October 28, 2009
And the knee jerks again
Following on from the rather ill-thought out Legg decision to make MPs pay back expenses that were within the rules when claimed (but not some of those who made, er, illegal claims), the latest stupidity is (apparently) to impose a blanket ban on MPs employing family members.
Why is this stupid? Well consider the following.
I used to work for John Pugh, MP for Southport. John has never disguised the fact that his wife, Annette, works part-time for him as a Parliamentary secretary. Nor that she took a (substantial) pay-cut in 2001 to work for John, and so takes home a salary well below what somebody of her skill, dedication and quality would normally command in London. John and Annette have come to this arrangement for numerous reasons, but one is an awareness that all must be above board, and there must be no question of John abusing his office to hand out freebies to his family.
And frankly, the people of Southport should be very grateful that they did come to this arrangement. It’s not just that Annette works incredibly hard, is incredibly able, and puts in ridiculous hours. It’s that she’s known John for decades, and so is uniquely placed to help organise the chaotic working week of a committed MP. Having been at John’s office for 7 months until last September, I can say that without a doubt it was Annette that kept John and myself on-track, and the office functioning as well as it did.
That will soon be over. Annette will no longer be able to work for John and the people of Southport. John will be forced to employ somebody who doesn’t know him, or how his office works. The new person will almost certainly have to be employed on a full-time basis. And they will command a much higher salary than Annette did. End result? John has to employ a worse secretary (at least in the short run; I trust John will find somebody who in the long-run will get up to scratch – but it will take time) for more money. Apparently, the taxpayer and the people of Southport are supposed to gain from this situation.*
Obviously I’m in favour of preventing nepotism and abuse a-la-Derek Conway. There is a problem with some MPs employing family members on grotesquely unjustified salaries. But the correct solution to this is to implement a measure that should have been undertaken years ago: making all MPs’ staff employees of Parliament and not the MP directly. That way salaries can be centrally set, with MPs having staff-number caps to ensure that they’re not deceitfully employing family dead-weight. (This would also help stop the shameful practice of using unpaid interns, incidentally).
Such a reform would ensure that the minority of those abusing the system are prevented from doing so, but that good, hard-working and dedicated staff can remain. This would benefit taxpayers and constituents.
Unfortunately such a sensible measure wouldn’t fulfil the reflexive bloodletting of MPs that the popular hysteria currently demands. So everyone loses, and the situation is worse than it needed to be.
Same shit, different day.
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* I know the proposals will allegedly be phased-in over a 5 year period, but I think my point still stands.
David said,
October 28, 2009 at 12:58 pm
You’re absolutely right — it wouldn’t be difficult, additionally, to have some kind of occasional investigation into the work that MPs employees are doing, which is what they’d do if they were interested in real reform rather than simply making a statement. Mind you, MPs have a lot to blame for not using the year they had to reform the system before the Scandal really broke out (it was in and out of the papers for at least a year before the Telegraph got their hands on the details).