MP attendance: end of term report

[Note: Voting attendance is an imperfect proxy for actual attendance, as the figure may be depressed by silent abstentions (i.e. not voting in a division, rather than voting both ‘aye’ and ‘no’) and by just turning up to vote, but failing to attend the debate. However, until Parliament provides a better measure for attendance, or more transparency of MPs actions, this is the only one we have.]

It’s recess time again, and time for MPs’ end-of-term report. I’ll leave it to others to comment on how they’ve dealt with some of the genuinely momentous events since the summer recess. This post deals solely with their voting attendance record.

First off, let’s have an overall look at the overall figures for the period:

	Oct-Dec 08	May 97-Jul 08
All MPs	70.2%	64.5%
Labour	74.8%	69.8%
Conservative	67.8%	61.7%
LibDem	72.2%	64.7%

The figures above are pretty self-explanatory. All parties have improved their attendance of votes, by 5 to 8 percentage points. Perhaps not surprising given the financial crisis.

Now let’s have a look at the main parties in detail, using the same histograms used before to show the distribution of the parties attendance figures. Interestingly (well, in a wonkish sort of way), the distributions are a bit more spread out than the long-term average. In part this is probably down to the shorter time period showing up variations that are hidden in longer period, but it’s interesting nevertheless to note that though all parties have improved their overall attendance figures, the number and proportion of Labour MPs who’ve voted in fewer than half the divisions has nearly tripled, from 11 MPs to 30 of them.

[Note: there's no significance to the width of the columns -- the recent ones are narrower so that both can be seen on the same graph]

Finally, let’s have a look at those outliers, first, the MPs who attended divisions less than than 50% of the time:

Attended fewer than 50% of divisions Oct–Dec 08

Name	Party	Constituency	Attendance %	votes attended/possible
David Cameron	Con	Witney	28.6%	24/84
Robert Walter	Con	North Dorset	34.5%	29/84
Michael Mates	Con	East Hampshire	35.7%	30/84
Tim Yeo	Con	South Suffolk	35.7%	30/84
Michael Howard	Con	Folkestone & Hythe	36.9%	31/84
Peter Bottomley	Con	Worthing West	40.5%	34/84
Liam Fox	Con	Woodspring	40.5%	34/84
Julian Lewis	Con	New Forest East	42.9%	36/84
Caroline Spelman	Con	Meriden	42.9%	36/84
David Tredinnick	Con	Bosworth	42.9%	36/84
David Wilshire	Con	Spelthorne	42.9%	36/84
David Mundell	Con	Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale	42.9%	36/84
Malcolm Rifkind	Con	Kensington & Chelsea	45.2%	38/84
Michael Gove	Con	Surrey Heath	45.2%	38/84
William Hague	Con	Richmond (Yorks)	46.4%	39/84
Mark Lancaster	Con	North East Milton Keynes	48.8%	41/84
-
Mark Oaten	LDem	Winchester	23.8%	20/84
Daniel Rogerson	LDem	North Cornwall	47.6%	40/84
Nicholas Clegg	LDem	Sheffield, Hallam	47.6%	40/84
-
Margaret Hodge	Lab	Barking	0.0%	0/84
Jessica Morden	Lab	Newport East	0.0%	0/84
Gordon Brown	Lab	Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath	3.6%	3/84
Kali Mountford	Lab	Colne Valley	14.3%	12/84
David Miliband	Lab	South Shields	19.0%	16/84
Khalid Mahmood	Lab	Birmingham, Perry Barr	21.4%	18/84
Gordon Banks	Lab	Ochil & Perthshire South	27.4%	23/84
Alistair Darling	Lab	Edinburgh South West	29.8%	25/84
Adam Ingram	Lab	East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow	29.8%	25/84
Glenda Jackson	Lab	Hampstead & Highgate	31.0%	26/84
Mike Wood	Lab	Batley & Spen	32.1%	27/84
Frank Cook	Lab	Stockton North	33.3%	28/84
Geraldine Smith	Lab	Morecambe & Lunesdale	36.9%	31/84
Rudi Vis	Lab	Finchley & Golders Green	39.3%	33/84
Claire Curtis-Thomas	Lab	Crosby	40.5%	34/84
Alan Milburn	Lab	Darlington	40.5%	34/84
Keith Vaz	Lab	Leicester East	40.5%	34/84
Tom Harris	Lab	Glasgow South	40.5%	34/84
Doug Henderson	Lab	Newcastle upon Tyne North	42.9%	36/84
Denis Murphy	Lab	Wansbeck	42.9%	36/84
Bill Etherington	Lab	Sunderland North	44.0%	37/84
Kate Hoey	Lab	Vauxhall	45.2%	38/84
Denis MacShane	Lab	Rotherham	45.2%	38/84
Stuart Bell	Lab	Middlesbrough	46.4%	39/84
Joe Benton	Lab	Bootle	46.4%	39/84
Roger Godsiff	Lab	Birmingham, Sparkbrook & Small Heath	46.4%	39/84
Bill Rammell	Lab	Harlow	46.4%	39/84
John Austin	Lab	Erith & Thamesmead	47.6%	40/84
Caroline Flint	Lab	Don Valley	47.6%	40/84
Robert Marshall-Andrews	Lab	Medway	48.8%	41/84

No surprise that GB‘s in this list, voting in only 3 divisions (see here for the divisions he did take time out to vote on). Ditto Alistair Darling and David Cameron.

However, the rest of the list is more interesting. Some of those on the front bench, for example (e.g. Jacqui Smith, Jack Straw), surprisingly don’t make the list, i.e. they voted in at least 50% of the divisions. Ditto some of the opposition spokespeople.

But what about the backbenchers who are on the list. Possibly there’s a good reason for Margaret Hodge and Jessica Morden for failing to attend a single division — illness perhaps (though there’s nothing on either of their websites to indicate such a factor)? And what about Kali Mountford (14.3%) and Khalid Mahmood (21.4%).

If I was in their constituency, I’d like to know, particularly since they took little part in debates, either. Similarly for the low-raters for the Conservatives — Michael Mates and Tim Yeo (6 directorships!) at 35.7% each.

Now the MPs who voted more than 90% of the time:

Attended more than 90% of divisions

Name	Party	Constituency	Attendance %	votes attended/possible
George Young	Con	North West Hampshire	91.7%	77/84
-
Willie Rennie	LDem	Dunfermline & Fife West	90.5%	76/84
Andrew Stunell	LDem	Hazel Grove	95.2%	80/84
John Hemming	LDem	Birmingham, Yardley	97.6%	82/84
-
Ian Cawsey	Lab	Brigg & Goole	90.5%	76/84
Paul Clark	Lab	Gillingham	90.5%	76/84
John Cummings	Lab	Easington	90.5%	76/84
John Heppell	Lab	Nottingham East	90.5%	76/84
Fraser Kemp	Lab	Houghton & Washington East	90.5%	76/84
Phyllis Starkey	Lab	Milton Keynes South West	90.5%	76/84
David Heyes	Lab	Ashton-under-Lyne	90.5%	76/84
Kevan Jones	Lab	North Durham	90.5%	76/84
Ian Lucas	Lab	Wrexham	90.5%	76/84
Siân James	Lab	Swansea East	90.5%	76/84
Barbara Keeley	Lab	Worsley	90.5%	76/84
Clive Betts	Lab	Sheffield, Attercliffe	91.7%	77/84
Angela Eagle	Lab	Wallasey	91.7%	77/84
Maria Eagle	Lab	Liverpool, Garston	91.7%	77/84
John Healey	Lab	Wentworth	91.7%	77/84
Keith Hill	Lab	Streatham	91.7%	77/84
Alun Michael	Lab	Cardiff South & Penarth	91.7%	77/84
David Taylor	Lab	North West Leicestershire	91.7%	77/84
Natascha Engel	Lab	North East Derbyshire	91.7%	77/84
Shahid Malik	Lab	Dewsbury	91.7%	77/84
Liz Blackman	Lab	Erewash	92.9%	78/84
Bob Blizzard	Lab	Waveney	92.9%	78/84
Jeff Ennis	Lab	Barnsley East & Mexborough	92.9%	78/84
Fiona Mactaggart	Lab	Slough	92.9%	78/84
Andrew Miller	Lab	Ellesmere Port & Neston	92.9%	78/84
Kerry McCarthy	Lab	Bristol East	92.9%	78/84
Mary Creagh	Lab	Wakefield	92.9%	78/84
Lyn Brown	Lab	West Ham	92.9%	78/84
Kevin Barron	Lab	Rother Valley	94.0%	79/84
Janet Dean	Lab	Burton	94.0%	79/84
Jim Fitzpatrick	Lab	Poplar & Canning Town	94.0%	79/84
Mike Hall	Lab	Weaver Vale	94.0%	79/84
David Kidney	Lab	Stafford	94.0%	79/84
Shona McIsaac	Lab	Cleethorpes	94.0%	79/84
Judy Mallaber	Lab	Amber Valley	94.0%	79/84
James Plaskitt	Lab	Warwick & Leamington	94.0%	79/84
Nick Raynsford	Lab	Greenwich & Woolwich	94.0%	79/84
Angela Smith	Lab	Basildon	94.0%	79/84
Ann McKechin	Lab	Glasgow North	94.0%	79/84
Clive Efford	Lab	Eltham	95.2%	80/84
David Hanson	Lab	Delyn	95.2%	80/84
Dan Norris	Lab	Wansdyke	95.2%	80/84
Bill Olner	Lab	Nuneaton	95.2%	80/84
Stephen McCabe	Lab	Birmingham, Hall Green	96.4%	81/84
John Spellar	Lab	Warley	96.4%	81/84
Dave Watts	Lab	St Helens North	96.4%	81/84
Helen Goodman	Lab	Bishop Auckland	96.4%	81/84
Andrew Gwynne	Lab	Denton & Reddish	96.4%	81/84
Neil Gerrard	Lab	Walthamstow	97.6%	82/84
Brian Jenkins	Lab	Tamworth	97.6%	82/84
Helen Jones	Lab	Warrington North	97.6%	82/84
Thomas McAvoy	Lab	Rutherglen & Hamilton West	97.6%	82/84
Chris Bryant	Lab	Rhondda	97.6%	82/84
Chris Mole	Lab	Ipswich	97.6%	82/84
Diana Johnson	Lab	Kingston upon Hull North	97.6%	82/84
Tony Cunningham	Lab	Workington	98.8%	83/84
Dennis Skinner	Lab	Bolsover	100.0%	84/84

Some amazing figures in there. In fact, given his 100% record you wonder if the Beast of Bolsover has got a home to go to.

C.

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Notes on calculations

• The above calculations were derived from the voting record freely available from the Public Whip project, and cover the period from Oct 2008 to Dec 2008. The data can be downloaded in the form of a MySQL database, and this was used together with custom MySQL queries to generate the figures.

How often do MPs turn up for work (Part 4): the ministerial effect

[Note: Voting attendance is an imperfect proxy for actual attendance, as the figure may be depressed by silent abstentions (i.e. not voting in a division, rather than voting both ‘aye’ and ‘no’) and by just turning up to vote, but failing to attend the debate. However, until Parliament provides a better measure for attendance, or more transparency of MPs actions, this is the only one we have.]

A frequent arguments for low attendance of voting divisions by MPs is that the figure is depressed by ministers (and shadow spokespersons), whose other responsibilities prevent them from attending as many votes (as they’d like to), thus bringing down the overall average.

Seems reasonable, so let’s have a look at just how much of an influence this ‘ministerial effect’ has on the overall figures. First, let’s look at the average voting attendance for ministers and non-ministers (calculation details below):

Attendance rates May 97 – July 08
All MPs	65.1%
Non-Ministers	64.4%
Ministers	67.2%

Er, wait a minute, so the average voting attendance rate for ministers is higher than non-ministers? That’s not what we expected. However, basic averages (i.e. the mean) can hide a multitude of sins, so let’s have a look at the distribution of those attendance figures.

As you can see, while the peak of the ministerial attendance is around the 65% mark (less than that for the non-ministerial one), there were far more divisions in which 90%+ of ministers voted than there were for which 90%+ of non-ministers voted.

This makes sense, in a way, as ministers are far more likely than backbenchers to turn up en masse for votes their party sees as important. It’s this that largely accounts for the figures we saw in the table above. However, what the graph also shows is that when you take the ministers out of the equation, attendance definitely does not shoot up. There is, in short, no ‘ministerial effect’ to account for the low attendance of MPs.

[It's worth mentioning that the ministerial office records are slightly incomplete -- the record of Parliamentary Private Secretaries is missing during some periods -- so I've run the figures for ministers both including and excluding PPSs. As you can see, it doesn't make a lot of difference.]

The party lines

Having looked at the big picture, it’s time to look at the ministerial vs non-ministerial attendance by party, specifically the three main parties in Parliament.

As you can see, the relationship between ministerial and non-ministerial attendance is noticeably different for each of the parties. Labour ministers do indeed have noticeably lower attendance rates than their backbenchers, though not as much as I’d expected and not enough to alter the distribution massively.

However, for the Tories and LibDems, the surprising thing — for me, at least — was the attendance rates for their spokespersons are actually noticeably better than their backbenchers, raising rather than lowering the overall figures. What, I wonder, is the reason for this?

Finally, a couple of quick graphs to wrap this post up. One shows, perhaps not surprisingly, that Labour ministerial attendance rates are less than for the shadow spokespersons — presumably the time commitment for a governmental position is greater than that for the equivalent shadow position.

The other shows the distribution of backbenchers attendance figures, by party. I’ll leave that one without making any further comment.

C.

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Notes on calculations

• The Ministerial/non-ministerial attendance rates were calculated by looking at every Commons division between May 1997 and July 2008, and working out the number of ministers/non-ministers who could have voted in that division, and the number who actually did vote. The average attendance figures in the table were calculated by dividing the aggregate number of votes by the aggregate number of possible votes.
  To calculate the distribution of attendance rates I calculated the ministerial/non-ministerial attendance rate for each division, and plotted these on a graph to show how those attendance rates are distributed (as usual, I’ve made the underlying figures are available as a spreadsheet here and here if you want to examine them further).
• Ministers are those holding any sort of ministerial office as per the PublicWhip database, including whips, but excluding select committee members (although it wouldn’t be hard to run the figures to include select committee members). The Parliamentary Private Secretaries record at the Public Whip is incomplete for several periods, and unfortunately (and ridiculously) there is no historical record of ministers available from Parliament’s own website.
• The above calculations were derived from the voting record freely available from the Public Whip project, and cover the period from May 1997 to July 22, 2008 (when the house rose for the summer recess). The data can be downloaded in the form of a MySQL database, and this was used together with custom MySQL queries to generate the figures.
• The graphs are visual representations of the density of the distribution, and were plotted using R using the kernel densityplot function.

How often do MPs turn up for work (Part 3): attendance week by week

GEEK CONTENT ALERT: This post is possibly only for those really into the details of attendance figures, as the data is somewhat dense. See also notes at bottom of page for what ‘attendance’ actually means.

Last time I looked at how evenly distributed of MPs attendance was, looking at how the averages were made up by party, and at some of those individual MPs who had particularly low attendance rates.

This time I’m going to investigate the attendance over time — specifically, how it varies week by week. I’ve done this by working out the average attendance for each week, and graphing them over time (see below, click for full-size image).

As you can see, there’s a lot of information on the graph, but there are probably a few key things to point out:

1. Note the red weeks — these are the weeks where the average voting attendance is less than 50%. Sometimes this is due to the opposition abstaining en masse, for example.
   Other times the reason is less clear — the 16% attendance figure in early 2006, for example. Though there was plenty of business that week, there appears to be only one division — on the report stage of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill on March 10, in which only 105 (including 4 tellers) out of 646 turned up.
   Perhaps the attendance during the rest of the week was much higher. Unfortunately Parliament gives us no way of telling. It’s not even possible to look at the video of the event to see how full the chamber as unlike the CSpan Archive of the US Congress, video coverage of Parliament is only available for 28 days after it happens.
2. The periods when the Commons is in recess are in blue, and cover a multitude of things, from general election campaigns, holidays, party conferences (in 2003 and 2004 there were distinct blocks of time off for these, separate from the summer break — now there’s just a single very long break), and time during which, in the words of the official Parliament website, “Members can carry out their other duties”.
   The recess periods tend to be slightly longer than shown, as they typically start sometime during the preceding week.
3. To me, a lot of the low attendance weeks appeared to be close or adjacent to recess periods. Is this a coincidence, or is there a possibility that MPs have a tendency to, well, bunk off early? Well, sorry to disappoint you, but the figures don’t support it. The average attendance for weeks adjacent to recess periods is 65.3%, for all other weeks 64.7% (see spreadsheet here).

I then wondered what the main parties attendance looked like, so below I’ve overlaid those figures on the same graph. It’s a very dense graph, but quite interesting for the geek at heart (again, click on the graph to see it full size).

There’s loads of info there to delve into, especially when there are strong divergences between the parties, or strong convergencies, for that matter. There are also some potentially suspicious drops, though like the apparent drops around recesses, care should be taken as the figures can have multiple readings.

For example, there’s a drop in attendance in week 20 of 2007 (May 14-18). Attendance this week was only 45.6% (see spreadsheet here), but a closer look at the voting divisions that week, shows that for much of the week voting attendance was relatively high:

Monday 15/05/07
Armed Conflict — Parliamentary Approval, 539 votes cast

Tuesday 16/05/07
Points of Order — Housing, 544 votes
Orders of the Day — Clause 2 — Meaning of “relevant duty of care”, 531 votes

Wednesday 17/05/07
Orders of the Day — New Clause 29 — Reduction of regulatory burdens, 400 votes
Orders of the Day — Clause 81 — “Local improvement targets”: interpretation, 403 votes
Orders of the Day — Clause 179 — Abolition of functions of Patients’ Forums, 376 votes

Thursday 17/05/07
Orders of the Day — Clause 182 — Duty to consult users of health services, 277 votes

However, the figures were brought right back down due to a series of very poorly attended votes on the Friday (May 18).
Motion to sit in private, 56 votes
Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Question Proposed, 144 votes
Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Constituent letters, 132 votes
Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — MP’s correspondence, 137 votes
Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Third Reading, 125 votes
Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill — Third Reading — Closure, 143 votes

The suspicious (and sporting) at heart may recall that the England vs West Indies test match was on at Lords from May 17-21, and speculate that a number of MPs decided to enjoy the second day’s play.

However, another, perhaps more likely, reason for the low attendance is what was being voted upon — a Bill that would have “taken away the public’s right to know about the internal workings of Parliament, or see any correspondence between MPs and any government department or local authority“. Like many such votes on transparency, MPs seemed curiously reluctant to be seen to taking a position against openness, yet apparently have no interest in supporting it either. (The Motion to sit in private, by the way, was a procedural tactic to prevent the bill being filibustered).

Of course, it’s also perfectly possible that both explanations are true

C.

Next time I’ll compare ministerial voting records vs back-benchers

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Notes on the calculations

The above calculations were derived from the voting record freely available from the Public Whip project, and cover the period from May 1997 to July 22, 2008 (when the house rose for the summer recess). The data can be downloaded in the form of a MySQL database, and this was used together with custom MySQL queries to generate the weekly attendance of MPs, grouped by party (available here as a spreadsheet).

The attendance are calculated by whether an MP voted in a division. As noted in my first post on the subject, this is an imperfect proxy for actual attendance, as the figure may be depressed by silent abstentions (i.e. not voting in a division, rather than voting both ‘aye’ and ‘no’) and by just turning up to vote, but failing to attend the debate. However, until Parliament provides a better measure for attendance, this is the only way of calculating it.

How often do MPs turn up for work (Part 2): the good, the average, and the downright lazy

Last time I briefly looked at MPs average attendance figures, and also the attendance figures for MPs for the three main parties. This time I’m going to examine what makes up those averages — are MPs much of a muchness (the average attendance, remember, is about 64%), or are there wide variations, with the figure being inflated (or reduced) by high (or low) attending MPs.

It’s worth starting by looking at the figures visually. (For the moment, I’m concentrating on the three main parties, and specifically current MPs. This means that the figures we’re looking at are higher than the overall average, as the three main parties’ attendance records are better than the minority parties, and current MPs’ figures are better than for those who’ve left parliament — I’ll perhaps look at why that is another time.)

The graphs below show the proportion of MPs in each attendance band. So the first band represents MPs who vote between 0% and 5% of the time, the next between 5% and 10% and so on.

As you would expect given the figures on average attendance, the Labour MPs are more skewed towards the higher attendance figures than are the other parties, with the highest proportion attending between 80% and 85% (compared with Liberals 75-80% and Conservatives 65-70%). As before, that raises the question: why are Conservative MPs attendance rates so much worse than the other two main parties?

The part-timers

Most interesting, perhaps, are those MPs at the bottom end of the scale, who can’t even manage to turn up 50% of the time, and they are shown in the list below.

	Attendance	Party	Constituency	Attended/possible
Gordon Brown	14.7%	Lab	Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath	492/3352
Michael Mates	35.5%	Con	East Hampshire	1189/3352
David Blunkett	36.7%	Lab	Sheffield, Brightside	1229/3352
Jack Straw	40.7%	Lab	Blackburn	1363/3352
Charles Kennedy	42.1%	LDem	Ross, Skye & Lochaber	1412/3352
John Prescott	42.4%	Lab	Kingston upon Hull East	1420/3352
Ruth Kelly	43.9%	Lab	Bolton West	1470/3352
Francis Maude	44.6%	Con	Horsham	1495/3352
David Mundell	44.8%	Con	Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale	373/833
Michael Howard	45.0%	Con	Folkestone & Hythe	1507/3352
Stephen Dorrell	45.1%	Con	Charnwood	1512/3352
Adam Ingram	45.8%	Lab	East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow	1535/3352
William Hague	46.0%	Con	Richmond (Yorks)	1543/3352
Michael Ancram	46.2%	Con	Devizes	1547/3352
Nicholas Clegg	47.4%	LDem	Sheffield, Hallam	395/833
Frank Cook	47.6%	Lab	Stockton North	1597/3352
Kenneth Clarke	47.9%	Con	Rushcliffe	1605/3352
Claire Curtis-Thomas	47.9%	Lab	Crosby	1605/3352
Richard Caborn	48.2%	Lab	Sheffield Central	1615/3352
Liam Fox	48.2%	Con	Woodspring	1617/3352
Robert Walter	48.5%	Con	North Dorset	1627/3352
Tessa Jowell	48.7%	Lab	Dulwich & West Norwood	1631/3352
Nicholas Soames	48.9%	Con	Mid Sussex	1638/3352
Mark Oaten	49.0%	LDem	Winchester	1635/3337
Patrick Cormack	49.6%	Con	South Staffordshire	1654/3333
Malcolm Rifkind	49.7%	Con	Kensington & Chelsea	414/833
Bill Etherington	49.97%	Lab	Sunderland North	1675/3352

As you can see, some of the 27 MPs appearing on the list are ministers or shadow ministers, including of course Gordon Brown (Tony Blair only managed 8.3% attendance).

The argument of course is that ministers should concentrate on running their department rather than attending every vote; the counter argument is that if it’s important enough to legislate about, it’s important enough for all MPs to discuss and vote on.

In many cases, however, there seems on the face of it little justification for an MP to vote in fewer than 50% of the divisions, and justify it is surely what they should do.

Perhaps they work tirelessly on behalf of the constituents who voted them in. Perhaps they do sterling work investigating and challenging the government’s claims. Perhaps there is some other legitimate reason why they attend so rarely.

Whatever the reason, it is surely fair to expect MPs to explain to their constituents and the citizens for whom they work why attend so rarely.

For Example

Let’s look, for example, at the MPs at the better end of this list, those that almost managed to turn up 50% of the time.

There’s Bill Etherington, Labour MP for Sunderland North (with an attendance rate of just under 50%). He’s apparently leaving Parliament at the next election due to a boundary change, and looks as though he’s counting the days, having spoken in only one debate in the past year, according to They Work For You.

Now in his sixties, according to his Wikipedia profile he started work age 14 in the shipyards, and eventually became a union official, before becoming an MP 16 years ago. You might guess that he’s had enough and is now ready to retire. And indeed, he told the Sunderland Echo, “I shall not be fighting the next election. I’ll be 68 or 69 by then and I’ve done my bit.”  Fair enough, but does that make it OK to be only a part-timer for the rest of his time as MP, and does it really explain why his attendance record has been consistently so poor?

Or what about the MP next to him in the list, Conservative MP for Kensington & Chelsea Malcolm Rifkind, former Foreign Secretary (and other ministerial positions) in the last Conservative government, before losing his Edinburgh seat in 1997. Now he’s been re-elected to Michael Portillo’s old seat is he showing the new boys a thing or two about commitment and hard work? Not if his attendance record is anything to go by.

Again, perhaps there’s a good reason. Being Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions? But that lasted only 7 months. Of course, the suspicion is that perhaps there isn’t enough time, given other outside interests (a directorship, a consultancy, membership of an advisory board, various writing and speaking engagements).

Then there’s another Conservative, Patrick Cormack, MP for South Staffordshire, and currently member of the Liaison Committee and chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. Having been an MP since 1970, he’s often referred to as a ‘Tory grandee’, is the Chairman and Life President of The House Magazine, and has a number of other outside interests. Yet, since 1997 he’s only turned up to vote 49.6% of the time.

Finally there’s Mark Oaten, Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester, who since 1997 has managed 49% attendance, and since May 2005 just 33.6%. He was Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs for the first six months, but 33.6%? Compare that with the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor (and briefly Acting Leader) Vince Cable MP who in the same period achieved 69.5% attendance.

So What?

These four MPs, taken from the better end of the part-timers list, are possibly not representative of the list as a whole. It’s possible even that all 27 MPs have a good reason for their poor attendance record, as it implies a lack of trust.

Possibly. On the other hand, MPs have been time and again been extremely resistant to operating transparently, with many being dragged kicking and screaming to reveal information about outside interests, family members employed as staff, expenses payments, and so on.  So much so that it’s perhaps not surprising that people reading these figures suspect the worst.

I’ll perhaps return to this list in a future post, but in the meantime if any of these MPs represent you, why not drop them a line via Write To Them and ask them to justify their poor attendance record.

C.

Next time I’ll have a look at how attendance rates change week-by-week.

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Notes on the calculations

The above calculations were derived from the voting record freely available from the Public Whip project, and cover the period from May 1997 to July 22, 2008 (when the house rose for the summer recess). The data can be downloaded in the form of a MySQL database, and this was used together with custom MySQL queries to generate the attendance of all current MPs (available here as a spreadsheet).

The attendance are calculated by whether an MP voted in a division. As noted in my first post on the subject, this is an imperfect proxy for actual attendance, as the figure may be depressed by silent abstentions (i.e. not voting in a division, rather than voting both ‘aye’ and ‘no’) and by just turning up to vote, but failing to attend the debate. However, until Parliament provides a better measure for attendance, this is the only way of calculating it.

How often do MPs turn up for work (Part 1)?

With MPs are still on their summer break (barring recalls for bank failures), it seems a good time to examine their performance. Consider it an end-of-term report.

Ironically, given how keen the government has been on public-sector targets, there are few ways we can measure how good a job MPs do, and even the most basic — how often do they turn up to work? — has be be worked out through a roundabout way. There’s no attendance register, still less any way of knowing how often they attend constituency surgeries, or other parliamentary work outside of the Commons.

All we have is the fairly rough measure of whether (and how) they voted in any given division. It’s crude and given to over and underestimating (abstentions appear as a no-show, whereas turning up only to vote is the parliamentary equivalent to going to work to get your card stamped), but it’s the best measurement we’ve got, until Parliament itself decides to improve transparency by giving us something else.

Thanks here should go to the people at the Public Whip project who collate this data by parsing Hansard into a form you can then analyse. The figures, however, only go back to 1997, so it’s not possible to compare the figures between a Conservative and Labour government, for example.

The basics

So, how often does the average MP turn up? About 64% of the time. Or to look upon it another way, 36% of the time (over a third) the average MP doesn’t bother to turn up to vote.

That figure is the average for votes since 1997, but it’s been consistently between 59% and 71% (see chart below). As the table shows, the attendance rate for the current crop of MPs is a little better (the main total includes MPs that have since left the house), and that for the House of Lords predictably low.

Attendance rates 1997 – Jul 2008
All MPs	64.5%
All Current MPs	68.3%
Lords	29.9%
Labour MPs	69.8%
Conservative MPs	61.7%
LibDem MPs	64.7%

However, as anyone with rudimentary knowledge of statistics or a healthy degree of scepticism will know, a raw average will hide a multitude of sins, so it’s worth delving into that overall figure a little closer.

The Political Parties

When you break down the attendance figures by party, one thing becomes pretty clear, Labour MPs vote a lot more often than either Conservative or Liberal Democrat ones do. The broad trend (i.e. moving average) shows some improvement over the past few years, but still remains below 70%.

Why is this? Why are the Labour figures so much higher? Maybe it’s something to do with being in power (remember the figures only go back to 1997), or perhaps Labour MPs really do care more, or perhaps they are keen to be seen to be supporting their party’s bills. Or perhaps there are more Labour backbenchers with not much else to do.

Whatever the answer, the Conservative’s low attendance figure does seem at odds with David Cameron’s statement that “MPs are meant to go to parliament; that’s what their job’s about.”

The minority parties have almost universally poor attendance records (with Sinn Fein it was party policy not to attend), and if we exclude those the average (i.e. for the three main parties) rises a little to 66.9%.

Why is the figure so low?

Personally, I’m not sure that’s a great figure. Is it really OK that for over a third of the time MPs had something better to do?

Perhaps if they were ministers, they were busy running their department, which is understandable.

Perhaps they were dealing with urgent constituency business — certainly possible, though I’m not sure it would account for such a high figure.

Perhaps, they attended the debate, but decided to abstain –  though given MPs can vote both ‘No’ and ‘Aye’ at the same time, effectively an active abstention — it would seem unlikely to be the case, or at least be a significant factor.

Perhaps, also, MPs are human like the rest of us, and given a job to do (much of which is mundane) have a tendency to bunk off when there’s no supervision.

C.

Next time I’ll have a look at how evenly spread attendance rates are, in particular whether the average is unduly affected by high- and low-attending MPs.

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Notes on the calculations

The above calculations were derived from the voting record freely available from the Public Whip project. The data can be downloaded in the form of a MySQL database, and this was used together with custom MySQL queries to generate a spreadsheet (available here) containing Average MPs voting percentage for 1997- July 2008, and for individual years within that range.

The political parties’ percentages were they obtained by taking the average (specifically the arithmetic mean) of the MPs attendance percentages, so the above figures for the parties are the the average of their MPs average attendance rates.

The attendance figure for the House of Lords is only for divisions to early June 2008.

Photo at top is Parliamentary Copyright.