Earlier this year, as the furore over parliamentary expenses was gaining momentum, I visited one of a diminishing number of MPs who can still claim a working-class background.
As ever, former pitman and National Union of Mineworkers branch secretary Ronnie Campbell, the member for Blyth in Northumberland since 1987, was earthy, entertaining and outspoken in his town centre office, resplendent with mining memorabilia.
Well before ‘flipping’ entered the Westminster lexicon, Campbell had raged about the abuse of second home allowances, with several ministers a particular target for his scorn. Imagine my surprise, then, when last week Ronnie came clean about fitting out his London second home. He’d trawled through expenses claims over the past five years and — hey presto — produced a figure of £6,200 for furniture.
‘I am going to pay it back,’ he declared while revealing he’d been ostracised by colleagues who saw his voluntary gesture — absolutely no pressure from the Labour whips, apparently — as letting the side down and a concession too far. ‘I am very sorry. I should not have claimed it,’ he told constituents.
Campbell, to be fair, is one of the few visible MPs in the region where I live although, with a majority of 8,527, he’s hardly secure. For years, the names of local parliamentarians tripped off the tongue; now I hardly know any, apart from current and ex-ministers. Most are anonymous; a few feature in the local media and advertise regular surgeries. That’s it.
But as I view with horror the collective greed at Westminster — not, to be fair, the few grand here and there, but the industrial scale of taxpayer-funded property speculation — I wonder whether a deeper malaise has gripped the Mother of Parliaments. We’re told that, in spite of all the scams, the majority of MPs work incredibly hard, serving their constituents well. But, in truth, we don’t know.
In the current hysteria, the risk is that knee-jerk reactions will prevail, with Conservative leader David Cameron’s threat to cut the number of MPs (646) emerging as the ultimate manifestation. This is dangerous talk in a country partly run by unaccountable quangos and with fewer elected representatives than other western democracies.
We don’t need fewer MPs. We need better ones with strong powers to scrutinise the executive. The recent creation of eight regional select committees, charged with holding regional quangos to account, might be a start. But they need teeth.
In return for ending the expenses system — seen by many MPs as a salary top-up — we need to pay our MPs more than £64,766 annually. But hand in glove with that, we need a new system of accountability. Let’s call it the equivalent of the Comprehensive Performance Assessments that MPs inflicted on English councils in 2002.
Why not an annual assessment of MPs, outlining appearances and work at Westminster, expenses, foreign trips and a broad measurement of constituency work? These factual assessments would be prepared towards the end of each session, and presented to the electorate at the start of each new one — an annual league table.
You can already hear the howls of protest: we’re not like other professions, they’d argue, and our trade is therefore not measurable in the same way as — say — the work of local councils. That’s true, of course. But why should hard-working MPs be fearful of a simple, easy-to-read guide outlining their work? Many would surely stand to gain, enhancing their reputations and, potentially, bucking national trends.
MPs have to recognise that outrage over the greed of some parliamentarians is every bit as profound as the public outcry over the recent behaviour of bankers. Some realise they are living on borrowed time. And that takes us to those lucrative outside interests. Of course, we should not pretend that all snouts are in the trough; while 66% of Tory MPs have outside earnings, alongside 37% of Liberal Democrat members, only 19% of Labour MPs earn extra money on any scale.
But while former home secretary David Blunkett might have topped the list with £450,000, followed by shadow foreign secretary William Hague (£320,000), the antics of others should concern us. Former health secretary Alan Milburn’s earnings from advising Pepsico and a health care supplier called Covidie hardly enhance the reputation of Parliament. And there are others like him in all parties.
As former Labour minister Chris Leslie argued in a Fabian Society essay last year, well before the current crisis: ‘Our politicians need to set an example and act fairly at a time when ordinary people have such low expectations of [them]. If MPs have excessive outside earnings, people perceive they are diverted from the public interest — or, worse, exploiting their public status.’
Peter Hetherington writes on community affairs and regeneration
