The Hitchin and Harpenden Conservative Association has drawn up a shortlist of candidates for the General Election.

According to the website Conservative Home, the candidates are Bim Alofami, Catherine Baxendale and Shirley Soskin.

On Friday, the party will select a candidate to replace Peter Lilley, who announced he was standing down after 34 years last week.

Bim Alofami is a former lawyer who now works a senior executive at HSBC. He contested Lewisham Deptford in the 2015 General Election and is a former treasurer of the Bow Group, a think tank within the Conservative Party.

He was vice president of the Oxford Union and has previously worked for Howard Flight and George Osborne.

Catherine Baxendale is a HR consultant who spent 17 years as a senior director at Tesco. She attended a grammar school in Buckinghamshire and in 2015, wrote a critical report on how the civil service manages and retains talent for Conservative politician Francis Maude.

And Shirley Soskin is the managing director of the recruitment consultancy, Silverhawk Partners. She previously founded the PR company, Clarion.

It is believed that she was involved in David Cameron’s drive for more female representation in politics, but because of business constraints, she could not stand in 2015.