Jacqui Smith has shown boldness worthy of a minister in making a statement about capabilities to be a minister and what makes a good one. In stating this elephant in the room, she might just have pushed the issue forward into finally being tackled by our political system. She has done us a service in forcing us to ask what really makes a good minister and where training really can make a difference.
Key also is whether women are harsher critics of their own performance. For every one woman who might feel this way and state it, there are many male ministers who might feel this way and not state it. Similarly there are many who are underperforming ministers, but never see it. Women tend to have higher standards of themselves than men when it comes to jobs – as statistics show around job applications, women tend to apply for jobs when they think they meet 70-80% of criteria; men will chance it when they’ve really got just half that. Women who raise this – and of course this has echoes of Estelle Morris – are not necessarily the poorer performers, but often the ones who care most about making a change and not just making it through.
So what this must not turn into (and if it does, it will be a missed opportunity) is a dull conversation about whether women perform well in politics. Of course they do. But where they might do less well is dealing with new situations where they are smaller in number. Access to coaching and mentoring can make a blurry world quickly become clear with a bit of direction about how to navigate politics at that new level.
We don’t explore how this happens behind the scenes all the time for those who might make “good ministers”. The mentoring is often round a dinner table from older politicians of the same school, family or predominantly “boys” networks. Good performance from capable individuals is not just because of inherent skill but also access to the right advice and at the right time. Some people get that more than others.
If we want to seriously tackle not just the quantity but also the quality of performance of MPs from different backgrounds and without an establishment history, we need to take this issue of training much more seriously. And also fight back at the critics of such intervention.
It’s not just politicians who are to blame for the pot luck performance of MPs who become ministers. The frenzy around MPs’ expenses, which has rightly tackled the outrage of duck houses, moats and second homes allowance abuse has also become a free for all that has extended into any funds that are spent on training MPs to improve their performance in a way that you would both expect and want in any other sector.
Anyone in a private sector organisation who reaches a new level of managerial responsibility will go on some targeted executive training. It’s even a key performance indicator because investment in developing capability is a sign of how well your organisation might perform in the future. New editors at the BBC get a week at a business school, followed up with further training at appropriate intervals to embed them in their new role. ‘Good’ politicians in the model to which we have become accustomed don’t grow on trees – unless it’s Eton or Harrow; when the skills of politics will be handed down as a right.
It’s time we saw systematic induction for MPs on how to be effective, not just how parliament works, and similarly for ministers. And time we realised that would be good value for money.