the real issue i have with MPs employing their family is that it can easily make the whole family economically dependent on the family member continuing to be an MP and the result of this is a kind of ‘dependency culture’ where the career takes precedence over all other considerations.

the payroll vote is already too numerous in parliament, without backbench MPs becming drones as well.

Standards are what we want, not voyeurism.

Reply: Yes, there is no accepted definition of “partner”, but I can see why MPs should declare if they are employing their live in lover, just as they now have to if they are employing their spouse.

Oooh! Who has been sleeping in the knife drawer then??

Frankly, I could not care less if Redwood does or does not employ his immediate family, so long as there is evidence to show value for money.

What we need in Parliament is transparency and accountability, which is exactly what we haven’t got at the moment.

If I had the choice, I would choose the member for Wokingham rather than (a Labour MP which the correspondent does not like -ed).

Reply: I think it is right that people should declare any members of their family working for them, or a partner they are living with. The BBC owe me an apology as I do not employ a family member or partner at the taxpayer’s expense. Taxpayers have a right to know, as these paid jobs at Westminster should be based on merit and offer value for money.

Reply: I do not employ a partner as a Researcher. Where and when did the BBC say that, for it is a libel?

Reply: I too am worried about the rise in the number of exams pupils have to take, and the concentration on learning “right answers” and “exam technique” rather than teaching a subject or discipline and trying to spark an enthusiasm or love for it. Good teachers still do so despite the system, but as you say it gets more and more difficult given the framework offered by the government.

(a) abolishing every education ‘authority’ in the land
(b) making all schools self-governing able to offer tuition in whatever they wanted, and
(c) giving parents education vouchers to the equivalent value of the spending per pupil in England that they could spend in whatever school they wanted

This creates choice for parents, competition between schools and good teachers could sell their services for higher salaries. It is widely accepted that competition raises standards, where as moribund state monopolies like state education do not.

Reply: Yes, it could. I have proposed making every school independent, and paying each parent up to an agreed maximum which would be enough to secure a good edcuation at most schools. Poeple could top it up if they wished for the smaller number of dearer schools.

Reply: There are good teachers in the NUT, and allowing children off school will not help.

“These people have a duty to serve the nation, if they have a grievance over pay or conditions they should negotiate that without recourse to strike.”

If they have a duty to serve the nation then the nation has a duty to pay them the going rate. If you remove the right to strike then the Government will simply pay whatever it wants to pay and impose whatever conditions it sees fit. The problem isn’t necessarily public sector workers being a bunch of millitant lefties, it’s more to do with the massive expansion in the public sector over the last 10 years so that the government simply cannot sustain the pay and pension bill any longer. Of course all of this was predicted but at the end of the day but it’s not the individual workers fault that the government has run out of cash to pay the very people it hired in the first place.

I am usually opposed to strike action and see it as a last resort to be used hardly ever. However, if my final salary pension sceme was under threat and all else had failed then I would go on strike. What else could I do to secure mine and my families future and all the money I had paid into the scheme in good faith?

It’s all well and good to say that in the case of the refinery workers that it is being closed to new entrants but we all know that once that concession was in that the existing members pensions would soon be under threat. You are an intelligent and educated man and a fine politician but many ordinary workers don’t have the same capacity as you to just move into a more lucrative sector and negotiate their own pay, conditions and pensions. What are they to do if they don’t exercise their right to strike?

Reply: if you are in a competitive company and you go on strike you are undermining your own job. In this case the action needs to be directed against the government, who did the damage to pension funds.

So true, but we can also see something else ‘in the long run’, government direction of research, government direction of admissions policy, government manipulation of the universities for its social policies. The net result is to devalue universities, devalue schools, and destroy public education in this country.

I am furious with the modern education system. My son is currently preparing for his exams in what is supposed to be one of the better state schools in the locality. He has no text books, he has no reading lists, each time I suggest he opens a book and read up on his subject, the retort is, “but the teacher says I only need to know .. x,y,z .. to pass the exam”. This is not education it is ANTI EDUCATION. Just jump through the hoops to permit the teachers to tick the boxes.

The government has not just destroyed a reasonably good pension system in this country, they have destroyed the education system too.