Who else is on the payroll?
- 30 Jan 08, 09:48 AM
Are there more family businesses such as "Conway PLC" earning tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money from working in the House of Commons?
The answer is we do not and cannot know. The reason for that is the House of Commons, led by the Speaker, has consistently blocked attempts to reveal basic information such as the names of the staff MPs employ, whether they are their relatives of their employers and what they are paid (see ).
Even those who sympathise with the desire of MPs not to see their staff's salary levels published may wonder why the public cannot know who it is we are paying to employ.
The only information that is available is the list of those with Commons passes who include unpaid helpers and family members who simply want easy access to the building. Thus, the information on last night's Newsnight and in many papers this morning about how many spouses maybe employed has come from scanning the pass list for staff with the same names as their MP and ringing to ask if they are in fact relatives and if they're paid.
Even if we did know which family members were on the payroll there are no checks on what these paid staff do. MPs are issued with guidance on contracts, pay rates and levels of bonuses but there is no audit to check that work is being carried out.
Honourable members are treated as, yes, honourable and, therefore, not requiring checks. The Senior Salaries Review Board recently recommended that this should change.
What this demonstrates is that the current rules did not and could not reveal the existence of the Conway family business. There would have been no investigation if it had not been for a leak of a secret document to the Sunday Times.
What's more, if Conway had not paid his son above the recommended rate for the job and an excessive bonus it’s unlikely any questions would ever have been asked about whether his son really did the work he was being paid for.
PS: My colleague, Martin Rosenbaum's excellent Freedom of Information blog has followed the story of MPs blocking FOI requests closely.
PPS: More interesting detail on this can be found on blog.
