Whether they like it or not, increasingly MPs are being assessed. Voting records are already available on the parliamentary website. In the next few months, an inquiry led by Sir Nicholas Winterton will consider publishing after every debate a list of who speaks, who attends, and who just turns up to vote. These figures may not indicate how well an MP has performed, but they are likely to be regarded as a guide to how long an MP is at work. Publishing a league table, however, would allow hard-working MPs to shine, and bring their lazier colleagues to book.
Generally, Labour backbenchers outperform their Conservative counterparts. When the 2001 voting records were published last year, Tory MP John Maples was found to have attended just 49 percent of votes, placing him 576th nationally. ‘The average Tory attendance rate at votes is about 60 or 70 percent,’ he conceded, ‘but you can up that by about ten percent for Labour members. The Conservatives don’t win many votes, so our MPs can get the evening off if they have anything better to do.’
Not all opposition backbenchers are so candid about their failings, and some have made very different assessments of their performance. Last year, the SNP concocted a league table encompassing speeches in the chamber, the tabling of motions, and the submission of written and oral questions which put the five SNP MPs in the top six among Scottish MPs. Of the bottom 30 places, 26 were held by Labour MPs. The table did not take into account that there were good reasons why some Labour MPs, such as Gordon Brown, were not tabling questions or spending time on the backbenches. Nonetheless, the results were picked up by the Scottish papers and Labour were accused of being lazy. Clearly, it matters who puts together a league table – and how.
The only truly independent guide to MPs’ performance is currently provided by FaxYourMP, a volunteer-run, not-for-profit website that helps constituents to contact their MP and then measures their responsiveness. They have delivered 50,000 faxes to MPs’ offices and published league tables of results since 2000. They have found that, on average, MPs responded to 61 percent of their correspondents within fourteen days. Iain Duncan Smith came bottom of the table.
Stefan Magdalinksi, one of the volunteers at FaxYourMP, describes it as ‘the first organisation to measure MPs’ responsiveness and performance in a systematic way’. He acknowledges that the league tables are imperfect, and is fairly ambivalent about their merits, but argues that ‘it should at least be the case that MPs be measured in a broadly similar way to that which they impose on almost all other public servants.’
The FaxYourMP league tables are encouraging MPs to be more responsive. Since they were published in national newspapers, the volunteers have had messages from MPs who want to work to improve their rating. The team is planning to do some analysis to see if overall performance among MPs has improved since the tables started. ‘Anecdotal evidence says that it has,’ says Stefan.
It is likely that MPs will be judged at the next election partly on their performance in league tables. There is an opportunity here for Labour to demonstrate the party’s strengths as serious and radical reformers. The FaxYourMP league tables provide a model that could be extended beyond emails and faxes, especially if Winterton’s inquiry brings more figures and records into the public domain.
Expect to hear howls of discomfort from Britain’s most unreformed public servants as the teeth of league tables, targets, and performance indicators sink into their backbenches. But as they feel the bite of modernisation, so they will appreciate and understand the challenge they are setting others in public services. What better way is there to demonstrate the merits – or otherwise – of league tables?