Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard has suffered a blow over his plans for guaranteeing women the top candidate slots for Holyrood.
The party’s governing body yesterday supported legal advice which warned the proposals would be unlawful.
Leonard’s party has been split over the best way to ensure the next round of Labour MSPs reflects the diversity of society.
Labour has a track record of using positive action to boost female representation and Leonard wanted to go further for this election.
In the autumn, he proposed that the number one slots on the regional Lists for Holyrood, apart from the leader and deputy leader, should be "guaranteed" for women.
He also wrote that a “proportionate number of candidates” in each ranking must be “key workers”.
However, as revealed by the Daily Record, legal advice appeared to sink the plans.
A leaked paper quoted the UK party’s Governance and Legal Unit (GLU) as saying:
“As there is currently only a minor inequality between the sexes of the Scottish Parliamentary Party, our QC’s view is that having the top place on a majority of lists reserved for a woman would be unlikely to meet the test of proportionality and would therefore be unlawful.
“This is because the likely result would be a majority of women with the Parliamentary Group rather than reaching the desired outcome of achieving parity.”
The GLU was also quoted as raising concerns about the key worker plan:
“On the topic of positive action for key workers, we are advised that there would be significant risk of indirect discrimination against those who share a particular protected characteristic as defined by the Equality Act.”
As an alternative, the paper suggested that a “minimum” of 50% of the regional lists should be topped by women.
Candidate selections for the list contests for Holyrood were discussed at a meeting yesterday of Labour’s Scottish executive committee (SEC).
It is understood a debate took place on the paper and the legal advice.
A proposal which had the effect of removing the 50% part of the paper - which Leonard’s supporters believe is not ambitious enough - was defeated.
Party moderates believe the leader wants to promote left-wing allies as candidates.
Leonard, who has struggled to maintain unity within his MSP group, survived a recent attempt to topple him.
In a statement, Leonard said: “Since the early-1990s, Scottish Labour has promoted the use of All Women Shortlists, as we have strived for greater parliamentary representation of women.
“I sought support for a process to further that goal, by prioritising women at the top of the regional candidates lists for next year’s elections.
"Having considered the legal advice that we have received, Scottish Labour has decided to do everything it can to promote diversity, advance women’s representation and to support candidates who are key workers.”
A Scottish Tory spokesman said: “Richard Leonard is so weak that he can’t even win votes within his own party. His virtue-signalling, fag packet plans for key workers have been shot down in flames by the Labour Party itself.”
