Trust may be key to new rules

Every year the public is asked to rate how much they trust different professions.

At the top end of the trust scale, the honest Johns (and Joans) are your judges, doctors and teachers. The public, by and large, trust what they say.

At the lower end are your estate agents, bankers and (perish the thought) journalists. Those three professions are invariably found scraping the bottom of the public trust barrel but they are no match for one particular profession.

The trust scale (or Veracity Index, to give its official title) has only one profession that year after year hits rock bottom ... and that’s the politician.

They are, in the eyes of the ordinary man and woman in the street, the least trusted of all professions.

It’s a point worth noting as new rules come into force for the next election which mean newly-elected MPs will no longer be allowed to use taxpayers’ money to employ wives, husbands and other relatives. Some MPs have already hit out at the move. Tory MP Sir Roger Gale, who employs his wife at a cost to the public purse of more than £30,000 a year, is particularly irked.

His view that his wife is uniquely placed to run his constituency office does, however, ring true.

Family members understand their boss, perhaps work harder because it is in their own interests, and maybe go that extra mile when others would not.

That doesn’t, however, make it right. The change of rules may rankle with some MPs, but they make good, and fair, employment sense. They may also help curb harmful calls of nepotism and ‘jobs for the boys.’

They may not like them, but the new rules could even help lift MPs from the bottom of that trust barrel.