should make that an explicit objective of the education service. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South touched on recommendation 5; she talked about political parties being honest in publishing exactly where they are at in terms of candidate selection. That monitoring data should be in the public domain so that researchers can analyse it and use it to show where some of the issues are. That still has to be put into action by all the parties, although some have made more progress than others. I hope that today's debate may encourage more movement, although we should congratulate the hon. Lady on managing to say something positive about the Deputy Prime Minister—I hope she did not find it too difficult—and I am delighted that he responded in full to her letter.