Jeremy Middleton is chairman of the National Conservative Convention and responds here to concerns that new candidate selection procedures represent an unprecedented centralisation of power.
Last week you reported the agreement by the Board to new selection guidelines for the rest of this Parliament. The article, together with the comments, suggests a power grab by CCHQ and the imposition of candidates on Associations: a ‘slam dunk’ for the centralisers of power and one in the eye for localism! I don’t think this is what has happened and would like to offer some balance to your readers.
These are exceptional times leading to exceptional pressures on candidate selection. Under normal circumstances all our candidates could, and should, have been selected by now. However, the saga of MPs' expenses and David Cameron’s subsequent decision to re-open the Candidates' List means that this has not happened.
There are already 15 Conservative held seats that need to be selected as soon as possible and we can expect more – perhaps up to 30 in total. Clearly these need to be selected as soon as possible and certainly by the end of the year.
However, at the same time the Candidates' Department are under intense pressure, having to run a parliamentary assessment board nearly every week in order to give the thousands of new applicants both a reasonable prospect of joining the Candidates' List and to ensure that they meet the same standards required of everybody who is already on the list. The Board agreed to increase resources to the Candidates' Department but even so, some curtailment to the standard selection procedure was necessary if all these selections are to be completed by the end of the year.
There were many views about how this could be achieved. The Board considered all the options but decided to that it was right that until we are in the last few months before a General Election Associations should retain as much of the process of selecting their Parliamentary candidate as possible.
The new process is not perfect because in order to make it quicker, less candidates are shortlisted than usual. However, I would point out the following:
- The Selection Committee will consist of six members of the local Association;
- All the vacancies will be advertised to all members of the Parliamentary List. There is no use of a Priority List;
- The Association Selection Committee decides who will be interviewed;
- The Association Executive are able to interview all six candidates;
- The final decision on who is selected is taken either by a General Meeting of all the members or through an Open Primary.
This decision was taken collectively by all members of the Board, which includes representatives from both Houses of Parliament, the Chairman’s Office and the Voluntary Party. I think it is worth saying that there are as many different ways to select Parliamentary Candidates as there are individuals around the board table and it is always difficult to get a solution that pleases everybody. However, they do represent a pragmatic solution to a difficult problem.
From a Voluntary Party perspective they maintain the basic principle that the Association picks the shortlist, does the interviews and runs the selection process. If any of the Association Officers of seats that are selecting have concerns I would urge them to raise these concerns with their Voluntary Party Board Members.
Importantly, it is absolutely clear that after the General Election, when these issues are behind us, the selection process will revert to the more protracted version. This allows more involvement from a wider range of people, which is important in the long term interest of democracy and motivation for the members of our party.
