The problem is this: a rightwinger will no doubt argue for the right of an employer to hire anyone he chooses. We are the ones supposed to believe in equal opportunities. Shouldn’t we concentrate on getting our own MPs into line before picking on a Tory just because she makes an easy target?

The tip story is bizarre. Of course she fails to spot that the fact that she is aware of it (if it is true) shows that the employee was trustworthy, whereas her current employee seems to have trouble keeping her trap shut.

To reiterate the point that Jimmy appears blind to; Dorries moaned about her daughter being unable to find employment, and then employed her with the taxpayer footing the bill. She now refuses to discuss the level of wage she has awarded the second daughter she has employed, and is even blocking people on Twitter who dare to challenge her on it. Her only answer to the Mirror piece; the usual empty accusations that it’s some kind of smear.

The list of the *declared* relatives and close friends (ahem) working for MPs is freely available in the public domain (RMI Part 2 various dates) without resorting to the Independent which merely reproduced it with annotations. At the time of writing Jennifer Dorries does not appear to be on there but her sister Philippa is there – as if she is still working for her MumP.

If the ?Labour MP to which you refer is still employing their offspring that is a current story. But far more so if they are employed without advert or proper recruitment and selection process AND are employed at a Senior grade and unusually high salary AND were subject of a parliamentary speech about how woe-is-me they are at being an unemployed graduate from Bournemouth University.

The one I referred to was employing rellies under cover of other people’s names, though for short periods, relatively small money, and with quite unnecessary secrecy. Indicating some failure of thunking I’d say.

I have written up Question 1 for Nadine Dorries here asking her to disclose the salary level for Jennifer’s post or posts and (supplementary) to confirm just how she thought she would get away with this appointment in the current climate of scrutiny.

Comments welcome.

On the matter of the alleged “tip fee” to one of her other employees this was allegedly £250 and was allegedly used by said researcher (not a temp) to treat themself and Nads to lunch. Certainly not acted on or any kind of threat to Ms Dorries’ privacy. Mr Maguire has put the Q to the alleged purveyor of this advance “tip fee” and they said to him that the story is completely made up by Ms Dorries.

Who to believe? Mum-P or hack? Difficult.

I just checked. The MP in question now lists a different relative under part 2. Post Conway.

If you’re doing an expose, the Indo did a story last year listing over a hundred MPs employing relatives. All parties at it.

I kept the details deliberately vague. It’s an old story and not one which I see any interest in re-opening, save to make the point that our hands are not clean here.

I think activists assuming they’ll be hired is also dangerous territory actually. As Tim points out the MP in question has to use the money wisely for the benefit of the constituents and if the offspringer in question was more qualified for the job in question then they OUGHT to be chosen ahead of the activist. And anyone better still responding to the properly advertised vacancy OUGHT to be appointed ahead of both of them. And the activist that’s done 1000 hours has no greater claim than one whos’s done 50 if the latter is the experienced case worker or whatever.

There is already a degree of relative swapping going on I’d wager. And there are MPs of all parties openly and not so openly employing relatives and friends and in other parties political hacks or councillors. irrespective of their merits in the job.

But I think – from what I know at this stage – that Dorries is way out on the way out wing of this practice and, lest we forget, is out there AFTER the level of scrutiny for all such appointments is far greater than ever before.

This is Post-Conway, this is Post-Part2 declarations, this is rubbing our noses in it and employing family with a great fuck you.

Which doesn’t excuse any previous abuse vide Conways but does beg some serious questions about Nadine’s attitude and IMO suitability for elected office.

If you’d like to send me the relevant details of your anecdote I’ll certainly consider investigating and publishing that story too. But a conspiracy of silence – see also outrageous overspending on election campaign expenses – is not acceptable.

Let’s scrutinise ANY MP where we feel there is now or has been a significant “family firm” problem. I already have one sneaky LP MP under research as it goes. But the story is not in the same league in terms of the money involved or the short changing of the constituents either.

There are other cases where MPs have married etc existing helpers, or not surprisingly other LP people, and where family are already on career track doing parliamentary or constituency work. That IMO is different from Dorries bestowing jobs on her kids.

I don’t know whether that argument stacks up. A few years ago I worked on a marginal where one of the constituency officers worked her back off on the unspoken assumption that she would be hired only to see the job go to the new MP’s offspring who had taken no part in the campaign. This was a Labour MP. It did not go down well. I think we are in a much stronger position on this if we clean our own house first. This a recruitment practice which we simply would not tolerate in any other sphere. We should have stopped this years ago. I don’t see how we can beat up a tory MP for failing to follow fair employment practices unless we are prepared to follow them ourselves.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by asquith: Dorries: still a cunt. http://tinyurl.com/ykwg54m...

Yes it does, and here’s an extract from The Green Book – Parliamentary Salaries, Allowances and Pensions (820 Kb .PDF) (summary):

3.3.1. Principles
You must ensure that arrangements for your ACA claims are above reproach and that there can be no grounds for a suggestion of misuse of public money. Members should bear in mind the need to obtain value for money from accommodation, goods or services funded from the allowances.

Conclusion: It can already be fairly said that Nadine Dorries has (again) broken the existing rules.

The £28,000 figure is an estimate reported by the Mirror crew. They also say the range for Office Manager / Senior Researcher (which is the job title Philippa has been reported under) is 18 to 39 (or something like that). It is in fact 21 to 40.

On the scale they reported £28k is about the mid point of the scale for SENIOR workers. Jenny Dorries doesn’t have a Politics degree, isn’t interested in Politics, doesn’t have an MA, and was written off by her own MumP as unlikely to be worthy of a job in these straightened times.

My plan is to drip out 30 substantive questions for Nadine in a “Nuts in November” daily feature at my blog. This may change if the story starts running away in a bigger way. Some of the questions and the associated answers are relatively trivial actually, but enough of them are serious.

Jimmy is right about other MPs, from other parties employing rellies. But post-Conway these are mostly partners and not young and inexperienced offsping. Look at the RMI Part 2 reports. Many of these arrangements are beyond reproach, at least in terms of current ability and workrate and so on.

The serial employment, apparently at rather high if not very high salaries, of two very inexperienced daughters in this way does make Nadine a unique case.

I have sympathy with some of the arguments about employing family members – unsocial hours, following MPs between the constituency and Westminster as appropriate, etc. – but the Dorries situation opens itself far too easily to accusations that she didn’t employ her daughter because she was the best person for the job, but because her daughter couldn’t get any other employment.

and we should do the same with them too. I see no moral problem with challenging nepotism.

Libertarians would usually argue that the process is entirely up to the employer. If they want to be nepotistic then so be it.

However, the issue is complicated by the fact that she is being taxpayer funded.

I’m worried about him. It’s been almost 10 hours since this came up and he’s not mentioned it.

We all know how much he hates troughers.

Perhaps he’s had a nasty fall and can’t pull the red string for the warden.

I bet the milk bottles will be piling up on his doorstep.

That’s the problem with ‘Broken Britain’ (copyright Shiny Dave Cameron), we don’t look out for each other nowadays. Not like in the 90′s.

Vote Palin 2012 (I’ve come over all Rowley Birkin QC)

What a show…..

How much is the second daughter getting paid? Was there a proper recruitment process for that? Where is the income for the second daughter listed?

And what questions are outstanding for Dorries?

I need to look back over my blogposts and other material but I think that Nads knew Philippa was leaving before she made her 06-07-09 speech about poor UB40 Dorries before I can declare that a stone fact. At the moment it is a question: Did she know or not? I had certainly started to speculate about Jenny’s upcoming employment by that point.

Anyways, another stone fact is that Philippa’s employment was properly declared in the RMI part 2 and that in the docs of 02-09-09 and 14-10-09 she continues to be so listed.

UB40 Dorries however is not listed in either of these documents. Which is odd.

Another stone fact, though a generalisation as well, is that starting money for a typical very high quality graduate, probably in politics or a cognate discipline would be £18k with a normal high water mark with a good MA let’s say of about £23k. To go in as Office Manager / Senior Researcher at £28k never mind £50k at 21 or 22 years is let’s say extraordinarily unusual.