Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

The news that a photographer Andy Parsons, who once worked for the Conservatives, has been put on the civil service payroll, seems to fit a pattern of behaviour over the last few months. Not just by the Conservatives, but the Liberal Democrats too.

This would be a serious issue at the best of times, but is especially so at a time when nearly all parts of the civil service are having to make huge cuts.

In addition to Mr Parsons there are two other Conservative cases:

Nicky Woodhouse, a Conservative film-maker who was responsible for the internet propaganda service Web-Cameron, and who started work this Monday making films for the government.

And Rishi Saha, who worked as head of new media for the Conservatives during the election campaign, and is now deputy director of communications in the Cabinet Office (and effectively head of digital communications, in charge of the websites run by the Cabinet Office and Number 10).

And for the Liberal Democrats, Tim Snowball, who worked as campaign tour organiser for Nick Clegg during the general election, is now a private secretary in Clegg's office. Clegg first met Snowball when he was at Sheffield University in his constituency.

Another Lib Dem to have landed a job in the Cabinet Office is Zena Elmarouki, who worked as Nick Clegg's deputy speech-writer when he was a plain party leader. She seems to be doing pretty much the same job for him now - but as a civil servant.

All of these people are on short term contracts of a year or two. If they were to be given permanent jobs then the selection process would be a lot more stringent, and the post would have to be advertised with proper selection competition.

The Cabinet Office insists making temporary short-term appointments is perfectly normal procedure, and often followed in business and the voluntary sector.

In the past political parties would have retained some of their staff simply by transferring them from the party payroll to the government payroll and appointing them as special advisers.

That's more difficult now, however, as the government has committed itself in the Coalition Agreement to "put a limit on the number on Special Advisers" [sic]. That "limit" was never specified, though the number of special advisers has fallen from 78 under Labour to 68 today (plus one other part-time).

Another problem which both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will have had is the disappearance of Short Money, the state funds which they got in opposition. Both parties had to make redundancies, but may have cushioned the effect by getting their people jobs in government.

I'm sure there must be other examples of party political staff suddenly getting civil service jobs in recent months.

If so, perhaps readers would be kind enough to let me know.

David Cameron's spokeswoman told me tonight that this was "perfectly normal", and that when Labour was in power they, too, frequently employed former party staff on civil service contracts.

"These people have to abide by the Civil Service Code. They can't be political. They can't be partisan. They cannot act politically. They are legitimately employed and went through the proper process."

Perhaps somebody can supply me with some examples from the Labour years.