What do we really want from MPs?

By Emma Burnell / @scarletstand

MPs work very hard. This shouldn’t be a controversial statement about a group of people who work roughly 12 to 14 hour days with few uninterrupted weekends, but it is.

Of course MPs as a group have hardly covered themselves in glory in the last few years, and the disgraceful expenses scandal was a condemnation of all that is worst about any system of self-regulation. MPs are also paid pretty well – They earn just under three times the average wage in the UK – and I’m not going to plead poverty on their behalf.

But given that their wages and the facilities that support them are funded by the tax payer, we might want to have a sensible debate – for once – about what it is we want MPs to do.

It would have been nice to have this discussion as part of the debate around changing the voting system. Sadly, both campaigns have (understandably) decided to ride the current wave of anti-politics sentiment, with the No to AV campaign describing AV as “a politicians’ fix” and the Yes to AV campaign claiming AV will make MPs “work harder”. I get it, they have a campaign to win, and they are not constituted to do anything other than persuade the public of the rightness of changing or retaining our electoral system. I also get that using the anti-politician mood is easier than changing it. But I feel a vital chance for a national conversation on the role of our elected representatives has been lost.

For me, democracy is just as much about what happens between elections as it is about the choices we make (and how we make them) at elections.

MPs who are fantastic legislators do not necessarily make the best constituency MPs. MPs who are the amazing political strategists do not necessarily make the best local champions. The ability to scrutinise legislation line-by-line, understanding the impacts and consequences both intended and unintended and to debate this within arcane parliamentary rules takes a dedication of purpose and singularity of mind that sometimes doesn’t fit with the kind of personality who can hold a hall of potential voters or parliamentary workers rapt at a great speech or the social skills to attend fetes and rallies, open days and CLP dinners. Equally those who impress most on the doorstep with their ability to talk to everyone and their empathy for all causes may not be the best person to be placed on a technical scrutiny committee.

I feel that the local link is vital to our politics. I want someone in my national parliament who has also walked down my street. But I also want housing experts deciding our housing strategy, strategists running our party and populists fronting it to sell the policies. There is no choice for me to say that I want different types of MP, those with local connections, and those selected for their expertise. There is certainly no understanding from the public debate that MPs skilled in different areas have different parts to offer the whole of the body politic.

I agree with the common complaint that we are drifting towards a permanent and exclusive political class. The internships debate in which I do not have wholly clean hands, has been part of this wider debate about the narrowing of those who can and do come into politics. But if we continue to demonise those who do make it, we will narrow ever more the pool of those who want to.

Yes some of our politicians were rotten. Some of them let us down very, very badly and we have every right to say so. But we only have the right to say so of those individuals, not of the class of people who are or aspire to be politicians. If we do, we risk leaving the field only to those who don’t care what people think of them.