Charles Kennedy and Sarah Teather
at this morning's briefing.
Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
Charles Kennedy is joined on stage today by "the prominent women members of his party" to illustrate the cross-policy platforms which will benefit women. The Lib Dem leader jokes that he is "umpiring" today, for once remaining seated, as Sarah Teather, Sandra Gidley and Baroness Falkner take turns at the podium.
The main points flagged up are the citizen's pension, based on residency rather than contributions (which often hinder women who have taken career breaks), a guaranteed maternity income of £170 for new working mothers, the pledge on ending tuition fees, a call for a comprehensive Equality Act, free personal care, and 3,500 childrens' centres by 2010.
7.40am: The BBC's Andrew Marr posits a controversial theory in a new report, that women are doing better at school and more are becoming millionaires. Ms Gidley hits back that today's survey is only about the young and the rich – the differences in wealth are at their starkest among pensioners and the poor.
Mr Kennedy says the Lib Dems are in favour of a "flexible decade" of retirement – saying that has been their policy since the 1980s - and denies that the party has nothing to say on crime or immigration (which Labour has been concentrating on in the past 48 hours).
7.50am: But Jon Snow wants to know when Mr Kennedy is going to make "a major" speech on immigration. There's two weeks to go, the Lib Dem reminds him, but he refuses to condemn the Tory campaign as racist per se. There has only been one question on women's issues so far from the predominantly male journalists.
A debate at the back of the room begins between the BBC's James Landale, and Lord Oakshott, the architect of the citizen's pension policy, as to whether it will be means-tested. That's it for this week, with Mr Kennedy heading off for his battlebus and a trip to Maidenhead, where he is hoping to "decapitate" the Tories' Theresa May – presumably not part of his women-friendly policies.
