More on the payroll vote

Sarah Wollaston is one of the more interesting of the 2010 intake of Conservative MPs. She was selected to stand for the Conservatives in the Devon seat of Totnes through  an open primary, in which all voters in the constituency were given the opportunity to select the Conservative candidate, rather than being chosen by the party. Perhaps as a result of this, Wollaston has been a somewhat independently-minded MP, voting against the Whip on numerous occasions. In this article she criticises the role of patronage and the payroll vote in Parliament and also offers an interesting perspective on the job of Parliamentary Private Secretary.