Tag Archives: members of parliament

Liberal Democrats who are frustrated at the modest media impact of our 72 MPs in the first month since their triumphant election should remember how long it takes to recruit new staff, discover the intricacies of parliamentary life and the surrounding media, put their diverse skills to effective use, and decide which specific issues they are going to make their own. In the last Parliament our 11 MPs had to cover the full range of issues thrown at them, with a skeleton supporting staff, with each by-election winner making a welcome difference to the load. When our Lords group met together with our new MPs, Ed Davey generously thanked us for the policy support and advice we had provided (with our larger numbers, though very limited staff) in combatting Tory legislation in the past 3 Parliaments. A much larger Commons Party, with significantly-increased staff both in MPs’ office and attached to the Whips’ Office, will transform our capabilities.

Few of us will yet have discovered the wealth of experience and expertise our new MPs bring to their new, fulltime, responsibilities (I’m still discovering constituencies that I didn’t realise we’d won…). Clearing some papers today, I discovered a memo on the government’s data strategy that Tim Clement Jones and I had written four years ago with a Liberal Democrat expert called David Chadwick – and realised that I’ve already met our new MP for Brecon and Radnor, and that he’s an established expert in a delicate field of public policy. A rapid look through our MPs’ short biographies shows a wealth of local Council experience, with all that provides for grappling with issues of social care, public services, environment and housing. I see that Gideon Amos, our Taunton MP, is also an architect and town planner by profession.