to muse about her own experience. Imogen Black, twenty nine, degree in Ecology, barmaid and political virgin. MP. Apart from uni she’d spent her whole life in Bungay, a pleasant, slightly off-beat market town in the Waveney valley. Staying there had not entirely been a matter of choice. It seemed to her that at the very minute she’d walked off, degree in hand, from the presentation the door marked ‘jobs’ had been shut tight. It had been 2018. She remembered her teenage years mainly as a good time spent with good friends in a good place. She had a very vague memory of the Olympics, and of the politics of the time, but had a very clear memory of sitting at the breakfast table as a young child listening to her parents denouncing that day’s act of corruption, now exposed on Radio Four. Imogen looked around her at the panelled-wall room, of a type so familiar from television, and at her fellow members, looking variously nervous or supremely concentrated on the speaker.
The flaw in their armour was the on-line petition. The entitlement for anyone to add their name to a petition and to have that petition considered by the house subject to a minimum number of ‘signatures’ effectively provided a fast track to democracy for the voter. Even though the government of the day was not required to enact any legislative change demanded in a petition, merely to consider it, and as often happened was perfectly entitled to totally ignore it, there was an inevitability about the maths.
After the 2012 Olympics there were a number of serious problems in the country. We were still involved in a war costing us lives and treasure. The economy was on its uppers, with no clear policies coming from government that were going to make a difference any time soon. Most serious of all there was ever greater inequality in society. Those that had, continued to have even more. Those that had not, saw their pockets being emptied with ever greater costs and their route to a better life blocked with their structural and social immobility.
The first showdown came with the Public Employees Remuneration petition. The petitioner, a small charity in the Midlands, demanded that no public employee receive more than ten times the salary of the lowest paid in the organisation that he or she represented. The author managed to really hit the spot and, unusually, caught the ear of the media. There had been a long-standing discussion about such a policy previously, but below the popular radar. With the petition the question went viral and within days more than a million had signed the petition. By the closing date more than three million had signed up. Depending on your point of view, by happy or unhappy coincidence, a large part of the published media was, at that moment, pretty dissatisfied with the government of the day and would have done anything to make its life uncomfortable. The petition was manna from heaven.
Although the ten times factor was probably fairly random it was quite a lucky number for the petitioners. It just so happened that, at the time, the annual salary of an MP was about sixty five thousand pounds. The popular interpretation of the petition made it very unlikely that their salaries would be effected. On the other hand, by showing their individual support for the petition they would be able to demonstrate solidarity with their electorate.
It was also a relatively apolitical subject, crossing party boundaries. Effectively the petition offered a great opportunity for the people, the press and the backbench politicians to give the political elite a hard time.
The government accepted the virtual petition without much grace and promised to consider the matter. When, some months later, it became clear that nothing was going to happen voluntarily the press started to roll out its armoury of stories relating to the pay of public employees. The endless stories of the pigs in their troughs were hard to bear and impossible to refute and, eventually, the government gave in and tabled a discussion in the house. The paper put to the house, by a liberal democrat, backed by his party, developed on the petition while remaining true to its core theme. It offered some short term safeguards and demanded that contracts be allowed to run their course but insisted on a gradual transition to the ten times rule, as it became known.
At that time the majority conservative party was only able to govern as part of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Relations were not very good between the two and there was never any doubt that the Liberal Democrat vote would be for the bill, much against the wishes of the Conservative elite.
The bill passed on to the House of Lords, in those days a second unelected chamber with the ability to change and delay final legislation, if not to stop enactment completely. In large part representing the establishment, The Lords didn’t like the bill one little bit. The bill languished with the Lords before being sent back to the Commons almost unrecognisable from the original. By this time so many deals had been done within the Commons that it was no longer certain that the original bill would have passed, and the house voted into law a compromise that excluded whole sections of the public service and changed the ratio substantially, as well as extending the timetable for enactment.
The next petition- actually the same petition re-presented- carried eight million signatures.
In those days the electorate was some forty six million. Of these about sixty five percent would vote in a general election. Far fewer for local elections. So, what the government was now faced with was a significant public outcry that was only going to get greater if it was ignored.
Even worse, the deals that had been done to secure the earlier vote had started to unravel and become known. The reason for a surprising rash of MP inspired local improvements, honours and elevations was suddenly evident. The many MPs whose support for the original bill had faded into disinterest were now the subject of intense press scrutiny. A democracy only recently risen from an earlier expenses scandal was now the subject of an even greater ridicule.
Things happened very quickly after this. A number of new factors arose, not least the threat by nearly all trade unions to withdraw funding from the Labour party and the appearance of another petition demanding the abolition of the House of Lords. The original petition was allowed back for re-consideration and, despite a last ditch defence of the status-quo received majority support and was sent, once again, to the House of Lords. The Lords knew better than to go against a country so inflamed by what seemed a never-ending abuse of their intelligence.
So it came to pass that, within a very few months the ten-times rule began to have an effect. Although the legislation allowed contracts to run their course nearly all were for one or two years and those yearly contracts quickly came round for renewal. Predictably, the rule was open to a number of interpretations. The executives that sat on remuneration committees were, in many cases, themselves effected by the rule and set about engineering their own salvation.
Henry Halliday, sitting at the back of the room, remembered very well listening to the same speech two years before, when he had arrived as a rooky, just like the new representatives sitting here today. They seemed to be a promising lot, from what he could see. Presently in-between relationships he could not help but consider his new charges in a slightly less than political light and had quickly decided that the out-and-out stunners were Amelia Ste. Beuve, sadly already married according to his notes, and Imogen Black. Close behind was Leonie Chichester and, bringing up the field Julie Smyth and Caroline Goubault. Caroline was certainly attractive on some levels, but seemed to have a sour face somehow. ’Oh well, one could always dream.’
‘Health Trusts, Civil Service mandarins and Council executives suddenly decided that they should not be employing lowly paid cleaners, clerical assistants and road sweepers, to name but a few, on their own books. Much better to farm all this work out to a private contractor. Miraculously, overnight almost, nearly everyone was able to demonstrate how his or her salary was no more
