Jobs-for-honours scandal at Department of Business
It is good Gordon Brown is recruiting so many trade ministers from commerce but it is wrong to give them a life peerage for a few months work.
Standard Chartered’s (LON:STAN) chairman and former chief executive Mervyn Davies is the latest to accept the ermine to promote the government’s message on trade.
He replaces former CBI head Digby Jones and joins Shriti Vadera, an ex-banker from UBS, and Paul Myners, whose many City jobs included fund management.
Such Goats – members of a government of all the talents –should prove highly valuable at such a difficult time for the economy. It is especially good that a Labour government can call on a sector that normally allies itself with capitalism and Conservatism.
But there are worries in filling government from such sources – and not only because they lack the Machiavellian skills acquired by seasoned politicians. Lady Vadera’s much-misrepresented comments on “green shoots” show the personal danger of being dropped into government without a bruising political apprenticeship.
These ministers have been elected by no-one, of course. There is some worry that the main weight of the government’s trade ministers are now in the House of Lords, unable to answer to elected MPs. Peter Mandelson, the business secretary himself, can be questioned only by peers having been made a lord rather than face a by-election.
It is divide and rule to have the spokesmen in one place and the people’s inquisitors in another.
But those objections can be countered, if only by using Commons select committees to grill the unelected ministers. The greatest concern ought to be the way that permanent peerages have to be handed to these recruits simply so they can become temporary ministers.
Digby Jones accepted his peerage, did a year’s work as a minister before resigning – but will remain in the House of Lords until his death. With a general election due by 2010 it is unlikely that Davies, Myners or Vadera (nevermind Mandelson) will be ministers by next summer, yet they will remain peers.
After the so-called “cash for honours” scandal, the “jobs for honours” system needs to be addressed. Hereditary peerages gave way to life peerages; surely we now need say, five-year, peerages for these short-term political appointments. If the new lords and ladies prove their worth their peerages can always be extended even when they are no longer ministers.
