Wife Swap - Westminster Style

Mrs Sandra Howard

The wives of MPs who work for their husband's as parliamentary secretaries and office managers, are hatching plans to defy what they see as an unfair ban by swapping jobs with one another.

If Sir Christopher Kelly goes ahead next month with plans to ban MPs from employing relatives, the wives are preparing to apply for employment with each other's spouses. Sir Christopher's ban would affect about 200 MPs who employ wives, husbands, children and more distant relations on the parliamentary payroll.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry), a junior Treasury minister, employs her daughter, Victoria Davies, as office manager. Last night Ms Davies said, "This is a job I love doing and I have a passion for it. I work hard for her {my mother} and she appreciates it."

Now I'm sure many of you will correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the main reasons MPs say they employ their wives/family members that MPs' hours are so long they would never see each other unless working together? If the women intend to work for other MPs, surely they won't see their husbands much at all. Now we know it's nothing to do with working hours and much more to do with family income.

Then again, it's possibly already planned that couples meet for these quintessential English habits of morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea - all heavily subsidised by us, but which few of us can afford these days.

Some wives are so upset that they have complained to the Equality and Human Rights Commission alleging discrimination while another has written to the head of the employment relations body ACAS.

Oh, nearly forgot to mention a little detail. The row over spouses' jobs comes as new figures obtained by the Sunday Times show that the total spent by MPs on their staff in 2008-09 went up more than 8% to £59.96m.

Tweet