Shaun Ley has written a good piece in the latest BBC World at One newsletter, which I think deserves wider circulation:

The image has stayed with me ever since the evening when I sat in the Strangers Bar in the House of Commons. It’s small and undistinguished, with a narrow bar and pretty unimaginative décor. The grander spaces are saved for Members of Parliament, not least the terrace, overlooking the Thames, which is just next door to this bar. Strangers is one of the few places where non-MPs can go for a drink, provided of course that an MP is buying.

On this particular evening, whilst MPs hung around waiting to vote, I’d squeezed in to the crowded bar to share a pint with a minister, the sort of routine exchange between journalist and politician which is the currency of Westminster life (and incidentally the source of many of the stories you’ll read in your newspaper the following morning).

It must be around ten years ago now, but the memory is still vivid. A cry erupted from the bar, where an MP was sitting drinking with her colleagues. She rose unsteadily to her feet, shouted for her handbag,  then,  spotting it at the other end of the room, proceeded to stagger towards it via a route which was a long way from being a straight line. Indeed, she was unable to stand upright, instead veering in crab-like movements towards her goal.

For me, it was my first direct encounter with the culture of excess drinking for which Westminster was once a by-word. It was at once embarrassing and distressing. The memory came again to mind when I read the obituaries this week for Fiona Jones. Part of the Labour landslide of 1997, she succumbed to drink to help her cope with both the stress of Parliamentary life and a court case over election expenses, which briefly led to her  suspension, before she was reinstated when her conviction was overturned on appeal. The  people of Newark, though, ended her career in the Commons after just four years. Wife and mother of two teenage sons, she was dead of liver failure at just 49.

I should say that the incident I witnessed in the Strangers Bar that night did not involve Miss Jones. But the story her husband told to the News of the World would seem familiar to the families of those who struggle with this disease, whether or not they’re in politics.

Chris Jones said his wife drank little before she first became an MP. But the pressure from the court case and the culture at Westminster were a deadly combination. “Soon she’d gone from the occasional glass of wine to much heavier drinking. At home she drank vodka to hide the smell from the children but down there she drank whisky because nobody cared if she drank.”

It’s that last phrase which is the most damning indictment of Parliamentary life. “Nobody cared”. For Fiona Jones read any number of other MPs who found consolation in the bottom of a glass for frustrated ambition, loneliness, and the sheer boredom of the political routine.

Take the example of Iain Mills, a quiet and unassuming Conservative backbencher from the Midlands. Mr Mills was an MP for 18 years. But he died as he’d lived in Westminster, alone.

In fact, his body lay undisturbed in his flat in Dolphin Square for two days. He was only found because a Government Whip wanted to know why he hadn’t shown for an important vote.

Mr Mills did not frequent the bars or restaurants, he was not clubbable, nor did he have close friends. When his body was found, in January 1997, he was lying on his bed, face down, surrounded by gin bottles. The inquest was told that the amount of alcohol in his blood would have put him five times over the drink driving limit.

The Whips Office is the nearest thing MPs have to a support service. Whips have a reputation as the hard men and women of politics. The good ones, though, spend as much time nurturing their flock as they do disciplining it.

After the inquest, Derek Conway, Mr Mills’ whip, said the Whips Office knew he was drinking, although they had no idea how much. “We were encouraging Iain to try and get a grip on the things that were of concern to him”, Mr Conway explained.

The heavy-drinking culture of the most exclusive club in London was one of the things the new generation of Labour MPs elected in 1997 hoped to change. In part, they succeeded. The altered working hours mean there are fewer late night votes, and fewer evenings spent in the Commons. The demographic has also changed across all the parties, with a greater number of fathers and mothers keen to get home in time to read the kids a bedtime story.

Yet these changes may not be permanent. If the next election results in a “hung” Parliament, or a Government with a wafer-thin majority, we could be back to late night sittings, and the fear of opposition ambushes which leads the Whips to keep MPs hanging around ready for a snap division. It’s when they can’t leave the building that MPs start to drift towards the bars, simply to kill time.

But as the obituaries of Iain Mills and Fiona Jones demonstrate, it may not just be time they’re killing.

Shaun