It must be, what, more than twenty years ago, while working on a local campaign against Housing Action Trusts (the Tory version) that I attended a public meeting on the council estate I lived on at the time at which the invited guest speaker was Dave Nellist, who was, at the time, the Labour MP for Coventry South East.

If the the truth be told, I remember very little about the detail of the meeting and my memories of the campaign are, today, a little sketchy. We won the campaign, in the sense that the Conservative government eventually backed off and dropped the idea of trying sell off the estate to private developers, ran a couple of really good alternative comedy shows as fund-raisers, one of which gave a friend a nice line in personal anecdotes about Attila the Stockbroker, who did one of the gigs in return for a ticket to a West Brom game at the Hawthorns and a curry, and a write-around for support from Labour MPs netted us, amongst the usual typewritten letters on Commons stationary, a handwritten note of support from Tony Benn which included a fiver.

What I do recall clearly about Dave Nellist, however, was that he arrived for the meeting while we were setting up the hall, asked for a small table, and promptly deposited on it a large pile of documents; copies of an annual report he voluntarily produced for his constituents giving a fairly detailed overview of both his work (and his expenses) as an MP. Even though this wasn’t his constituency he was speaking in, he started off his contribution to the meeting by inviting everyone in attendance to take away a copy of the report with them so that they could see for themselves what use he was making of the public money he received as an MP, a move which, I do recall, impressed many of those in attendance.

Nellist also, famously, took only a fireman’s salary for himself from his MPs salary, on account of his being sponsored by the FBU, spending the remaining money on funding his constituency/casework activities.

I mention this now only because it strikes me as a little odd that in all the chatter surrounding efforts to drag MPs licking and screaming into the 21st century in terms of transparency, no one seems to have hit on the simple idea of asking MPs to file an annual report of their activities (and those of their constituency offices) as a simple and convenient means of satisfying the requirement of showing their constituents, and the wider public, just exactly what they’re getting in return for public money paid over to them as their salary and expenses.

When you think about it, charities and other organisations in receipt of public money do this kind of thing all the time. In fact they do it when they receive funding from just about any source, from any of the various lottery funds or from other charitable trusts and no one ever questions either the need or value of such exercises. It is a simple fact of life in the voluntary sector, that if you receive any kind of external funding then, at some point, either annually or at the end of the project to which the funding relates, you prepare a report showing how the money was spent and what the funder got in return their money; the things that the project achieved, the number of people it worked with and supported, what its successes (and sometimes) failure were.

Why should MPs not do exactly the same thing? Why should I not able to access, each year, a written report produced by my MP showing their income and, within reason, expenditure and what I, as a constituent, got in return for that money by way of everything from their parliamentary activities (voting, questions, etc.) and the kind of casework undertaken at their constituency office. Is it such a big ask to expect information on how many cases MPs take one, what type (immigration, housing, etc.) and how many interventions on behalf of constituents lead to successful outcomes? I’d suspect that, in the case of a number of hand-working backbench MPs, such a report would work for their advantage and show them in a good light once it can be seen just how much unreported work they do in their constituencies in return for the funding they receive for their constituency office.

It might even go some considerable way to sorting out the contention that exists over the parliamentary communications allowance were this to be designated specifically for the purpose of producing such an annual report for distribution to constituents. One can hardly quibble, after all, with the practice of MPs telling their constituents what they’re getting for their money and any further complaints about the ‘power of incumbency’ of the kind which accompanied the introduction of the communications allowance would ring a little hollow if it were used to provide this kind of information – after all, if an incumbent MP benefits electorally from having an excellent record of working in and for their constituents’ interests then that’s a benefit they’ve at least earned by their efforts.

This is, to my mind, a simple measure and one that, if implemented correctly, has many advantages, not just to the public but also to MPs – or at least to those MPs who do work hard and pull their weight either in the Commons or in their constituency. It would both increase transparency and enforce, on MPs, a measure of discipline in the recording their own activities and the recording and monitoring of those activities undertaken by staff employed using parliamentary allowances, information that would be required to produce an annual report, without necessarily burdening them with too much intrusive external scrutiny. It would be the responsibility of MPs to produce their report – or more likely ensure that their staff produces the report – and the system could be backed up with a very simple but effective enforcement regime under which failure to file the report at the requisite time, which I’d suggest should be around the end of the summer recess, would result in the suspension of further payments until the report is filed.

So why isn’t it being suggested as an obvious step forward towards greater transparency and accountability. Indeed why is this suggestion coming from MPs themselves when, in the current febrile climate, they have more gain than most from being seen to voluntarily open themselves up to greater scrutiny?

About the author
'Unity' is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He also blogs at Ministry of Truth.
· Other posts by Unity


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