Whilst ambling through the squeaky clean parade of MPs expenses this morning, I happened upon an interesting insight that might go part of the way to explaining why some of our politicians are so afraid of Independence and the fear of what they will lose in the way of power, privilege and pounds when the electorate votes to restore Scotland's Independence.
Now before I go all tarring and feathering like a crazed one man lynch mob, I'll state up front, I realise that there's a lot of pressure on MPs to work alongside someone whose loyalty they can count on, notably a family member. I can fully understand how in those first few years of having the responsibility of being the public face of a constituency puts tremendous pressure on family and relationships. It's not a conventional 9-5 job. The House of Commons sometimes works until stupid o'clock, there are always demands to attend meetings and social events representing your constituency at all hours. It must play havoc with any attempt at normality. However, surely after a few years of getting over the hurdles, the big dynamic changes, the relationship/partnership becomes a 24 hour thing where separating the boundaries of the professional and personal begin to blur and the distance of actually employing someone, let's say actually qualified, to do the job edges a little closer?
I am, of course, talking about Category 12 of Part Two of the Register of Members' Financial Interests. To wit Family members employed and remunerated through parliamentary allowances.
There's roughly 150 members of parliament who employ wives, husbands, partners, sons, daughters, nieces, cousins, sister-in-laws and err well done Tory MP Dr Daniel Poulter who employs his mum, as parliamentary staff. We also have what one presumes might be the rather the fraught working relationship of Laurence Robertson Tory MP for Tewkesbury who manages to employ his wife (from whom he's separated) as secretary and his partner Anne Marie as his office manager. One can only ponder at what their staff Christmas do is like...
Of all the names on the list two belong to SNP members, I wish they weren't there, however they are. The two Angusii of the group of six, both employ their wives. Much as the hoody sporting Robertson seemed to immerse himself comfortably in the old boy network of expenses, with claims for such vital components of parliamentary life as a twenty quid corkscrew (what was it made of gold?) I would have presumed that SNP members would have perhaps taken a further principled stand and moved away from what looks from the outside as filling your own pockets with public monies and smacks of parliamentary privilege. Feller's take a hint, find qualified outsiders as staff and give your missus a break.
So it's cross party. 'They're all at it' as the cliché goes. If the remaining 500 MPs can get by without employing family members why can't these coves? Why does this minority feel the need to add to their family wage packet rather than spread the largesse amongst their similarly qualified constituents?
A trawl through the list also brings up three Lib Dem and eleven Labour MPs doing their bit for the family purse strings. Bare in mind it's not just wages, it's pensions too. This is some serious money sloshing around from the public purse into the family coffers. You have to ask are MPs more concerned about their own family welfare than those they represent? The big thing for me is why this desperate need to employ family members when in all other walks of public life our civil servants are mostly loyal and impartial to employers. Is it fear of scandal that drives this need for only the most trusted of confidants? Also where is the openness on what looks to be a closed shop, are there job adverts followed by interviews with the lucky family member getting he job for having a better reference?
SNP
Angus MacNeil - Wife
Angus Robertson - Wife
LIBERAL DEMOCRATS
Malcolm Bruce -Wife
Menzie Campbell - Wife
Michael Moore - Wife
LABOUR
Russell Brown - Daughter
Ian Davidson - Wife
Brian Donohoe - Wife
David Hamilton (no me neither) Wife
Tom Harris - Wife
Jimmy Hood -Wife
Michael McCann -Wife
Ian Murray - Partner
John Robertson -Daughter
Frank Roy - Wife
Jim Sheridan - Daughter
Posts
