A Week in the Life of a Member of Parliament
If the recent press coverage of the indiscretions of one or two individual MPs is to be believed then readers might be expecting an article about the job of an MP to be littered with references to family members on the payroll, and a constant round of drinks parties and foreign junkets. In truth, in my experience of 11 years in the House of Commons the vast majority of my colleagues work hard to perform what is after all a challenging job, with long, unpredictable and unsocial hours where you are guaranteed to attract flack from one quarter or another!
So why on earth do we do it you may ask? Certainly compared with my previous 16 years working in the City I have never worked harder than in my 11 years as the MP for East Worthing & Shoreham and attracting criticism is part of the job. With 90,000 bosses you are never going to please everyone all of the time but we do our best.
Whilst no week in Parliament is the same or predictable I have taken a fairly typical week in February to give a flavour of what I get up to at Westminster and in my constituency on behalf of my 90,000 odd (in some cases very odd) constituents.
Most Monday mornings I will have an early meeting in the constituency or at the constituency office before travelling up to Westminster from my home in Sussex by train.
This Monday starts with a tour round the House of Commons and discussion with students from Warwick University, my alma mater, and an opportunity to use them as a sounding board for our proposals for a National Citizen Service to be rolled out for every 16 year old under the next Conservative government. I am joined also by a student from one of the schools in the constituency who is shadowing me for the week for work experience.
On to lunch to chair a discussion on the Department for Children, Schools and Families with a group of educationalists and civil servants and back to the House in time to raise a question with the Home Office minister Vernon Coaker to enlist his help with the cannabis café in Lancing which has stuck 2 fingers up at the law for the last year and continues to trade, much to the annoyance of many local residents. Fortunately he agrees with me that this is a completely unacceptable situation and offers to help - RESULT!
Back to my office to go through the week's diary with my long suffering PA Kathryn and researcher Ruth, who alas is about to move on to pastures new after putting up with being called on to produce research on all manner of things for me over the last 3 years. The morning post contains around 80 letters and there's another 80 or so emails - the fastest growing form of correspondence these days and making your email address widely available to your constituent is a necessary part of the job but at the same time creating a rod for your own back.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people complain about not seeing their MP. Yet with fortnightly surgeries around the constituency; informal street surgeries in shopping centres like Southwick Square, Broadwater and Shoreham farmer's market; frequent public meetings; a regular electronic newsletter and an Annual Report delivered to every door; an updated website; frequent In Touch newsletters; regular media appearances; email, post, telephone and fax contact details - it really has never been easier to get hold of your MP.
After attacking the post its off to a lobby to save a specialist mental health hospital in south London used by some o my constituents and then I catch a bit of the debate on the Lisbon treaty which will keep us up debating late into the night. Tonight the last vote is likely to be after 11pm so it's a chance for me to catch up with correspondence at my desk and dictate follow up letters for the weekend surgery. This is interspersed with a meeting with fellow West Sussex MPs to share information about the state of the hospital consultation, and the inaugural meeting of the Parliamentary Group on cannabis use and children of which I am a founder member. After several late votes I finally leave the office at around 11.30 to stay the night at my flat in Westminster.
The early bird gets the worm and I am in my office at 7.30 dealing with the 'To Do' pile which has been growing ominously large. At 8.30 I find myself juggling 2 breakfast meetings. The first I am chairing is the Parliamentary Financial Services group with a discussion on the sub-prime mortgage crisis which is rocking the economy both sides of the Atlantic. I also manage to put in an appearance at the BBC South region breakfast to discuss local media coverage.
At 9.30 it's time for the weekly Children, Schools and Families team meeting where we plan our strategy for dealing with Government business in the week ahead. As Shadow Minister for Children this is an extensive but fascinating brief which takes up most of my time at Westminster and I spend the rest of the morning in meetings with children's charities about the forthcoming Children & Young People Bill dealing with looked after children and which I will be leading on for the Conservatives.
Off to Westminster abbey for lunch with the Archbishop of Canterbury and a curious selection of MPs' Lords and clergy who want to discuss children's policy ahead of the forthcoming publication of the Children's Society latest report on the commercialisation of childhood, of which the Archbishop is patron. It provides an interesting arena for church and state to come together and in most cases agree!
In the afternoon I have a selection of meetings on cardiac risk in the young, fatherhood and post office closures, which we know all about to our cost in Worthing and Adur. Back to my desk to go through the day's post, return phone calls and be greeted by the wearisome news that I have 78 unread emails. No time to follow the latest instalment of the Lisbon treaty debate in the chamber but I keep my television tuned to the parliamentary channel in my office which will give me a warning of how late the votes are likely to be and again I find myself in the office until just after 11pm. I also spend an hour briefing our prospective parliamentary candidates on education policy and wishing them well in their constituencies when the general election is eventually called. I warn tem to expect a long haul until the spring of 2010 the way things are looking for the Government. Thank goodness I am not still on the candidate's circuit and was lucky enough to win my seat almost 11 years ago.
Another day and another breakfast. It's not just the army that marches on its stomach! I go to a fascinating working breakfast hosted by the International Affairs think tank Chatham House on the political situation in Pakistan following the elections. back to my office to go through the post and meetings with my staff about correspondence and next week's diary, and wondering how we are going to fit everything in. There's also a briefing from the charity PRIMHE about a conference on mental health and children in Cardiff next month where I am the key note speaker. At 12 noon its into the Commons chamber for the most boisterous, if not necessarily constructive, half hour of the week, namely Prime Minister's Question Time. I take my usual seat in the back row just out of the line of sight of the Speaker so I can heckle as much as I like with impunity. One of these days he will latch on to where all the noise is coming from.
After a demanding lunch on Government databases and civil liberties with a group of journalists and political researchers t the think tank Centre for Policy Studies, I am due to be in Westminster Hall to respond to a debate on child poverty. Fortunately my researcher has provided me with a good selection of relevant bullet points on how the Government are missing their targets and I am rather pleased with the ad lib speech I am able to fashion from it. later on I catch up with some media interviews and particularly the news that the Home Office has agreed to step in to help over our cannabis café. At 5.30 I attend the weekly meeting of the 1922 committee which is open to all Conservative Mps and peers to hear about the forthcoming business and an advance notice of what level of whipping we are likely to be on the following week. With many more days of the Lisbon treaty to go we are on a 3 line whip virtually everyday particularly when it comes to the crucial vote on whether our constituents should have a vote on the treaty, as I strongly believe.
I go though some ideas to update my website with my researcher on www.timloughton.com and we film a podcast on the Lisbon treaty which is available together with a survey on my www.telltim.co.uk website. We film it outside the offices of the European Commission just across Parliament Square and amusingly they send out a press office to monitor what we are doing - such is their paranoia. last vote is at 7pm this evening so it's an early night and I indulge myself in a Portuguese wine tasting courtesy of the Parliamentary Wine Society. eventually drag myself back to my desk and this time it's only 65 unread emails.
It's Thursday which is usually a lighter day at Westminster when it is possible to catch up on all that work which you have not had a chance to deal with in my case a serious filing session beckons as the tower blocks that pass for my filing trays threaten to topple over. I attend environment questions in the morning and after a meeting with children's charity Kidscape who do some great work on anti-bullying, it's tie to get the corkscrew out for leaving drinks for my researcher Ruth. Several bottles later I leave them to it and am able to get away from parliament early as there are no votes. That enables me to attend a board meeting of the Ropetackle Centre Trust in Shoreham, which I have chaired for the last 7 years and where we are facing some tough challenges to raise further finance but everyone is agreed that our first year has been a great success in bringing some great original entertainment to Adur.
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