One proposal to be considered is whether winnable seats should be "twinned", with one going to a female candidate.As she announced the postponement, Theresa May, the Conservative Party chairman, said there was "more to do" to improve the Tories' record on selecting women to fight elections. And we are doing a number of things," she said on Radio 4's Today programme. "We have changed the Parliamentary assessment board that judges whether people are suitable to be on our candidates' list."The Tories were accused of taking panic measures but Mrs May said the decision not to select any more candidates in coming months gave the party an opportunity to look at the process "in a proper, professional and businesslike way".About 75 per cent of candidates selected in Tory target seats are "retreads" who fought the general election in 2001. Only 15 per cent are women and only one is from an ethnic minority background.John Reid, the Labour Party chairman, said the Tories should reopen selections in winnable seats to prove they were "serious" about selecting more women."I challenge Theresa May to do exactly that," he said. "She has admitted that the vast majority of Conservative associations have already chosen retreads who supported William Hague last time around."The Tories have come under fire for blocking Nikki Page, a former catwalk model and Parliamentary aide, from standing in the London mayoral election. Ms Page was stopped from running by the Conservative selection board despite public backing for women candidates.She said: "I really wanted to show a fresher approach to politics which would attract more people into the party.

Unfortunately, seeing what happened to me is unlikely to encourage women to put themselves forward for selection."Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory leader, is under pressure from Tory modernisers to introduce some form of quotas to ensure that more women MPs are elected. Among the modernisers are Andrew Lansley, the MP for South Cambridgeshire and former director of the Conservative Research Department, and Julie Kirkbride, MP for Bromsgrove.But their calls are expected to be resisted by traditionalists including Michael Ancram, the shadow Foreign Secretary. There will be pressure to replace Michael Trend, the Tory MP for Windsor, with a woman candidate. Mr Trend has announced he will not stand again in the safe Tory seat after a furore about irregularities concerning his expenses.Bright, articulate and selected – only to face a 'smear' campaignBy Paul Vallely In theory, Sue Catling ought to be just what the Tories are looking for. She's bright, articulate, attractive, hardworking and at 44, in Tory terms, young. But most of all she's a woman.It wasn't surprising, therefore, when last year she was selected to fight one of the few marginals winnable by a Tory, Calder Valley around Halifax in West Yorkshire. The glamorous former actress, who runs her management training business, had been among Central Office's fast-tracked candidates, given preferential selection status because she did so well in the seat last time, cutting Labour's majority by half.But now, within just six months, she is threatened with deselection.

In two weeks she faces a special general meeting called after 40 local Tories signed a petition calling for her to be ousted, amid allegations about her private life, which she denies. No one will say anything publicly, but in private the constituency is abuzz with rumours about how she has "slept her way to the top".Mrs Catling said yesterday: "It is a very unpleasant smear campaign." The rumours allege she has had affairs with prominent local Tories and spent afternoons in a local hotel where she was "caught in bed" with a man. "It's all untrue," she said, "but it has unsettled many of the older members."Her critics are publicly taciturn. "I believe she doesn't have the support of the majority of the membership," John Foran, Calderdale Council's deputy leader, who has also signed the petition, has been quoted as saying.