Part Two: Attracting and Identifying Diverse Talent
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The candidate selection process within your party plays a crucial role in shaping a more diverse and representative democracy. A fair, transparent, and accessible approach can help ensure that individuals from underrepresented backgrounds have equal opportunities to stand for election. In Wales, demographic differences across regions mean that a one-size-fits-all approach may not be effective, but political parties should work to remove systemic barriers that disadvantage certain candidates and implement positive actions to foster a broader range of elected representatives.
Candidate selection is influenced by party policies and procedures, leadership priorities, and the attitudes and behaviours of those involved in the process. Ensuring an inclusive and equitable system requires a commitment to proactive measures that support diverse perspectives in decision-making. Under the Equality Act 2010, political parties also have a duty to uphold open and inclusive processes.
This document sets out key recommendations for fostering an inclusive candidate selection process, including:
- Strategies for raising awareness and engaging a diverse pool of candidates
- Best practices for fairly evaluating candidates and ensuring diversity is considered
- Guidelines for creating inclusive and transparent selection processes
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Information and outreach
Transparent information
It can be difficult to find information about becoming a candidate. This can discourage and exclude those who are not already highly engaged and mean parties may miss out on diverse talent. To encourage potential candidates from a diverse range of lived experiences and backgrounds, parties should clearly communicate their processes, expectations and timelines, as well as their commitment to attracting diverse talent. This could include:
- Publishing a statement on your website which highlights that your party values a diverse range of lived experiences
- Having a stall at party conferences and events with information on how to become a candidate, staffed with people who can answer questions and signpost to further support and information
- Holding regular information sessions run by people who have gone through the process themselves
- Widely advertising dates and deadlines for all aspects of the assessment and selection process
- Setting up a page on national and local party websites with information about the steps towards becoming a candidate, including:
- Legal and party-specific criteria for candidate eligibility
- Required application forms
- Vetting/due diligence checks
- The candidate assessment process
- Relevant timescales
- Any fees prospective candidates will need to pay
- Role descriptions for MSs, MPs, and Councillors, covering details about pay, average hours spent on formal duties, and expectations around participation in party activities
- Links to further resources and support.
People from underrepresented groups tend to have access to fewer networks and resources and may benefit particularly from support during the application process. This can include:
- Parties resourcing relevant sections or peer networks in their party to support and mentor potential candidates from underrepresented groups
- Running tailored information sessions for people from underrepresented groups
- Having a buddy system or peer support from those who have already gone through the process
Working directly with organisations and programmes such as Equal Power Equal Voice, Disability Wales and Elect Her who offer peer support, mentoring and access to resources for underrepresented groups.
Proactive outreach
Outreach activities are a great way to promote your party, speak to potential voters, and encourage people to get involved in your activities. Face to face outreach can be particularly effective at engaging with people from underrepresented groups who might be interested in your policies but unsure if they would feel welcome in the party.
When thinking about outreach activities, try and be innovative in where your party goes and who your party reaches out to. For example, to attract more people from a minority ethnic community don’t just approach the local religious leaders and ask for a meeting. Hold a stall at a local community centre, play group, youth project, or festival. Your party could consider varying the times that you run the stall. Prioritising outreach activities will help your party recruit new, talented individuals and can be a helpful way to train current members be more confident in communicating the aims and work of the party.
Diversifying your party membership is a great way to ensure your party is reflective of Welsh society and will often be the first step on the journey of your future candidates. Your party should consider actively recruiting people from underrepresented groups into your membership through:
- Contacting people who indicated they would vote for you and asking them to join.
- Placing advertisements in publications that are popular with underrepresented groups, including online or social media advertisements.
- Highlighting your equalities policies.
Be open about the equality and diversity practices your party wants to improve on and clearly state that new members will be valued in helping the party achieve this. If new members help you to improve, make sure you acknowledge this.
Candidate assessment
The candidate assessment process determines which aspiring candidates gain approval to move on to the selection stage, where the final candidate for election is chosen. Each party uses different terminology, and here we refer to this stage as vetting, assessment, or screening. Common assessment activities include an application form, interviews, and additional tasks like presentations or political knowledge tests, though processes may vary across parties and elections.
To achieve equal representation, parties must remove barriers that may unfairly disadvantage underrepresented groups. Under the Equality Act 2010, parties have a duty to ensure a fair and open process, supporting diverse candidates to succeed. A transparent and inclusive vetting process not only strengthens democracy but also enhances policymaking by ensuring diverse perspectives are represented. This stage provides an opportunity for parties to reflect on what skills and experiences they value in candidates and to equip those involved in the process with the necessary training and support to uphold equality. The following sections outline steps your party should consider at each stage of the assessment process.
Application forms
An application form can be a good way to gather information about potential candidates. However, it can also become a barrier to participation and remove excellent candidates from your process before having a chance to discuss their experiences, skills and political interests. To make this process more accessible for all candidates, parties should consider:
- Having a clear role description that is easily accessible to potential candidates
- Outlining the essential and desirable criteria against which applications will be assessed
- Using plain language and avoiding jargon
- Avoiding application forms that are overly lengthy or complex
- Being clear about how many words are expected for each answer or in a written statement
- Communicating that equal consideration will be given to references from outside of the party
- Using anonymous recruitment and selection to eliminate unconscious bias.
With verbal communication being a key skill in politics, a written application might not be the most accessible and effective format to identify the strengths of candidates whose first language is not Welsh or English or who have accessibility requirements. Parties should consider having an alternative choice of formats for the application, such as personal statement videos or voice recordings.
Assessment panels
Although each party has a different process for vetting and selecting candidates, one common aspect is that potential candidates are interviewed by an assessment panel. It is crucial to consider equality and diversity when preparing for and conducting selection interviews.
Your party should have an accessibility policy to ensure the selection process is inclusive. Ensure that information provided to selection panels includes guidance on diversity and how to recognise and overcome unconscious bias and aim to have at least two people responsible for making decisions about who is selected.
To promote diversity, it is important that the panel is inclusive, with members drawn from a range of backgrounds and experiences. Widely advertise the process and timeline for recruiting panel members and consider collaborating with relevant networks within your party to help recruit a diverse selection panel. It is essential to evaluate candidates against set criteria rather than making decisions based on ‘gut instincts.’
Panel members should receive equalities training, covering topics such as barriers faced by underrepresented groups, the importance of equal representation, unconscious bias, and good practice in conducting interviews. Refresher training every three years will help keep panel members’ awareness up to date.
Interviews
Interviewing a potential candidate can be a good way of assessing their skills and suitability. However, party members from protected groups report that assessment interviews can create barriers to reaching selection and be a negative experience. Parties should consider the following steps to avoid this.
Preparing for interviews in advance gives an opportunity to implement best practice in making the process accessible and removing barriers. Before the interview, ask each candidate whether they require any reasonable adjustments. Parties have a duty under the Equality Act 2010 to consider accessibility and provide reasonable adjustments. This could include holding interviews in a fully accessible building, offering video interviews, sending out interview questions in advance and communication adjustments, such as BSL interpretation.
Parties should consider how they can create a welcoming and supportive atmosphere and provide clear instructions on how to access the location or online meeting.
For the interview process, parties should consider:
- Developing a clear framework for assessing candidates, identifying essential and desirable criteria and any weightings used
- Making criteria accessible to potential candidates before the interview
- Agreeing on a set of interview questions in advance to ensure consistency and fairness. (It may sometimes be appropriate to ask different follow-up questions to help clarify information or to address and further explore specific points).
- Focusing the discussion on evaluating a candidate’s skills, experience, and motivations
- Asking open-ended or scenario-based questions that allow candidates to provide comprehensive responses
- Providing candidates with the opportunity to ask questions and outline any reasonable adjustments or additional support they may need during the campaign process
- Recording notes on candidates’ responses for future reference.
There are certain questions that are always inappropriate to ask when assessing a candidate’s suitability. For example, questions about:
- Personal life, sexual orientation, gender, or relationship status
- Plans for pregnancy or family
- Where someone ‘is really from’
- A person’s health or impairment, beyond discussing any adjustments or support they may need
- Any other personal questions that would not reasonably be expected in a formal interview for a job or volunteering role.
If your party requests potential candidates to complete an additional task, knowledge test, or presentation as part of the interview process, consider the purpose of this request. Ensure it aligns with your party’s commitment to widening participation in politics and doesn’t inadvertently create barriers.
Valuing diverse experience
In politics, there may be unspoken requirements that a person must demonstrate before they will be accepted as a potential candidate. Public-facing and campaigning roles are often seen as more important and are given greater value than roles that are more administrative, internal, or repetitive. Potential candidates who have done lots of previous party campaigning (especially ‘traditional’ activities such as door-knocking and leafleting) may be seen as more loyal, reliable, or deserving than those who have gained their experience in other contexts.
While it is reasonable to expect a qualified candidate to have participated in party activities, it is important to remember that individuals from underrepresented groups are more likely to experience barriers to participation, e.g. due to an impairment, caring responsibilities, or reliance on paid work. Participating in party campaigning is time-consuming and often incurs costs to activists, and due to structural inequalities and stereotypes, people from underrepresented groups are more likely to take on less valued roles.
During candidate assessment, it is important to recognise that previous experience in party campaigning is not the only measure of a strong candidate. Many potential candidates will have work, community, or other experiences just as credible as party political campaigning. To reflect this, parties should consider designing interview questions and criteria in a way that brings out and values a wide range of relevant experiences.
Giving feedback
Your party should promptly inform potential candidates whether they have passed the assessment and consider providing constructive feedback to candidates who were unsuccessful. Offering supportive and constructive feedback is also a way of building the next generation of potential candidates, while feedback that is overly personal or vague is unhelpful and discouraging.
Use the role description and the competencies assessed during the interview to discuss the skills or attributes the interviewee did or did not demonstrate. It is important for unsuccessful candidates to be able to act on the feedback. The feedback should be objective, specific, and where appropriate set out potential ways to improve. It may be helpful to direct candidates to training or development opportunities as part of the feedback, along with a realistic timeframe for when they might be eligible to try again.
Timescales and challenges
There can be challenges in achieving best practice during candidate assessment. Application processes are often run under tight deadlines and are typically led by volunteers. At times, elections are called on short notice, which means the process may need to be completed quickly. To reduce the risks of a process that may create barriers for individuals in protected groups, it can be beneficial for your party to plan ahead. Consider implementing actions that prioritise equal representation in your processes. For example:
- Having a pool of already-screened potential candidates
- Offering multiple opportunities for candidates to be vetted or creating a rolling programme of candidate assessments throughout the year
- Widely advertising assessment dates in advance to allow for maximum participation.
Candidate selection
Positive action
A main driver of the lack of diversity in elected office is that individuals from underrepresented groups are less likely to be selected as candidates, especially in winnable seats. If effectively designed and implemented, positive action in candidate selection is the single most effective measure your party can take to advance diversity and inclusion.
Many forms of positive action in candidate selection are lawful under the Equality Act. Guidance published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission provides a helpful overview. Depending on the protected characteristic, voting system and other circumstances, various forms of positive action might be appropriate for different selections.
Positive action measures for women can include:
- Gender quota thresholds, where you stipulate that a certain percentage of your candidates must be women.
- Zipping lists, where you alternate women and men on a party list.
- All-women shortlists, where only women are eligible to stand in certain seats.*
*Note that, while all-women shortlists are currently permitted under the Equality Act,
this provision will be automatically repealed at the end of 2030.
Positive action measures for women are used by parties in two thirds of all countries worldwide. Their effectiveness depends on several factors, including:
- The level of the threshold – the closer to 50% the more effective
- Thresholds acting as a ‘floor’ (minimum) rather than a ‘ceiling’ (maximum)
- Consistent compliance or enforcement
- The use of safeguards to ensure placement in winnable seats. This can include:
- Criteria about where women are placed within a list (‘vertical’ criteria)
- Criteria about the proportion of wards or constituencies across Wales where women are placed in the first or only position (‘horizontal’ criteria)
- Requiring that women are stood in a proportion of seats that your party identifies as ‘best performing’ or ‘winnable.’
Other positive actions your party should consider include:
- All-Disabled-Shortlists. Similar to All-Women-Shortlists, shortlists that are made up exclusively of disabled candidates are possible under the Equality Act and have been previously used in the UK.
- Reserved places on shortlists for other underrepresented groups. While requiring all candidates on a list to have a certain protected characteristics is currently only legally possible for women and disabled candidates (All-Women-Shortlists and All-Disabled-Shortlists), parties can reserve any number of places short of all for people with other protected characteristics.
- Targets for the number of underrepresented candidates. For example, if 1 in 5 people in Wales are disabled, you could set a target for 20% of your candidates to be disabled.
- Reserved seats for underrepresented groups. Where a sitting member steps down, the party could stipulate that the position should be filled by someone from an underrepresented group.
- Intersectionality in positive action. People who experience intersecting discrimination or multiple disadvantage face additional barriers and tend to be most underrepresented. Parties should give special consideration as to how positive action measures can address this.
- Acknowledging gender diversity by recognising that some of your members may not identify strictly as male or female. Your party could implement a target or quota system that ensures the number of candidates identifying as male and female does not differ by more than one, allowing non-binary individuals to be selected as candidates without preventing your party from meeting its gender balance targets (e.g., 50% women).
- Applying these positive actions in the selection processes for your internal committees and senior roles.
As with positive action measures for women, the effectiveness of these measures will stand or fall with effective compliance and enforcement and the degree to which they facilitate placement in winnable seats. For more information on the impact of quotas for characteristics other than gender and intersectionality, see WEN’s Diversity Quota briefing.