Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Syt]

Pff, rookie numbers. The (ex-)chair of the FPÖ faction in the Styrian parliament resigned because he yoinked 500k of party and public funds. (That's on top of "extra reimbursements" of 50k p.a. to party friends, donations to far right organizations etc.)

[The Brain]

Wow the widespread corruption is just ridiculous. I wonder if this information was available earlier just the press was too shy to cover them?

Remember, these are the guys doing it openly enough to actually pick up these gigs as second jobs. They are the most visible amateurs.

Yeah, if people are openly taking jobs like that it is likely that corruption is very widespread.

[Sheilbh]

Wow the widespread corruption is just ridiculous. I wonder if this information was available earlier just the press was too shy to cover them?

Remember, these are the guys doing it openly enough to actually pick up these gigs as second jobs. They are the most visible amateurs.

None of this is secret or illegal. MPs are allowed to have second jobs (unless they're a minister - former ministers and senior civil servants need to consult the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which I'd suggest has not covered itself in glory with Cameron and Heywood) or other incomes they just have to declare it (as well as gifts and shareholdings of over 15%) on the register of Members' interests. The information is public, it's available every year very easily (you can look at them back to 1997 here:https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentary-commissioner-for-standards/registers-of-interests/register-of-members-financial-interests/) - I think it's updated every month.

All that's changed is public attention/interest because of the Paterson story which happened because the Guardian put in lots of FOIA requests and worked out that Paterson was doing the one thing he's not allowed to do as a second job which is lobby/advocate on behalf of his employers.

Worth noting as well that the most highly paid MPs (except for Theresa May who is, of course, minting it on the speaking circuit - which I find baffling) are not actually the ones doing the low-grade lobbying (though Paterson made a lot) but the lawyers and doctors who've kept their private practice going - so Geoffrey Cox was a QC before he entered parliament and a very experienced general commercial barrister who's done lots of work in off-shore litigation centres like the BVI, Mauritius etc. Now he's not a minister he's picked up his practice again just like he had before he was a minister.  I tend to the view that with lawyers or doctors or other professionals, it's a judgement for their constituents: will this take up too much of their time for them to be a useful representative. But I can't see anything the "consultants" are doing except potentially misusing their position.

Edit:
Looked it up - this is the stuff they have to declare on the register:

Category 1: Employment and earnings
Category 2: Donations and other support for activities as a Member of Parliament
Category 3: Gifts, benefits and hospitality from UK sources
Category 4: Visits outside the UK
Category 5: Gifts and benefits from sources outside the UK
Category 6: Land and property
Category 7: Shareholdings
Category 8: Miscellaneous
Category 9: Family members employed
Category 10: Family members engaged in lobbying

Edit: Also - from Johnson's perspective, this (from the Sun's Political Editor) sounds pretty bad. The whips are the absolute ultra-loyalists any leadership depends on - if they're briefing against the boss things are not good for him/her:

Tom Newton Dunn
@tnewtondunn
This is quite something. Two different backbench Tory MPs tell me they have been approached by whips in the last 24 hours to tell them the Chief, Mark Spencer, was NOT the instigator of last week's disastrous motion, but he was following direct orders from the PM. It means...
...government whips have (officially or not) begun actively briefing against No10. Sources close to Spencer emphatically deny he sanctioned this. Govt source: "It was a Government decison. It's a team game, we stand or fall together". More on @TimesRadio at 4pm.

Edit: And the Mail still going big - tomorrow's front page:


Edit: Times going big too - and Cox being reported to the Standards Commissioner for using his parliamentary office/facilities for his second job.

[Josquius]

I await the idiot gallery to cry out you know what will fix MPs taking second jobs? Cut MPs salaries!

Very funny to see the mail continue down it's anti tory path. Is there anything they're actually for these days? Except poppies of course.

[garbon]

I await the idiot gallery to cry out you know what will fix MPs taking second jobs? Cut MPs salaries!

Very funny to see the mail continue down it's anti tory path. Is there anything they're actually for these days? Except poppies of course.

Cut them? I have seen some people noting they should increase them so that becoming an MP isn't a salary cut vs. private industry.

[Sheilbh]

Very funny to see the mail continue down it's anti tory path. Is there anything they're actually for these days? Except poppies of course.

The Mail has always had a line of their own and they'll always pick a scoop or a juicy story/campaign over supporting the government - the same goes for the Sun. I don't think that goes at all for the Express anymore which is basically state media (but has a small circulation) or the Telegraph for this government, because they want Boris Johnson to return on a £250k+ a year contract to be a columnist.

And of course the Mail is the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, plus Mailonline - and they all have separate editors who are all very competitive and hate each other and will take slightly different editorial lines. So they will normally try to out-do each other on scoops and campaigns to drive circulation. Remember that in 2016 the Daily Mail supported Leave but the Mail on Sunday supported Remain. But I think the Mail as a group of papers has, except for the Guardian, probably the clearest sense of identity and who their audience is and what they want - they are the tribunes of curtain-twitching lower/middle middle class England.

Cut them? I have seen some people noting they should increase them so that becoming an MP isn't a salary cut vs. private industry.

Yeah. I am very unsure on all this - I think the consultancies and directorships should be got rid of entirely.

Other second jobs income I think is more justifiably independent and separate from their job as MP. For those it's more of a question for the voters in their constituency. So for example there are working lawyers, doctors, nurses and social workers in the Commons as well as people who earn incomes from writing books (from actually quite impressive histories like Kwasi Kwarteng's to trashy fiction ). I don't really think there's a conflict of interest between those types of income/roles and being an MP, the issue is whether they are able to spend the time on their constituency that they should. And I think there is an argument that it is good to have MPs who are still engaged in the real world and come from backgrounds like law, academia, medicine, social care etc and still participate in that world. I think there's an argument that provides a broader set of experience than just people who've come up through the political parties (the researcher - SpAd - candidate - MP - Minister pipeline). My understanding is that when local parties are selecting candidates they normally quite like ones who've worked out of politics.

There is a link here to the parties and the seats. If you are a barrister representing a relatively affluent countryside constituency with a few caseworkers you can probably be a good constituency MP and have a second job. If you're representing a deprived area like Blackpool or an area with very high levels of deprivation or lots of immigration casework - like my constituency - then even with your case workers that is a far more full time and full-on job and I don't know if you can do it well if you're also being a GP or a defence barrister or whatever else. Inevitably that breaks down so it is easier and more plausible for Tories (or Lib Dems and some SNP) to do second jobs while if you're a Labour MP very often that will not be possible if you're actually doing constituency work.

I get the argument for raising the salary, but I think £80k is a good base salary and that we only see it as not being a pay cut v private industry if our idea of who should be an MP is that they should be partners in City law firms, or commercial barristers, or senior doctors, or directors - there is a class element there. If parliament should also include nurses, social workers, journalists (though not commentators a la Johnson or Gove), people from NGOs/third sector, workers - then it's not necessarily a pay cut and it is still a very well paid job.

Separately I would entirely remove their staff and office costs from MPs' expenses - because I don't think they are individual expenses but part of our democratic system. I'd increase their budget for staff and offices so they can hire case workers and researchers etc (I'd ban hiring family members) who could be reasonably senior - those jobs advertise for abut £25k a year as graduate jobs when I think we'd be well served with a bit more seniority and experience. I'd also look at general working conditions for MPs - they've generally moved from the ridiculous all night sessions and voting at 2 in the morning, but they still really don't work for, for example, young parents. We should have things like e-voting the ability to contribute from home if the debate is, say, later than 7pm etc. Because I think that also feeds into the type of people who can be MPs which favours men, probably with money already.

[Tamas]

Realistically, MPs should have high enough salaries to make remaining honest and un-corrupt the correct move risk-reward wise.

But people would be howling at them getting high(er) salaries so it's not going to happen.

[Sheilbh]

But people would be howling at them getting high(er) salaries so it's not going to happen.

Yeah.

There's a case it was a contributory factor in the expenses scandal. Basically MPs didn't vote themselves a raise for years because of how angry it would make everyone, so they used the expenses system in really dodgy ways. So then they carved out responsibility for setting MPs' pay and approving expenses to an independent body but you'll still see on an almost daily basis entirely bullshit "here are MPs voting for a pay rise (full House of Commons) here's MPs debating saving the NHS (three Labour backbenchers talking to each other)"

It's a bit like the whole restoration of Parliament - the reports from architects and engineers etc are really really bad. It is a disaster waiting to happen - there's incredibly old electrics that hasn't been updated since the 30s, there's asbestos, there's basically entire offices areas that a fire would just burn through in minutes because of how they've been designed. It is incredibly unsafe and in need of huge restoration which will be expensive because it's a historic building that's listed and a world heritage site - but MPs are very reluctant to vote for it because to the public it would just appear that they are spending billions of pounds on their workplace. It's for this reason I think they should be forcibly moved into a campus of portakabins in Kidderminster while Westminster is declared a national monument - because if they can't take responsibility for preserving the building they're in for political reasons they should move out

Separately - Tory Vice Chair has resigned - between this and the whips briefing against Johnson this is getting serious. I saw the Washington Post doing a story on how Johnson should be having a moment in the global spotlight with Cop26 but is instead mired in domestic scandal and it slightly reminds me of the Tories getting rid of Thatcher which happened during the Iraq war to the bafflement of all the allies. Apparently the Saudis initially thought that the only way something like that could happen was if there was a coup and spent a few days trying desperately to work out which generals were behind it

Tory party vice-chair Andrew Bowie resigns in protest over sleaze
MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine becomes first party figure to step down as a matter of conscience over scandal
Aubrey Allegretti Political correspondent
@breeallegretti
Wed 10 Nov 2021 10.19 GMT

The Conservative MP Andrew Bowie has announced he will resign as a vice-chair of the party in the wake of the sleaze scandal engulfing Boris Johnson.

Bowie said he requested to step down but agreed to stay in post until a successor has been appointed. He believed he could not continue to defend the government after the prime minister's botched bid to save a colleague from suspension and overhaul the standards system.

The fallout is continuing and another Tory MP, Geoffrey Cox, is also in the spotlight and has been referred to the commissioner by Labour for appearing to conduct legal work from his Commons office.

Bowie's resignation is significant as he was a key adviser to Theresa May when she was prime minister, serving as her parliamentary private secretary.

He became the Conservative vice-chair for youth and the UK union in August 2019, a few months after Johnson became prime minister.

Bowie was first elected in 2017 to represent West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine in the Commons. He has a wafer-thin majority of 843 votes.

Another Conservative aide, Angela Richardson, temporarily lost her job for voting against the government-backed bid to reform the standards system, but got her job back when Johnson U-turned and ditched the plans.

[garbon]

Do people feel that way about the Houses of Parliament. Specifically that if money set-aside to repair it, that's just MPs making their lives cushier?

Such a foreign consideration for me personally that saving a landmark building would be seen as such.

[Sheilbh]

I've no idea if it's how people actually fear - but I think it is how MPs and governments of all parties (because this is another issue that we have known about for many years and has been delayed and delayed - probably until something really bad happens) think about it. I think that's their fear and a large part of why they won't just do it. Of course every time they delay the restoration, it just gets more expensive.

Having said that I do remember a poll where about 50% of people thought Parliament should be restored (mainly Tory and Lib Dem voters), but a solid quarter of voters wanted it either sold off or demolished because it was too expensive

I totally agree. I don't think it's theirs, but instead they have responsibility to care for and preserve it as a building because it is listed and a world heritage site for very good reasons - it is an important landmark national building and should be looked for the future.

[The Larch]

Isn't Parliament already quite obsolete and not fit for function anymore? All the stuff about it not being able to host all MPs if they turned up and such. Maybe the Houses of Parliament could be kept for pageantry and protocol and a new modern Parliament could be built elsewhere.

[Sheilbh]

Isn't Parliament already quite obsolete and not fit for function anymore? All the stuff about it not being able to host all MPs if they turned up and such. Maybe the Houses of Parliament could be kept for pageantry and protocol and a new modern Parliament could be built elsewhere.

In that sense this Parliament building has been obsolete since it was built. After it was bombed during the war parts, I think including the Commons had to be rebuilt and they had the option of expanding it so iit could fit all of the MPs at that point in the 40s because it was already overflowing and they decided not to change it but to rebuild it exactly as it was (and I think most Commonwealth or maybe allied countries sent gifts that would be incorporated into the new building - so there's Canadian wood, I think the brass fittings were made in Australia etc). But it's only designed to fit about 430 MPs, in the 40s (and now) there were about 650 MPs.

If the fear MPs have is being perceived as spending billions on their workplace, I'm not sure building a new building at the cost of billions would necessarily help

Also recent experience of building new parliaments in this country is not great. The Scottish Parliament was supposed to be built quite quickly at a cost of £40 million. It took far longer than it should have and eventually cost about £400 million. Plus the design was acclaimed by other architects and won lots of awards at the time (in the 2000s) but has never been particularly popular with the public and I think is now seen as maybe not so great:


I think the actual chamber itself works quite well but my understanding is other bits of the building don't work quite so well and don't really function.

Given Britain's general modern record on new big building projects I'm not convinced we can be trusted with building a new building

[The Larch]

Fun fact, my hometown's university campus was designed by the same architect that designed the Scottish Parliament. It also received lots of awards, and you know what happens with places that have received architectonic awards. 

[Sheilbh]

Architects aren't literally the worst people in the world. But they are close.

Edit: Incidentally this is another area where I think Wales actually did far better at far lower cost and receiving almost no attention from England or Scotland - because I think the Senedd looks great. It's a bit like various points in the pandemic while England and Scot are having huge fights over who's better over incredibly tiny distinctions, Wales is just quietly getting on with things



That sculpted roof goes through all floors before plunging into the chamber:

[garbon]

I've no idea if it's how people actually fear - but I think it is how MPs and governments of all parties (because this is another issue that we have known about for many years and has been delayed and delayed - probably until something really bad happens) think about it. I think that's their fear and a large part of why they won't just do it. Of course every time they delay the restoration, it just gets more expensive.

Having said that I do remember a poll where about 50% of people thought Parliament should be restored (mainly Tory and Lib Dem voters), but a solid quarter of voters wanted it either sold off or demolished because it was too expensive

I totally agree. I don't think it's theirs, but instead they have responsibility to care for and preserve it as a building because it is listed and a world heritage site for very good reasons - it is an important landmark national building and should be looked for the future.

Yeah I've seen the articles detailing thats what MPs fear but was wondering what evidence there is to back it up.