During the 1980s more women and black MPs entered the House of Commons. Nevertheless, the pace of change remains slow. If current trends are projected forwards on a linear basis, the number of women MPs would be only 100 by the year 2000, and would not achieve parity with men until the middle of the twenty-first century. The number of black MPs rose from four to six in the last general election, but this figure needs to more than quintuple to keep pace with the size of the ethnic population. MPs from the chattering class continue to expand at the expense of traditional working-class trade unionist. Any transformation in the social composition of parliament is a slow process of incremental change, which lags behind demands for political inclusion. The structure of opportunities in the British political system is narrowly constrained by low levels of incumbency turnover. Very few people become Labour or Conservative inheritors, or strong challengers, with serious prospects of being elected.

If the pace of change is to be quickened, in order to produce more women and black MPs before the year 2000, what else can be done? Whether, and how, this situation is perceived as a problem, and the alternative solutions acceptable to each party, depend upon each party's general values and ideology. Alternative models of recruitment to both the private and public spheres provide different ways of evaluating the selection process.