Committee on Standards (Lay Members)

John Spellar Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I am sorry at this hour to bring a note of dissension to proceedings. Colleagues who have braved these debates before will not be surprised, but basically what we have here is same old, same old. I notice we always employ recruitment consultants. I do not know why, really, because we still get people from the same old group moving around from quango to quango, but from a narrow basis. Of course, the recruitment consultants work on their criteria. What we are not getting in respect of either party is people who represent that vast part of the country that is not metropolitan—I include perhaps some of the metropolitan centres in Scotland and possibly in Northern Ireland—and who are not part of the great and the good. It is the same, by the way, with health authorities.

Going back a number of years, we had local businessmen and council leaders—people who were running businesses day to day and with real-life experience. We had trade union leaders—people who had come up from the shop floor and had real experience. We are dealing with the Committee on Standards; we are dealing with human behaviour.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call John Spellar.

[John Spellar]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We therefore do not have that breadth of experience and understanding coming in, one could often argue, in many cases.

I do not know any of these individuals; I take the word of Members who have actually met them that they may be quite estimable individuals. However, among that particular social set, there is contempt for the political process and for politics. We can see that coming through on many occasions and in the huge delays that take place when dealing with individual cases, as though this does not have an impact on the political process, political confidence or the individuals themselves.

The reason I raise this issue particularly in this debate, as in many others, is because this attitude is now endemic in the public life of this country. Real-life experience is denigrated. Political experience is particularly denigrated. I think that politics actually is a noble profession. Politics and politicians are absolutely necessary in order for the democratic will of the people to be brought about.

Therefore, by side-lining them and taking them out of decision making, and by claiming that they are non-political, when the nature of things, the conflict in society and the resolution of that conflict are inherently political, we are saying that these matters should not be entrusted to the people who actually put themselves before the public and get their vote—it should be taken away from there. This is just an example, but so much of life in this country now is done by a small set that is self-selecting and, these days, self-perpetuating. There is increasing evidence that the chances of people coming from an ordinary family and moving up through the system are diminishing. We are seeing that in a whole number of areas in this country, such as in the arts, where the opportunities for working-class youngsters to break through in theatre or music have been much diminished.

These people not only do very nicely out of all these quangos, but do so with a warm glow from feeling that they are doing a public service. However, what they are actually doing is leading to the stratification of society, the net result of which, such as in previous debate, is that the public feel frozen out until they have an opportunity to actually say, “We think we ought to be heard.” I urge elected Members on both sides of the House to take that on board seriously. We cannot change all of this immediately, but we can deal with it within our own affairs and say that Members of Parliament should, if I can use a phrase, take back control.