Not The Least Honourable Member

It was good to hear Derek Conway on The Week In Westminster.

Politically, I doubt that I would vote for him, even if he is now on Press TV. Personally, he does seem rather unpleasant, although I have never met him. But his son was paid as a part-timer on the lowest point of the lowest quartile, and yet look what happened. Whereas, to cite an example almost at random, Jacqui Smith's husband is paid as a full-timer on the highest point of the highest quartile, despite doing nothing more than keep the constituency house in which she claims not to live anyway. Yet look what has not happened. Not to mention the flipper now in the Speaker's Chair.

The real scandal exposed by the Conway affair was and is that positions such as those nominally held by his sons are only open, even when they are being filled properly, to people who can afford to live in Central London on pay of only eleven thousand pounds per annum. In other words, to independently rich people. And even the Green Book restricts them to university graduates.

Instead, just as there should be a ban on any party funding except of an individual candidate by resolution of a membership organisation (whether the Midlands Industrial Council, the GMB, or whatever) the name of which would appear in brackets on the ballot paper, so there should also be at least a firm expectation that jobs such as this be filled from a pool maintained by that organisation, which would match the public salary of those thus appointed.