Inside intel: parliamentary wisdom for new MPs
7 min read
From acing your maiden speech to handling mountains of mail, seasoned MPs share their tips with Chaminda Jayanetti
“So daunting. I’d never seen so much gold.” Gen Kitchen was only elected as Labour MP for Wellingborough in a by-election in February, but she’s already more experienced than almost half the MPs in Parliament thanks to this month’s transformational general election. Her first day in the House of Commons is still fresh in the memory. “The Speaker’s Chamber is just incredible.”
If Kitchen – who was 28 at the time – was overawed by her first contact with the Palace of Westminster, she’s in good company. Richard – now Lord – Harrington was 52 upon his election as Conservative MP for Watford in 2010. He not only had a successful business career behind him, but was also a Tory Party treasurer.
“It is quite an intimidating experience when you first walk in, akin to the first day of primary school,” he recalls. “It's an institution that makes you nervous if you’re not familiar with it.”
And that goes for plenty of today’s MPs. More than 300 of Britain’s 650 MPs were elected to the Commons for the first time this month.
When Laura Smith first put herself forward as Labour candidate for Crewe and Nantwich at the 2017 snap election, she didn’t think she could win – a working-class primary school teacher, her aim was to give sitting MP and education minister Edward Timpson a “bloody nose” over school funding cuts.
Instead, amid 2017’s Corbyn surge, she won by 48 votes.
“To say that I wasn't prepared is probably an understatement. I’d never been to Parliament. I had only been to London a handful of times,” she says, remembering her concern that everybody in the Commons, regardless of their political views, would be smarter than her.
Despite being a confident public speaker, she felt disappointed by her maiden Commons speech. Beset by nerves, she fluffed her first line and remembers her knees knocking with tension. But her dad told her to remember her values and to represent working-class women and her constituents.
“I realised that with my own life experience, and the things that have happened to me, nobody on those benches had more of a right than me to be there.”
Recalling her own maiden speech, Kitchen adds: “I think we got a bit of guidance. I looked over what speeches had been given by both Labour and Conservative MPs before me. I wanted to do a bit of my own stuff.”
Kitchen recommends new MPs namecheck local businesses and charities. “It’s such a good way of saying thank you to all of your supporters,” she says. “I think I namechecked about nine charities and nine businesses, and then we got all the Hansards and stuff ready to send out.
“[The owners of] a little tea shop that I namechecked were absolutely thrilled – they were watching the speech as I gave it.”
Kitchen has also noticed a modern trend in her short time in the Commons – MPs directing their thoughts towards social media. “I know some male [Labour] MPs that have lots of different ties in their locker, so if they’ve got three or four questions or are intending to segue, they just nip out, change their tie, come back in, and it looks like they’re in a different outfit, so they can clip loads of different stuff [for social media] on the same day.”
It’s critically important to be organised. If you don’t deal with your casework and identify those issues which require an investment of time, you can let people down very badly
One thing all new MPs will experience is a heaving inbox. When the recently retired Labour MP Karen Buck was first elected in 1997 to a previously Tory-held seat, sacks of letters started arriving almost immediately.
“The knock at the door from the postie bringing stacks of mail, four feet high,” she recalls. “It’s 10 times worse, 50 times worse, now [in volume] with email and social media.”
Back then, nearly all the post was casework. The big change has been in “policy mail” – people wanting to know, or lobby, an MP’s view on a particular policy issue. Buck says the first big uptick in policy mail came around the Iraq war. This was then followed by the rise of social media and campaigning sites that encourage people to email their MP.
Casework is a key part of the modern MP’s job, partly thanks to collapsing public services and winnowed local councils – although Buck recalls the eccentric and alarming cases that came up.
“I remember my very first [constituency] surgery was a man who wanted me to get his wife deported. Certainly, one of the first involved someone wanting me to reinstate them to the throne of Romania.”
Mostly, however, it revolves around the failings of the public sphere – housing crises, benefits snafus, immigration problems. Being able to secure some kind of tangible outcome for people in need can be rewarding for MPs. But it’s hard work.
“It’s critically important to be organised,” says former Liberal Democrat MP Sir Norman Lamb. “If you don’t deal responsibly and efficiently with your casework and identify those issues which require an investment of time, then you can let people down very badly.”
The flipside of casework is reduced time to dedicate to legislative scrutiny. MPs have to specialise in certain areas, trusting the party whips to provide guidance on how to vote outside of that. This naturally gives party leaderships more power – but it’s the result of MPs lacking time to acquire sufficient knowledge to exercise their own judgment across all areas, all the time.
“There is so much going through that if, for example, you are a member of a select committee and you have an important select committee hearing that is taking place in the afternoon when a piece of legislation is going through, you will not be necessarily following both at the same time in an equal level of detail,” says Buck. “If there’s a piece of legislation that is not in your specialism of interest, you will be guided by the whips. It’s less a question of being told what to do and more a question of everybody has to prioritise within their parliamentary life.”
There are good and bad ways for MPs to use what time they have. Select committees are unsurprisingly seen as a good opportunity to wield actual influence, develop specialist expertise and hold ministers to account. All-party parliamentary groups (APPGs), not so much.
“Most APPGs are a complete waste of time, and it is just to occupy MPs who otherwise wouldn’t have enough to do,” says Lord Harrington, who makes an exception for those with relevance to an MP’s constituency.
MPs will also get called up to serve on bill committees. These are meant to scrutinise specific laws going through Parliament but are notorious for their abject failure to do anything of the sort.
“A lot of people were doing an awful lot of internet shopping in some of those committees that I was in,” says Smith, who lost her seat in Labour’s 2019 wipeout. “I do feel that you have a duty to understand at least as much as you’re capable of what is going on.”
MPs have their own snippets of advice for July 2024’s intake. The House of Commons library gets rave reviews as a source of policy information. Kitchen also describes Kate Emms, director of MP engagement at the House of Commons, as “a fountain of all knowledge” on Parliament’s sometimes baffling rules and procedures.
Smith recommends getting to know another source of information: parliamentary staff, especially the doorkeepers. Harrington suggests ambitious new MPs should be pushy and ask senior party figures for jobs – something he regrets not doing while those around him did, early on in his time as an MP. Buck urges incoming Labour MPs to build themselves a reputation for knowledge in priority areas.
“I would say maintain humility. It’s an undervalued character trait. Humility and empathy, I think are really valuable,” adds Sir Norman Lamb. “Don’t get carried away, don’t start to think you’re more important, more significant than you are.”
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