Andrew Gilligan: Are We Getting Full Whack from Nick?

“IMAGINE what the last six weeks have been like, waiting for that call from the Telegraph,” a Yorkshire MP friend said to me the other day. Well, on Sunday, they came for our very own Nick Raynsford.

Until now, inner-London MPs, like Mr Raynsford, have been spared the worst of the expenses horrors. They cannot claim the additional costs allowance – even Parliament appears to draw the line at allowing somebody whose constituency is six miles from Westminster to have a second home.

As greenwich.co.uk revealed last month there has, of course, already been the small matter of Mr Raynsford paying his local Labour Party £2000 a quarter for the “use of surgery and office facilities,” even though the contact details for his office (an 020 7219 number) show it is actually based at the Commons and many of his surgeries are not held at the Labour Party office but at other venues including Woolwich Town Hall and West Greenwich Community Centre.

But now something perhaps more controversial has come up. Raynsford, we learn, is one of Parliament’s highest extra-curricular earners – £148,000 a year, to be precise. To speak of second jobs doesn’t do him justice – he actually appears to have seven jobs.

They are vice-chairman of the Construction Industry Council (£50,000 pa), chairman of Rockpools, a recruitment firm for the public sector (£33,000), chairman of the National House Building Council (£25,000), non-executive director of the housing information provider Hometrack (£18,750), president of the building training agency Constructionarium (£9,000), non-executive director of the Fire Protection Agency (£7,000), and writing assignments at Building magazine and the Municipal Journal (£5,000 plus), not to mention that other little earner – Labour MP for Greenwich and Woolwich.

Now, I don’t in fact mind MPs having other jobs. We often complain that politicians are too cut off from the “real world,” that they waft up a sealed political career tube from student activist to MP’s researcher to trade union official to Westminster without at any point making contact with the world of work inhabited by most of their subjects.

Raynsford doesn’t fit into this category. Long before he was elected to Parliament, he had a strong record as a housing expert, campaigner and advocate. He became a competent and well-respected housing minister in Tony Blair’s government. There shouldn’t be any problem about his taking jobs in the field now he is a backbencher – so long as he is punctilious, which I’m sure he is, about telling us of his interest when he speaks.

But does such a large number of other commitments leave our MP too little time for the core work? Raynsford told the Telegraph: “On average, I work between 55 and 60 hours a week on Parliamentary and constituency affairs, and my private interests do not adversely affect my ability to discharge my public responsibilities.”

The evidence on this is mixed. Raynsford is a rather active parliamentarian. According to the official parliamentary search engine, he has spoken in the Commons chamber on eight occasions so far this year. According to the Public Whip website, he has attended just under 85 per cent of votes since 2005.

Since leaving the Government Raynsford has also taken part in some fairly high-impact rebellions on key issues. He voted on the rebel side in the Government’s two greatest defeats – against the proposal to detain suspected terrorists without charge for 90 days, and on the settlement rights of ex-Gurkhas. He has opposed and voted against the Heathrow third runway. He voted for a 100 per cent elected House of Lords.

Raynsford also, of course, publicly called for Gordon Brown to stand down as prime minister last month. Could this possibly have anything to do with him being fingered to the Telegraph for his extra jobs this month?

In the constituency, however, his activity levels seem lower. With others, Raynsford has successfully campaigned for a Crossrail station in Woolwich. He has chaired the “key stakeholders consultation group” on the redevelopment of Greenwich Market (and got pretty cross with me when I suggested the plans weren’t much good.) He holds six surgeries a month.

But Raynsford is relatively little seen in the local papers. The most recent press release on his website is nearly a year old. So far in 2009, he has scored just four mentions in the Factiva local press database (not a full record of all the local papers – but by comparison his Greenwich borough colleague, Clive Efford, Labour MP for Eltham, has ten mentions.)

Raynsford has also been accused of not responding to constituents’ letters. I, too, have written to him in the (albeit quite distant) past and failed to get a reply.

Raynsford’s latest annual report to constituents outlines the following set of constituency activities for the year to spring 2009. (By the way, it’s worth noticing that the report, although produced from public funds, has the same colours and typefaces as a Labour Party election leaflet.)

He “[met] regularly with TfL and South East Trains (sic) to discuss their plans and make sure they are responsive to local residents’ concerns.” He has been “working closely with the Olympic Delivery Authority and Greenwich Local Labour and Business to ensure that training programmes [from holding the Olympics in Greenwich Park] are in place and job opportunities are made available locally.”

He has been “working to ensure that regeneration schemes in Greenwich continue despite the economic downturn.” He has helped secure improved paving and lighting around Westcombe Park station and claims “significant progress over the past year” in the project to bring new buildings to a number of local schools.

As readers may know, Southeastern Trains will in December reduce the number of direct train services from Greenwich to Charing Cross, although overall peak services into central London will increase. Job and training opportunities from the Olympics in Greenwich appear conspicuous by their absence, although Mr Raynsford has told Greenwich.co.uk that 137 jobs at the Olympic site have gone to local people. The regeneration schemes at Greenwich Pier and the old District Hospital site are stalled (Boris Johnson proposed to kick-start the latter with mayoral funding, but the Government has called it in). The market development seems to be going ahead despite there being no clear need for it.

Far from there being “significant progress” on new school buildings, works have not yet even started on any of the five schools involved, five years after the programme was first announced (neighbouring Lewisham, which announced at the same time and under the same Government programme, has already finished two of its school rebuildings.)

None of this, of course, is Raynsford’s fault. And it is in many ways refreshing that we have an MP who seems more interested in national issues than in the kind of pavement politics and social work that tie so many parliamentarians down. Pavement politics is, or should be, what councillors are for.

Still, given the many problems with our dear council, perhaps it could be argued that Greenwich needs Nick Raynsford more than the National House Building Council and Rockpools Recruitment does.