Another day, another mess. Yesterday it was the Government's turn to bugger up Parliament.

Under the guise of bringing necessary reform to the payment of MPs' allowances - which is necessary and could have been quite a short Bill - the Government has introduced a whopping ill-thought-through constitutional landmine of a Bill. It would be serious if one thought such a measure would last any time at all on the statue book.

I along with Richard Shepherd divided the House on the second reading - and these votes show whether we agree with the principle of a Bill.

The Government emphasised to the point of tedium that this measure had all Party support. While we only gained a single vote in opposition to the measure, what was devastating for the Government were their numbers. They had only 290 odd.

Given that the Liberals seem to be voting with the Government, and the Government has 349 MPs, they ought to, on that score alone, have registered 412 votes.

Of most significance however was that not a single Tory voted for the measure. If there is a change of Government at the next election this absurd measure will be quickly on the exit chute.

The measure is not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Parliamentary Committee that judges these matters has not even had a chance to sit on the Bill, which was published only last Thursday.

New categories of crimes are created for MPs and yet as the Tory spokesperson Dominic Grieve so effectively pointed out, the attempt of the Government to appear extra tough with MPs turns out to be nothing of the kind - although I'm sure that was not the intention.

Currently we have a fraud measure going through Parliament with sentences of up to 10 years. Why in this measure do we create a new offence for MPs but have only a one year maximum sentence?

I centred on the absurdity of insisting that MPs not only declare their part-time earnings - I'm all in favour of that - but having to give an account of the hours worked for these earning is not only demeaning, it is unpractical.

Start the clock . . . egg timers soon to become vital equipment for MPs to measure the time spent on second jobs

This impracticality was brought home to me just before the debate.

A banker asked to see me. He was anxious to discuss the feasibility of whether his village could collectively bid for Gas, Electricity and the other utility supplies thereby pushing down prices.

I immediately saw this was an idea relevant to the mutual of which I am a non-executive director in Liverpool - Medicash. After our meeting I wrote to the Chief Executive to see whether this might give Medicash an additional lease of life.

How do I time that activity? When was I carrying out my MP role and giving advice and at what point should I have clocked on for Medicash?

Of course I could make a return, but would it be honest and accurate? And should we have rules which discourage honesty, we have too many of them in the welfare state and we all know the consequences there.

More importantly, if moonlighting is to be dubbed an offence, why aren't the biggest offenders - Ministers - having to set out how much time they spend on their job as opposed to their duties as an MP?

I suggested we would all have to be given hourglasses so that we could give accurate estimates. But when would I start the hourglass when writing an article? When do the first thoughts come into my head?

The real aim of this measure of course is to drive out of the Commons MPs with other interests. We have no serious trade union leader, business leader, entrepreneur, musician and the only IT innovator - Adam Afriyie - has had to give up this role while he is on the opposition front bench.

This nasty little measure will change what we mean by being a representative in this country, converting it into membership of a very tightly drawn and declining political class.

To help dislodge the whole measure I will refuse to put in the hours worked for my part-time earnings, although I shall attempt to make an estimate for my website.

This will land me with a fine of up to £5,000, which I won't pay. I shall resist the bailiffs taking goods to that effect so finally I will be landed in prison.

I would prefer to spend time honourably with inmates in prison than with a Parliament cowered into submission by a Government that has given up any appearance of knowing the difference between its ear and its elbow.

No dark thoughts interrupted two stunning visits in Birkenhead on Friday. There were other visits too which gave me huge pleasure, but they illustrated problems rather than the town's successes.  

After a good meeting on what I call the Market Renewal Programme, and the safeguarding of our budget in these precarious times, I went off to Faiveley Transport, a company with a beautiful setting in Morpeth Dock and gave a hint of what the site will be like once Peel Holdings gets fully underway.

In the old days it would have been said that Faiveley Transport makes parts for railway carriages. In fact in today's market they are at the top of the technology cusp adding real value to railway carriages most of what we now come to think is the most attractive feature of rail travel. The control of temperature, information about where the train is going, vehicle door systems, as well as the braking system.

Faiveley Transport is in for two major contracts resulting from the huge public investment in modernising our railway system. The first is helping to produce a new fleet of Intercity Express trains and the second working on carriages for the much-anticipated Thameslink service. If anyone wants a lesson in how international companies have replaced in many respects the role the nation state once had in determining orders and thereby livelihoods they need go no further than Morpeth Dock and talk to workers at Faiveley. The customer service after care part - which are mega orders in themselves - is where Faiveley Tranpsort UK comes in. 

Frank lends a hand at Faiveley Transport

Most of the employees I met at Faiveley were male. Here is one company moving against the trend in Birkenhead and elsewhere where employees can still earn good family wages. That is what is so missing now in poorer areas and it is for this group that is catered for by Jill Quayle and her hugely dedicated team at Tranmere Methodist.

The national figures on NEETs - not in education, employment or training - are appalling. Birkenhead's figures are even worse and both nationally and locally the totals are higher than when Labour came to power in 1997.

Jill's team works largely with young people excluded from school. Friday was the day on which certificates were handed out for success and success there was in abundance.

95% of last year's group are now back in employment, education or training. No other project has a success rate like this and no other project takes young people more difficult to bring up to the starting point in life.

Successful Members of Tranmere Community Project

The average cost of this success is £710 per young person. It puts New Deal and every other Government programme to shame. One of the things which, please God, will happen when public expenditure cuts start to get politicians focussing on objectives will be to shift part of the smaller budget into those areas which bring most success.

What shocks me to the core about the BBC expenses story is not the sums involved. Nor is it that people earning £250,000 a year still can find time in what we hope are very busy lives to record and reclaim the minutest of expenditure.

No, the real shock comes from charging up presents that they give to their friends and acquaintances. What does poor old Bruce Forsyth now feel about that bottle of Krug Champagne?

There might have been a passing pleasure that a "friend" sent him a £100 gift.

But the basis of a gift is surely to give something of your own. The best gifts come when people make things for you or give you their time.

The gift relationship has more recently been converted into presents. But at least one felt people were giving up income they may have spent on themselves to give to us.

Now poor old Bruce realises that this act of friendship to mark his 80th birthday was really nothing of the kind. Mark Thompson didn't put his hand into his own £647,000 salary, but charged it up to us license fee payers. So, Bruce, it is a very belated Happy 80th Birthday from all of us, and not, as you might have thought, from solely the BBC's Director General.

There is another side to the expenses saga. Although it won't be popular, I hope nevertheless it will be worth telling.

When I first came into the House thirty years ago, older Members told me to claim my allowances. They had been told by the then Chief Whip in the Wilson Government that pay was being frozen, but Members were expected to claim their enhanced allowances. And so the story was handed down as though it was some part of an apostolic succession.

Over the last three decades I cannot recall a time when MPs were given their pay increase in full. I am sure there were some occasions, but most governments have been too feeble to implement recommendations from the top salaries review body. No trade union would have put up with this behaviour. Nor would any professional body such as teachers or doctors.

Instead of implementing the recommendations in full, the Whips would go about spreading the weasel words about claiming the allowances in place of a full pay increase.

So that is the culture I came into and which has been massively strengthened over the years. All too many MPs have come forward once they were exposed by the Daily Telegraph and said their claims were within the rules or worse still blamed modestly paid staff in the Fees Office.

Only the exceptional MP has replied that they were told to claim the allowances and that is what they had done. My expenses were put up on my website as soon as possible and I was the first MP to publish them and they have since been published again by the House of Commons.

Now we are into the next round of beating up MPs and humiliating them. The House passed a resolution that all our outside earnings should be published. And mine will be published here when they are sent to the authorities.

That has not stopped the Sunday Telegraph trying to jump the gun. They have sent a beguiling email asking us within a day to provide not only details of the earnings but how long we take in earning these sums.

Their enquiry to me and my reply are posted below. I am reluctant to disclose how long it takes me to write articles as I fear for the jobs of highly paid journalists once editors see how quickly copy can be put together.

But there is a bigger issue at stake. I think it is good that MPs have outside interests and earnings. It is crucially important that none of the earnings are ever used to influence votes here in the Commons. But the process of Government - making laws which affect real people's lives - is enhanced by having real people with a real spread of interests here in the House of Commons.

During my time here I have seen a big change in who becomes an MP. And the numbers who had lives before politics has gone down, and the numbers who have only had a political career, being researchers, or MP's assistants, or working by lobbying government, have significantly increased.

The result is a poorer House of Commons. I believe we should move to a system where those MPs without substantial outside earnings gain one rate of pay. There should be another option for those MPs who have substantial earnings outside the Commons.

I do not think it necessary to list what those earnings are. I think it is none of my business or the public's business.

We have no serious trade unionists in the House. There is an almost total lack of big businessmen, there are few entrepreneurs, there is no-one representing the big interests in the country - like women's organisations, sports clubs, centres of musical excellence, IT innovation and I could go on.

Why should any of these people ever think of coming in to the House of Commons, which is in danger of becoming so frightened of the media, asked to provide information you would never ask of your best friend and would be embarrassed to learn it of your neighbour?

I shall as resolutely as possible oppose moves that come to the Commons that are meant largely to acquiesce to unjustified media campaigns against politicians. The campaign against MP's earnings will make the House of Commons poorer, and better government, even more difficult to achieve.

The standard of MPs and governance will not increase as a result of these campaigns. That will come from MPs having the courage to take power back from the Government, to control our own timetable so that every measure opposed by the Government that affects our constituents' lives can be properly considered before being passed into law.

We won't raise our own moral by endlessly succumbing to the latest media hunting party. It will come when the public see at last that we are behaving as MPs traditionally have done down the centuries and that is to hold the Government to account.

Sunday Telegraph Enquiry - (to protect sensitive information about Sunday Telegraph employees, the following has been redacted).  

From: FIELD, Frank 

Sent: 25 June 2009 14:32
To:
Subject: RE: MP's second jobs survey - Sunday Telegraph

Dear ,

Thanks for your e-mail. In the spirit of the new rules which you cite, I will happily send you my return after I have sent it to the Registrar. My worry however is filling in the amount of time it takes me to write articles. For I fear that once the management of the Telegraph sees how quickly good copy can be purchased at such reasonable sums more jobs at the Telegraph may be at stake.

With best wishes,

Frank Field

From: [mailto:]
Sent: 24 June 2009 14:42
To: FIELD, Frank
Subject: MP's second jobs survey - Sunday Telegraph

Dear Frank Field

We are conducting a survey on MPs' second jobs for this weekend's Sunday Telegraph, ahead of the introduction of new rules due to come into effect on July 1.

According to the Register of Members' Interests, you have listed the following remunerated employment, office, profession or directorships:

Directorship: Medicash Health Benefits Ltd.

Regular column for PensionsWeek, a publication owned by Pearson. (Up to £5,000)

Occasional articles for:

Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph. (Up to £5,000)

Times and Sunday Times. (Up to £5,000)

Mail and Mail on Sunday. (Up to £5,000)

Guardian and Observer. (Up to £5,000)

The Spectator. (Up to £5,000)

The Independent. (Up to £5,000)

Occasional appearances on BBC Radio 4 . (Up to £5,000)

In the spirit of the new rules, could you please tell us:

1 a) the precise amount you earned in the 2008-09 financial year from each of the above interests?

b.) the nature of the work carried out in return for that payment?

c.) the number of hours worked during the period to which the payment relates?

d.) the name and address of the person, organisation or company making the payment - except where it would be "contrary to any legal or established professional duty of privacy or confidentiality"? If you are withholding details under this exemption, please can you state the reason why?

2. a.) Could you also please tell us, from July 1, what outside remunerated employment will you continue to undertake? - if same as above, please state.

b.) what precise amount you expect to earn from each of these interests in the 2009-10 financial year?

c.) the nature of the work carried out in return for the payment?

d.) the number of hours you plan to work?

e.) the name and address of the person, organisation or company making the payment - except where it would be "contrary to any legal or established professional duty of privacy or confidentiality". If you are withholding details under this exemption, please can you state the reason why.

We would be most grateful if you could reply to this message by lunchtime on Thursday June 25th. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call on the numbers below.

Yours sincerely,

and ,

The Sunday Telegraph

020 7, 0797 or 0779

Congratulations to John Bercow on his election as Speaker. It is a great office to hold at any time. It is now a crucial one in helping to salvage the good name that should be associated with politics.

Two things trouble me, however. The new Speaker made much about how honourable the vast majority of Members of Parliament are. That is not how the public sees us, I'm afraid.

In one sense that doesn't matter too much. The allowance system is to be reformed by the Kelly Commission. Our past expenses are also to be subjected to an audit by a new independent body which will cost the taxpayer another £600,000 each year. They will presumably treat the Speaker equally with the rest of us. What will they make of flipping a main home? And where does it leave the standing of those Members who have already repaid money back to the Fees Office.

More troubling was the Speaker's acceptance speech. Prime Ministers and Speakers are never more powerful than at the point of election. Any reforming Speaker is going to face huge resistance here in the Commons.

That is why I was disappointed that the acceptance speech was not mainly devoted to outlining the changes the Speaker intended to bring in immediately.

Shouldn't notice have been given that his Speakership depended on establishing a Business Committee of the House which had total control over how it spends its time? No other reforms come near to touching this one for importance.

Shouldn't the Speaker have let it be known, even in the gentlest tones, that he had nailed his Speakership to this reform? Likewise wasn't this an opportunity to say that the appointment of the Grand Committee's Chair on Thursday ought be selected by secret ballot, and that he would receive nominations on the Committee's membership directly from Members. He could then pass on his recommendation on the Committee's membership to the Committee of Selection.

What was wonderful about yesterday's proceedings was that the Speaker will thoroughly enjoy his role, this is an attribute not to be under valued. We need somebody who combines the serious intent of a reformer with a character that believes no matter how difficult the decisions that now face us, we should make them with good humour and believing the best in our opponents' motives.

The Labour leadership question is at the moment settled. The Labour side is beginning to recharge its political batteries. One would expect by this weekend for the focus to return to the Speakership race.

This Speakership will differ from others in that the holder of this office will need to help rebuild trust amongst voters in the parliamentary system. The Speaker therefore needs to have a reach into the world outside parliament. But a Speaker must also, at the same time, command support amongst all the parties here at Westminster, including their own.

While I have received a large amount of support from the public, the lack of support from colleagues in my own party is at the moment a significant weakness. Unless that support is forthcoming I will not be a candidate in the election, though it may be that the Labour block may begin to break up over the next week.

It is important that our election of Speaker is seen to be one that is not driven by party advantage. If that is how the public perceives it to be then the next Speaker will be broken-backed when it comes to helping rebuild the trust in our Parliamentary system.

Because I believe the next Speaker has to be different from other recent Speakers, and that the Speakership could play a pivotal role in negotiating a new contract between the House and the government, and the House and the electorate, I will continue to put up material on my website on how I would like the new Speakership to take shape.

Productivity in the public sector fell by well over three percentage points between 1997 and 2007. This finding, published by the Office of National Statistics is the starting point of the new politics that will dominate the next ten to fifteen years.

Most politicians are still singing from the same old hymn sheet which is now irrelevant. The theme music has been an ever expanding public budget.

It was obvious this time last year that Britain faced a major budgetary crisis. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research estimate that by 2012 public expenditure even after taking into account the changes the Government have announced for after the election will come in at 48% of GDP. By then the Government estimates the economy will be again booming, but the tax revenue from this booming economy will come in at 'only' 38% of GDP.

How are the public accounts to be balanced? That is the big central question which needs to come centre stage if the debt market is to be convinced that Britain is worth lending to.

The ONS report is the most useful of pointers to the politics of the new era. Not only has the central assumption of social democracy - that increasing gains can come from increasing public expenditure - been tested to the point of destruction, but the new politics needs to pick up the debate from this very point.

Each of the major public budgets must be set the task of winning those non-existent productivity gains that should have been forthcoming as undreamt of sums money were allowed to slosh around the public sector. New skills will be required for the new politics.

The key people that have to be promoted in the public sector are those whose eyes are firmly on the new agenda of delivering more for less. Job security can only come if public sector workers embrace change to deliver those productivity gains which have failed to materialise since 1997.

Politicians too will need new skills. Move one is to tear up the old hymn sheets. Move two is to write the new music. The idea that one is a good Minister because one successfully defends ones budget against attack has to become old hat.

Ministers should only be promoted because they start delivering more services with a smaller budget.

Labour supporters claiming that the European results were not a catastrophe for the party can only do so by inventing a new meaning for the word catastrophe. Whether one looks at them on a national, regional or local level the picture is pitiful.

The results reflect the collapse of support for the Government in the country. They also ring a clear verdict on the EU.

Take the Wirral results, which cover four Labour Westminster constituencies. The Tories romped home with almost 21,000 votes. Labour was in a poor second place with 16,000.

In Wirral there is considerable resentment against the current EU. It may be that all of these natural voters deserted their natural party to support one of the clearer anti-European tickets, but I doubt it.

Even so the two parties standing in the election who hold the strongest views against our present relationship with Europe far out stretched the Labour vote, and almost toppled the Tory vote.

The BNP came in with 4,666 votes and UKIP's vote totalled more than 13,000.

Don't let anyone kid themselves that this was an unimportant election where voters felt they could make a clear protest vote. Unless something changes significantly on a national level these results would be reproduced at a general election.

Labour cannot win with the present Prime Minister. I was one of the seven who would not support his coronation after Tony Blair was shoehorned out of Number 10. But even I didn't think a Brown administration would be as inept as this one.

The Brownites are attempting to terrorise Labour MPs into inaction. If they succeed then we deserve our fate.

It is simply absurd to argue, as does No. 10, that the next leader must call an immediate general election. A new leader, when being invited by the Queen to form a government, should inform the Monarch that he or she intends to return in April of next year to call for a General Election on May 6.

The new Prime Minister would make that a part of a message brought back from the Palace.

Similarly, the failure to deal with immigration and Europe is poisoning our political system. I have set out in the Balanced Migration campaign how we should counter positively the BNP. Similarly, we need to cut loose European politics from our domestic politics. Voters have no party to represent their worries on this score, only the BNP with their evil interests.