Fresh faces
Fashionable despair over the rise of a professional political class took a knock today. The has just published research suggesting the next generation of MPs will probably have more real world experience than their predecessors...
A survey by unearths some interesting factoids....
• 20% more parliamentary candidates have business, management or financial services experience - 48% compared to standing MPs (28%).
• Twice as many PPCs (14%) have experience of over 15 years when compared with current MPs (7%).
• Conservative PPCs have more than twice as much (58%) business experience than their Labour counterparts (24%), who in turn have less experience than the Liberal Democrats (36%).
• More candidates work in business management or financial services roles than any other employment sector - 37%. Over half of the Conservative candidates studied work in this sector (52%). Roughly a quarter of Labour and the Liberal Democrats PPCs are currently employed in these sectors (23% and 26% respectively).
• Just 17% of PPCs currently work in politics, public affairs or public relations.
With hundreds of new faces expected in the next House of Commons, Sally Muggeridge, chief executive of the IPT, is clearly pleased at the findings.
"What this research shows for the first time is that many of these new MPs will be more - not less - business-aware and more representative of the population as a whole," she says.
"This is encouraging, although there is still more to do if we are to make Parliament a more representative institution."
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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