In this blog, Nick Dickinson argues that Stella Creasy’s call for better parental leave rights for MPs is a vital step. But a better system can’t be achieved by IPSA alone, and asking it to do so may undermine the aim of a more representative Parliament in the long run.

The Labour MP Stella Creasy has written to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), the body that regulates MPs’ pay and expenses, after the authority denied a request to fund the appointment of a ‘locum MP’ to provide full maternity cover. While Creasy has argued that IPSA must “follow the law on maternity cover” in this respect, the regulator has responded, through its chief executive Ian Todd, that the “concept of a locum… is misconceived in relation to an MP” as a matter of constitutional principle.

In the context of the systematic underrepresentation of women in British politics, IPSA’s position seems hard to justify – appearing to put constitutional niceties ahead of gender equity. Parliament has a long history of direct and indirect discrimination against women MPs, with the fight for better parental rights only the latest in a long list of fights to make Parliament more equitable. IPSA’s position is also undermined on this occasion by having provided funding for a locum position for Creasy previously in 2019, albeit only after similar pressure being applied.

Yet the clear and pressing need to address parental leave for MPs cannot fall to IPSA alone. Independent bodies of various kinds are common in UK. However, IPSA is unique in exercising functions which so directly affect core institutions of British democracy – and which were held until comparatively recently to be the sole prerogative of a democratic sovereign Parliament. For the same reason, its central tasks are sharply delimited: to determine MPs pay and pension contributions and to regulate and administer the system of expenses (or ‘business costs’, as the regulator now calls them).

Throughout its existence, IPSA has been the subject of a variety of attacks by MPs on its decisions. While this was initially directed at the exercise of its core tasks, in particular the regulation of expenses, over time controversies have shifted towards what IPSA is not doing rather than what it is. This has included, among other things, criticism in support of a greater HR role for MPs staff, for whom IPSA provides resources and template contracts, in the context of bullying and harassment scandals in the Commons.

These critiques all have individual merit, but taken together they amount to a form of mission creep with the potential to backfire badly. As scholarship on agencies such as IPSA has shown, their independence is assured through the intensive management of reputation. Contrary to the expectations of public choice theorists, however, this is achieved not through ‘empire building’ and taking on a broader role but by a ruthless focus on narrow core competencies. At a time where some of IPSA’s have once again become controversial this lesson is all the more important.

Moreover, the effective exercise of IPSA’s pay setting competency itself has substantive consequences for gender parity in parliament. Maintaining an adequate level of pay has been shown improve legislator quality by overcoming barriers faced by women in entering legislative bodies. Kotakorpi and Poutvaara (2011), for example, take advantage of a one-off pay reform of Finnish legislators to show that increased remuneration led to increases in levels of higher education among candidates and office holders, but only among women. Likewise, Atkinson, Rogers and Olfert (2016) also find a positive effect of increasing legislators’ compensation on the proportion of highly educated women in the Canadian parliament by increasing the pool of candidates.

Instead, Parliament should take responsibility for the constitutional reforms required for a real solution to the problem. One obvious device would be the use of ‘alternates’ – or substitute candidates elected alongside the primary candidate in each constituency. If the candidate wins office but is unable is unable to serve for any reason (illness, death, extended travel, or, as in this case, parental leave), then the alternate takes their place fulfilling the full functions of the office holder. Alternate positions are widely used in Latin America and can be found in systems around the globe.

Routine use of alternates may also come with other benefits in terms of broadening descriptive representation. By increasing the pool of candidates for office, parties may gain more leverage to strategically nominate members of underrepresented groups to alternate positions. A system of alternates would also allow MPs to take leave for other reasons, for example mental health. This has been highlighted most recently by Labour MP Nadia Whittome’s decision to take time off to recover from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But the ability of more MPs to regularly take such breaks may become increasingly important in light of the psychological pressures of modern politics. Again, this impact is very likely to be gendered issue given the broader unequal burden of mental health in the population as a whole.

In sum, Stella Creasy’s call for better parental leave rights for MPs is a vital step towards a more equitable politics. But a better system can’t be achieved by IPSA alone. Moreover, asking it to do so may undermine the aim of a more representative and democratic Parliament in the long run.

Dr Nicholas Dickinson is Bingham Early Career Fellow in Constitutional Studies at Balliol College, Oxford.

Marc Geddes explores fresh drama in the theatre of Westminster. In this blog, he discusses Dominic Cummings’ recent select committee appearance and considers the insight it can offer into the effectiveness of select committees.

Asked if the prime minister, Boris Johnson, is a fit and proper person to get us through the COVID-19 pandemic, the former chief advisor to the prime minister, Dominic Cummings, replied: ‘No’. This damning verdict was given as part of evidence to the joint Science and Technology/Health and Social Care committee inquiry into lessons to be learned from COVID-19. The appearance was high-profile: newspaper articles speculated at length about the session in advance, it was discussed that morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, the session was trending on Twitter, and it remained headline news throughout the day and into the next. To use the analogy of theatre: it was a front stage political drama. It raises a significant number of questions about the government’s handling of COVID-19. But what does it tell us about select committees? I think there are three interesting issues.

A first issue is about how effectively select committees are able to develop detailed questioning. It was interesting to note how the session played out largely in a non-partisan way (with some exceptions). But more than that, the session showed us the importance of sustained and effective questioning. Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt – chairs of their respective committees – took up the first hour to question Cummings before other committee members had an opportunity to ask questions. The ability to follow a line of inquiry was crucial to following up on key claims and asking for concrete evidence of Cummings’ allegations through written documents. The chairs were also unafraid to ask follow-up questions when committee members failed to do so (e.g. when Cummings first accused Hancock of lying to the Cabinet, the committee member expressed shock but moved on to another subject). Cummings was held to account, but the session raises questions about the wider questioning skill of committee members. Perhaps there are structural issues at play: with fewer questions, members need to ask more direct and arguably more adversarial questions; knowing you have 30 minutes instead of ten makes a big difference.

While Clark and Hunt, in particular, have come out looking well, there is also a bigger question to be answered about what the joint committee gained from the session. The hearing was wide-ranging (and perhaps unnecessarily long). Cummings made a significant number of eyebrow-raising claims. His answers were long and rich in detail, sometimes backed up by pictures, graphs and text messages. The hearing was an exercise in explanatory accountability: understanding what happened, in detail. It helps paint a picture of how Number 10 operates, which – given the gravity of the decisions – is hugely important. But it was also a picture painted according to one former advisor that has fallen out with, and is disliked by, many in government. His account was therefore partial, and full of contradictions. He was reflective about things he wanted to talk about, but evasive when it came to things he did not want to discuss. The joint committee had a big task in testing the former advisor’s claims, with some (though not complete) success. The committee was good at pushing for evidence and information, but Cummings was still able to talk generally about ‘groupthink’ and system failure without always going into specifics. A second issue that this hearing raises, then, is how individual testimonies fit into the wider picture, and also how effectively the committee gathered accurate information.

A third issue concerns the witness. I have already implied that there is some doubt surrounding the truthfulness of Cummings’ account. Let us not forget that Cummings’ appearance took place despite him being found in contempt of Parliament for refusing to appear in front of a different select committee in 2019. This should raise questions about his motivations for attending in this instance. An underlying issue – as discussed in this recent Constitution Society blog – is the possibly complex relationship between committees, witnesses and contempt, which has been the subject of a number of parliamentary inquiries over the years (as also recently discussed by Paul Evans for the Hansard Society). In any case, a wider issue for Parliament to consider is the truthfulness and credibility of the account of somebody who has previously been found in contempt of Parliament. It is not clear, in the end, how much credibility we should give to Cummings’ evidence. This, in turn, raises the thornier question of whether it was in the committee’s interest to hear from Cummings directly in this way – something that only time will tell.

All three issues return us to a fundamental, existential question: what’s it all for? What is, ultimately, the purpose of this hearing, this inquiry, and scrutiny by select committees? Evidence sessions are an incredibly important part of the scrutiny process. It is through them that committees are able to explore key policy and political issues, gain information about what happened, and to evaluate if things were done as effectively as they could have been. This doesn’t happen through one single hearing, but through multiple different sites across Parliament: along the committee corridor and in hearings, through bilateral meetings, through written communications, through oral and written questions across the Commons and Lords, and much else besides. Through this, Parliament is able to build webs of scrutiny that can be significant for strong accountability – provided that chairs and members are able to ask effective questions in order to establish the truth.

Marc Geddes is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh. He is author of Dramas at Westminster: Select committees and the quest for accountability, which won the Mackenzie Prize for Best Book Published in Political Science in 2021.

This blog has been kindly shared with us by The Constitution Society. Please find the original post on their blog series here

Wang Leung Ting writes: A year has passed since the adoption of hybrid proceeding (HP) by Parliament. HP was intended to mitigate the problems that come with the pandemic and lockdown, most important of which is to maintain the representativeness of the House by facilitating participation from vulnerable members, such as aged MPs, who need to be shielded to protect their health, as well as female MPs, who are more likely to be burdened by increase familial and caring responsibilities during the lockdown. It is perhaps time to take stock on HP’s efficacy see if it has the intended effect in facilitating aged and female MPs’ participation in parliamentary proceedings.

But before doing so, we need to address a methodological obstacle: the lack of an observable counterfactual to act as a baseline of comparison. To put it differently, it is impossible to tell how MPs would have behaved should the impact of the pandemic was not mitigated by HP. Without knowing that, we cannot determine whether HP has indeed changed MPs’ behaviour.

However, the scope of HP has gone through a couple of changes in the past year as shown in Table 1. During the height of the first wave of the pandemic (P1), HP applied to both substantive (i.e. debate on legislation) and scrutiny (i.e. Questions to ministers) business. This was narrowed during last summer and autumn (P2), when HP was limited to scrutiny business only. It was not until the end of December(P3), with the onset of the second wave of infection, that the arrangement under P1 was restored.  

We can therefore exploit these expansions and contraction of the scope of HP to determine its impact on MPs behaviour: If HP does facilitate the participation of aged and female MPs, we should observe these two groups of MPs being more active during P1 and P3, when the application of HP was more expansive, in comparison to the more restrictive P2.

Let’s begin by looking at MPs participation at the aggregate level. The following graph shows the total number of words spoken by all backbench male (blue) and female (red) MPs each week from the beginning of this parliament until 18th Mar 2021 as recorded in the Hansard. We can see that there is a dramatic drop in the number of words spoken during P1 for male MPs whilst the negative impact for female MPs is much less apparent.

What about older MPs? Graph 2 shows the result of the same analysis as the first but this time between MPs who are over the age of 65 at the beginning of the pandemic (Green) and those who aren’t. We can see that there wasn’t much change for aged MPs participation throughout 2020 except a very modest increase in the number of words spoken by MPs above the age of 65 with the onset of P3.

Graph 3 below shows the number of words spoken by female and aged MPs as the proportion of all words spoken in each week. For female MPs, despite some fluctuation, their participation remains quite steady except for the slight increase in P3 in comparison to the end of P2. As for MPs over 65 years of age, again there is no dramatic shift except for some modest increase toward the end of P2, which continued under P3.

To further explore the effect of HP on MPs participation at the individual level, I have fitted two Time-series Poisson regression models on the number of words spoken by each backbench MP in any weeks throughout the study period. The baseline of comparison in both models is P2, as suggested in the aforementioned hypothesis. The model includes MP fixed effects, which confine the analysis to variation of participation within an MP across weeks. It also contains week fixed effects, which control for time-varying factors that may affect MPs participation, most important of which is varying number of sitting days and the length of proceeding between weeks.

Table 2 shows the result of the two models. Model 1 considers P1 and P3 separately. The results confirmed some of the aforementioned observations. For male MPs, there is a clear drop in participation during P1. In comparison to P2, the weekly number of words spoken by a male MP drop by about 60% whilst the drop among female MPs is only around 50%. Moreover, this distinction between male and female MPs in P1 is statistically significant. A similar effect is also observed in P3 although the gender distinction is no longer statistically significant. Model 2 considers P1 and P3 together as the scope of HP under both phrases are roughly the same. Again, it shows that there is a statistically significant and gendered distinction in the impact of the expanded scope of HP under P1 and P3.

What about aged MPs? Although HP did not bring many benefits for them in P1, but they did catch up eventually during P3. On average, aged MPs spoke 35% more each week during P3 than they did in P2. Moreover, there is an interaction between age and gender as this effect is particularly strong among older female MPs.

These results suggest is that HP does facilitate female and aged MPs’ participation in parliamentary proceedings. As the scope of HP increase in P1 and P3, so did the number of words spoken by female MPs. Although the effect is most apparent during Phrase 1 when it was driven by the fact that the impact of the first wave of the pandemic is less negative for female MPs in comparison to male MPs. As for older MPs, the benefit of HP is not apparent until Phrase 3. This suggests that there is perhaps a steeper learning curve for older MPs to adopt the use of technology. Once they are acquainted with the new arrangement, HP does indeed increase aged MPs’ participation as well.

A limitation of this study is that it focuses entirely on what happened in the (virtual) chamber. What it cannot take into account is the possibility that the benefit of HP could also lie beyond the chamber, such as allowing MPs to do more in their constituency or for their family without the usual trade-off with traveling to Westminster to participate in parliamentary proceedings.

As the country seems to be turning the corner with the pandemic, there has been an ongoing discussion, both in and out of Westminster, on what roles, if any, should HP play in Parliament post-COVID. Results in this post have demonstrated that HP does have a positive impact on the participation of MPs belonging to underrepresented and vulnerable groups, there is therefore a case in favour of maintaining some form of HP in parliamentary proceedings in the long run.

Wang Leung Ting is a Fellow in the Department of Government at LSE.