Who are the Parliamentary Private Secretaries?

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Andrew Defty

DSCF1962I have written before about Parliamentary Private Secretaries. In 2013 I observed that these unpaid Ministerial aides have perhaps the least glamorous job in parliament. Theirs’ is also perhaps the most elusive job in parliament.

Although they are unpaid and therefore not strictly speaking on the payroll, the creation of Parliamentary Private Secretaries has been seen by many as a means of expanding the payroll vote. Appointment as a PPS is a sign of recognition, an indication that one’s talents have been noticed by someone in government. It also holds out the prospect of elevation to ministerial ranks in the not too distant future, although this is obviously dependent on continued loyalty. While they may not be ministerial positions the role of the PPS is outlined in some detail in the Ministerial Code, which makes it clear that their role is not simply to support their Minister, but also to support the government:

Parliamentary Private Secretaries are expected to support the Government in divisions in the House. No Parliamentary Private Secretary who votes against the Government can retain his or her position.

The role of PPSs in padding out the payroll vote is not based solely on their expected loyalty but also on the fact that there has been a gradual but significant increase in their number. From only a handful of PPSs at the beginning of the last century, since the mid-1990s there have been more than 40, around one PPS for every two Ministers in the House of Commons, or about one third of the payroll vote.

In recognition of this, a number of inquiries have recommended limiting the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries. In 2000, the Conservative Party’s Commission to Strengthen Parliament, criticised ‘the emergence of the “extended government”‘ and recommended a reduction in the number of Ministers and a cap on the number of PPSs. More recently, the Public Administration select committee recommended that the number be limited to one for each government department.

Moreover, because these are not ministerial posts and don’t carry a salary, they also present a fairly unobtrusive way of expanding the payroll vote. While a complete list of ministerial posts, including unpaid ones, is published annually, governments have generally been somewhat tardy in providing information about which MPs are Parliamentary Private Secretaries. The view of successive governments appears to have been that, as these are posts which do not carry any ministerial responsibilities and which do not incur any public expenditure, appointments are largely a matter between a Minister and his or her PPS.

Interestingly, in the run-up to the 2010 general election the Conservative Party promised to make politics more transparent, making it easier for the public to access government data, particularly in relation to appointments. They also promised to reduce the size of the government by cutting the number of Ministers. Although the latter did not happen, the government did begin to make available, information about appointments which had, in the past, been quite difficult to find. In June 2010 the Coalition government published a full list of special advisers and their salaries – a dataset which has been updated on an annual basis. In November 2010, the Coalition government also published a list of Parliamentary Private Secretaries. However, unlike the list of special advisers, this list has never been updated.

This would not be so bad if such a list existed elsewhere, but it is surprisingly difficult to track down such information. There is no list of PPSs on the otherwise comprehensive Parliamentary website. A phone-call to the House of Commons Information Office elicited a knowing sigh and the suggestion that I could try the political information service, Dod’s. Although Dod’s Parliamentary Companion has not included lists of PPSs since 2006. They also suggested I could try contacting Downing Street.

My email to Number 10 is, as yet, unanswered. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that successive governments have deliberately sought to obscure the role and indeed the very existence of the Parliamentary Private Secretaries. The previous government made a welcome initial movement towards greater openness in this respect, but this was short-lived. The government must have a list. Publication would not be difficult and is important for a number of reasons. Openness about government appointments would seem to be an important part of democratic accountability. Transparency in relation to appointments, which is standard in most other fields, is also central for monitoring equality of opportunity. Aside from anything else, it seems anomalous that while the Ministerial Code is publicly available, a list of all those to whom it applies is not. If I hear from Number 10, I’ll let you know.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Fewer and older: consequences of the decline in party membership in the UK

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Andrew Defty

There has been a long term decline in membership of the mainstream political parties in the UK. In the mid 1950s membership of the Conservative Party stood at around 3 million while the Labour Party had around 1 million members. By the time of the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party had a membership of around 150,000 while Labour Party membership stood at about 270,000. Recent years have seen an increase in membership of some of the smaller parties, most notably UKIP, the SNP and the Green Party, but this has not compensated for the overall decline in party membership across the UK. Only around 1% of the UK  population is now a member of a political party. Although party membership has been in decline across Western Europe, the UK now has the lowest level of party membership in Europe.

Declining revenue

partiesThe most obvious consequence of declining membership is that parties have faced a decline in revenue from membership fees. This does not, however, affect all parties equally. Parties have never been entirely dependent on individual subscriptions and have always sought to generate other sources of income. These include individual and corporate donations, affiliation fees such as the Labour Party receives from the trades unions, and commercial investments. The extent to which parties have been successful in generating alternative sources of revenue affects the degree to which they have been able to cushion themselves from declining membership. The graph opposite, from the latest excellent House of Commons library note on party membership, shows the proportion of party income which comes from membership revenue. This shows that the bulk of income for all parties comes from sources other than subscriptions, and also that there is a wide variation in the extent to which parties are dependent on membership. While 23% of Green Party income comes from membership fees, this comprises only 2% of Conservative Party income.

Alternative sources of income

While the development of alternative sources of income has allowed the parties to offset the decline in subscriptions, the growing dependence on donations raises questions about the political system being captured by powerful interests. Critics of the Labour Party have long complained that the party is in thrall to the trades unions. The obvious response to this is that these are mass membership organisations which represent millions of working people across the UK. However, trade union membership has also been in steep decline since the 1980s and it is, of course, far from clear that all trade union members also support the Labour Party.

Attention has also focused on the extent to which parties have become dependent on donations from a small number of wealthy individuals. According to a recent report, since David Cameron became leader, twenty-five individuals have donated more to the Conservative Party than the party’s total annual income from membership subscriptions. Given the extensive powers of patronage available to the Prime Minister, with seats in the House of Lords and a range of other honours in his gift, dependence on wealthy donors can lead to obvious accusations of honours being traded for cash. Dependence on wealthy donors can also prompt questions about whether such individuals have an influence on policy. Questions were raised about Labour’s relationship with wealthy donors in 1997 when, following an announcement that a ban on cigarette advertising would include an exemption for Formula 1 racing, it was revealed that the formula 1 chief executive, Bernie Ecclestone, had earlier donated £1million to the Labour Party.

The importance of activists

If one donor can provide more financial support than the entire party membership, why do political parties bother with the difficult, and often fruitless, task of trying to persuade large numbers of people to join? The simple answer is that parties, or at least parties which hope to win elections, don’t just need money, they also need people. While political parties have become increasingly sophisticated organisations with a cadre of professional policy wonks, media managers and spin doctors, when it comes to fighting elections they remain heavily dependent on a large number of volunteers to knock on doors, deliver leaflets and make phone calls.

Even in the United States, where presidential candidates must raise a war chest amounting to many millions of dollars before they can even consider running for the presidency, campaigns are still dependent on an army of activists. The bulk of campaign finances will be spent on advertising, facilities such as campaign headquarters, banks of computers and telephones and not a little on overpaid campaign strategists, but much of the actual campaigning will be carried out by unpaid volunteers.

While British political parties may be able to generate alternative sources of revenue, it is the shrinking of the activist base which is the most worrying aspect of declining membership for most parties. Moreover, while the graph above suggests that the Conservative Party are best equipped to manage a decline in revenue from subscriptions, they are perhaps much less able to sustain the decline in members. The decline in membership of the Conservative Party has been steeper than for other parties, albeit from a higher starting point. Conservative Party members are also older, perhaps much older, than members of other parties. Establishing the age profile of party members is difficult but a reliable estimate puts the average age of Conservative Party members at 59, with over 60% of members over the age of 60. The average age of Labour Party members is generally thought to be around 52 although a recent estimate suggested that the influx of new members since the general election has seen that fall to 42. Clearly, 60 is not old and most over-60s are likely to be healthy and active. However, a diminishing and ageing activist base is not good for the health of a political party, or indeed, for the health of democracy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Government or governance? It all depends on who governs

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Andrew Defty

The study of government has long been a central preoccupation of the discipline of politics to the extent that the two are often viewed as synonymous. Many now embark on a politics degree after studying for an A-level in Government and Politics. On arriving at university students are often confronted with a bank of textbooks designed to provide an introduction to government and politics, or to the government and politics of different states (UK, USA, the Netherlands etc). In recent years, however, there has been a growing tendency to use the word governance, in addition to, or in many cases in place of, government. The widespread acceptance of this trend was perhaps best illustrated when, in a break with tradition, Michael Moran chose Politics and Governance in the UK, as the title for his standard undergraduate politics text book.

So what is governance and how does it differ from government?

The word government has the advantage of not only describing the activity of ruling, but also providing some indication about who is responsible for doing it. Thus while we can talk about government as being the activity of ruling, we can also talk about the government as that group of people with the authority or mandate to do so. In short, governments govern.

However, this also hints at the limitations of  the word government in that it implies that governing is an exclusive activity carried out by a particular ruling group. While distinctions are sometimes made between different levels of government such as national, regional or local government, it nevertheless implies that government involves directing things from above and is the carried out by institutions with certain defined formal responsibilities.

The word governance on the other hand refers to the process of governing without implying that any particular group enjoys a monopoly in that process. Indeed, the more widespread use of governance has emerged out of an understanding that governing is a process which may involve a range of different actors which share power or arrive at decisions through a process of bargaining or negotiation.

The word began to be more widely applied to UK politics in the 1980s when the policies of the Thatcher governments sought to diminish the role of the state through privatisation and the contracting out of public services. This process received a new impetus, albeit  in a different direction, under New Labour when responsibility for key decisions was allocated to non-state actors, such as the Bank of England, and further power was devolved away from Westminster with the creation of new legislative bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Another important driver has been the pooling of sovereignty involved in Britain’s membership of international bodies such as the European Union.

The creation of new institutions involved in the process of governing has led to the widespread use of the term ‘multi-level governance’. This differs from traditional ideas about central, regional and local government, which still perhaps imply a top down distribution of power and certainly a formal division of responsibilities. In contrast multi-level governance implies that power is widely distributed between different levels or institutions involved, and that decisions may be made across the levels rather than at one level or another.

All of this means that in many areas governments no longer govern, or at least they don’t govern on their own. This does of course raise questions about who we can blame when things go wrong, but that is a question for another day.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Shades of grey: a challenging frontbench recognition test

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Andrew Defty

I’ve written before about the frontbench recognition test which I inflict upon my first year politics students (see ‘Is it Yvette Harman?’). The test involves showing the students a  small selection of photographs of members of the frontbench team of each of the main parties and asking them, in groups, to identify the individuals and their current job. Aside from a little bit of fun, more so for me than the students, the purpose of this exercise is to reveal some very simple truths about executive power in the UK. Most obviously that while the UK doesn’t elect Prime Ministers by a popular vote, the Prime Minister generally remains the most recognisable politician in the country. Similarly, it also tends to show that leaders of the other main parties enjoy considerably higher levels of recognition than other frontbench politicians. This might also lead us to reflect on the notion that while Britain operates a system of Cabinet Government in which the Prime Minister is merely one of a number of potential Prime Ministers, encapsulated in the phrase ‘first among equals’, in terms of levels of public recognition there is very little equality. Running this test year on year it is clear that one does not need to move very far along the frontbench before drifting into obscurity. If public recognition is a source of power in politics, and it surely is, then Prime Ministers and other party leaders do have a resource which is not widely distributed.

This year’s test was perhaps more cruel and unusual than in the past as May’s general election followed by leadership contests in the Labour and the Liberal Democrat parties mean that many of the frontbench teams for all of the main parties are new to their job. To make it easier this time I omitted the Liberal Democrats, despite the fact that I could have fitted the entire parliamentary party on one slide, and also the SNP.

The first slide always comprises a selection of what I assume to be the most prominent Cabinet ministers. However, even this was not easy this year. In addition to Cameron, Osborne and Theresa May, who all appeared on the first slide last year, I added Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, who were considerably less recognisable than Nick Clegg and William Hague who they replaced from last year’s slide. Of the three groups of students taking the test, all three were able to identify Cameron, Osborne and May and their roles. However, only two recognised Hammond and Fallon, although in Fallon’s case this is an improvement on last year when only one of three groups was able to identify him.

The second slide comprised Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, recently appointed Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Greg Clark, and three women from the Cabinet, Amber Rudd, the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and two longer serving Ministers, Theresa Villiers, Northern Ireland Secretary and Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan.

Nicky Morgan was the only one of this six whose name and role was correctly identified by all three groups. Jeremy Hunt was identified by all three groups, although one group did not know his job, while Patrick McLoughlin and Theresa Villiers were identified by two groups both of whom knew their current jobs. This is an improvement on last year when Hunt, Villiers and Morgan were only recognised by one group, perhaps reflecting the fact that all three have now been in office for some time. Only one group recognised Amber Rudd although this is an improvement on her predecessor, Ed Davey who failed to be recognised by anyone last year. That honour this year goes to Greg Clark.

In previous years the Shadow Cabinet has, by far, enjoyed the lowest levels of recognition and this year was no exception, although this was perhaps more understandable this time, when as one student pointed out ‘all of them were on the backbenches until a few weeks ago.’ As usual I omitted the Leader of the Opposition on the, perhaps bold, assumption that everyone would know who Jeremy Corbyn is. Not something I could have said 12 months ago. One group failed to identify any of the Labour front bench. The only two shadow ministers recognised by both of the remaining groups were John McDonnell and Hilary Benn. One group recognised two more Shadow Education Secretary, Lucy Powell, and Owen Smith, although they didn’t know that he had moved Shadow Welsh Secretary to Work and Pensions. Nobody identified Shadow Health Secretary, Heidi Alexander and Shadow Transport Secretary, Lilian Greenwood.

Despite the fact that many of the politicians in this year’s test could not reasonably be called household names, in some cases even in their own homes, the overall results were good. However, they were somewhat flattered by one group (and largely one student) who was able to identify all but three of the seventeen politicians on the slides and, with one exception, their roles. This was a level of recognition which in this year’s test I will freely admit I would not have achieved. In several years of running the test this is somewhat unusual. The remaining two groups identified eleven and five MPs. The only individuals to be identified by all three groups were Cameron, Osborne, May, Hunt and Morgan. As usual students were more likely to be able to identify male politicians than female politicians, despite the fact that the men all look remarkably similar – suits, ties, greying hair.

Last year I speculated about what the results might mean for a potential future leadership contest. In this respect Theresa May appears to be more prominent than last year, but so are Jeremy Hunt and Nicky Morgan. If public recognition is anything to go by a replacement for Jeremy Corbyn is unlikely to come from the Shadow Cabinet, although Hilary Benn might be a good outside bet.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Shades of grey: a challenging frontbench recognition test

Should Jeremy Corbyn join the Privy Council?

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Andrew Defty

Jeremy Corbyn’s apparent failure to be sworn in as a member of the Privy Council when it met last week has generated a level of interest which this archaic and obscure institution has not enjoyed for some time. I have written previously about the nature of the Privy Council, that august body of individuals which pre-dates such modern developments as Parliament, the Cabinet and the office of Prime Minister. Originally created as a group of special advisors to the monarch, the Privy Council today comprises, among others, the most senior politicians in the country and is the body through which the few remaining prerogative powers are exercised.

While elevation to the Privy Council is a formality which usually goes unnoticed for Leaders of the Opposition, Corbyn’s well known republicanism has focused attention because entry to the Privy Council involves swearing an oath of allegiance to the monarch in a somewhat bizarre ceremony in which one kneels before the Queen while kissing her hand, or as Tony Blair observed, ‘brushing her hand with your lips’. Corbyn seems, not unnaturally, reluctant to be involved in this process. While we do not know for certain what exactly he does thinks about it, it would not be unreasonable to assume that, like John Prescott who left the Privy Council, albeit after leaving office, he thinks the whole thing should be abolished.

Labour spokespeople on the other hand, no doubt concerned to avoid more headlines suggesting their leader has snubbed the Queen, have suggested that Corbyn will become a member in due course and his absence from last week’s meeting is explained as little more than an unfortunate diary clash.

However, does Corbyn really need to join the Privy Council?

There are some who clearly think that Corbyn should join as a matter of principle. That if he is to be considered as a ‘serious politician’ he must abide by the conventions of the constitution and demonstrate due deference to the monarch. This is clearly a moot point, but it is worth noting that this is not a requirement of all MPs, unlike for example swearing the oath at the beginning of each new Parliament.  Indeed, it is not a requirement at all, individuals are invited to join the Privy Council, and as with all honorary positions they may respectfully decline.  Moreover, judging by the accounts in numerous Ministerial memoirs, many, although by no means all, of those who have joined consider the whole process somewhat irksome.

There have also been a number of claims for the practical benefits of Privy Council membership. These may not, however, be as significant as they seem.

Shortly after Corbyn became Labour leader an erroneous front page story in The Sun suggested that Corbyn would hypocritically kiss the Queen’s hand in order to enable Labour to gain access to £6.2m in ‘short money’, state funding which is offered to Opposition parties. The story had barely hit the newsstands before a succession of constitutional experts lined up to point out that the provision of ‘short money’ was not conditional upon Privy Council membership, and the story appeared to be little more than a clumsy attempt to smear Corbyn.

A more defensible argument is that Corbyn will need to join the Privy Council in order to gain access to secret intelligence briefings which the Government occasionally shares with Opposition leaders. This has been repeated in a number of media outlets, most notably The Daily Telegraph which last week observed that membership ‘gives him the right to receive government intelligence briefings.’ 

Unlike the short money story there is at least some truth in this. Successive governments have found that Privy Council membership may be a useful device to enable the distribution of sensitive material beyond those in Government, through the practice of sharing information on what has become known as ‘Privy Council terms.’ This has become particularly important feature of relations between Government and Opposition.  It is through this mechanism that Leaders of the Opposition have occasionally been apprised of concerns that one of their MPs might be a security risk and should not be considered for a position which would give them access to sensitive information. It may also be used to share sensitive information with Opposition politicians at times of national emergency or conflict.

In his book, The Prime Minister, the office and its holders since 1945, the historian Peter Hennessy has provided a list of issues since 1945 on which information has been shared with Opposition leaders on Privy Council terms including the Middle East in the 1950s, the Cuban missile crisis, the Profumo affair, the future of the nuclear deterrent and the conflict in Northern Ireland. More recently the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, shared intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction with Opposition leaders on Privy Council terms, as did David Cameron in relation to events in Syria in 2013.

However, Privy Council membership is not the only, or perhaps even the most effective means of sharing intelligence with opposition MPs. In most cases when politicians are afforded access to secret information the intelligence agencies rely on something more robust, and legally binding, than the Privy Council oath. Government ministers and also members of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (which includes opposition MPs) are all notified under the Official Secrets Act. While Corbyn may, for other reasons, be reluctant to sign the OSA it would at least provide a more accountable mechanism and quite possibly one with which the intelligence agencies would be more comfortable. Particularly when compared to an oath sworn before God and the Queen by someone who doesn’t believe in either.

It is also important to bear in mind that Privy Council membership does not come with a right to access secret intelligence material, as suggested in the Telegraph. Privy Council membership is awarded for life and extends to over 600 individuals including current and retired politicians as well as prominent individuals from fields including the civil service, academia  and journalism. While all have taken the Privy Council oath, providing them all with a right to access secret intelligence material would represent a worrying breach of security. Thus, when Governments share sensitive information with the Opposition, it is not only rare, it is also on their own terms. When they choose to do so and how is entirely in the hands of the Government.

It is wrong then to assume that Privy Council membership for Opposition politicians is a privilege which does not also benefit the Government. For Opposition leaders being shown intelligence information on Privy Council terms can be a mixed blessing. In interviews for our research on parliament and the intelligence services several former Ministers observed that the binding nature of the Privy Council oath has the added advantage for governments of preventing Opposition members from making political capital out of what they have been told on Privy Council terms. In certain circumstances they observe, if the Opposition wants to more effectively challenge the Government, then it may better to decline offers to be shown secret information in this way.

It is then a well-established convention that Leaders of the Opposition become Privy Council members, but it is not an obligation, and it can be a double-edged sword. If Corbyn were to choose not to join it would not create a constitutional crisis. Moreover, far from putting Corbyn on the back-foot it would pose a challenge to the government who would need to decide whether and how to share sensitive information with the Opposition.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment