By Rosie Campbell and Sarah Childs

Elected Greens will also advocate for ways to make politics more accessible to under- represented groups including women and disabled people. These could include proposals such as job sharing for MPs and a permanent access to elected office fund to help with the costs of standing for election.[1]

The verdict was damning: the august trio of Mark Darcy (formerly of BBC Parliament), Ruth Fox, (Director of the Hansard Society), and Professor Meg Russell (Director of the Constitution Unit at UCL) were all against. The inclusion of MP Job-shares in the Green Party manifesto is, in their view: (i) unfair to constituencies that continue with only one MP; (ii) risks confusion and disarray when job-sharing MPs disagree on  contentious conscious issues; and (iii) risks reproducing, if not entrenching, a gendered division of Westminster and constituency work, to men’s advantage.

Diversity is a ‘noble’ cause - in the words of Russell - and she is correct to state that it is hard to ‘stamp out the unfairness in the system’. She also acknowledged on air that some of her feminist friends would be ‘shouting at the radio’ - and in this, she was again correct. As the authors of the Fawcett Society’s Open House, Reflections on the Possibility and Practice of MPs Job-Sharing, we felt a responsibility to rebut the arguments we had just heard. One of us messaged Russell – in an act of academic feminist friendship - and told her of our intention to write a response.  

When we began looking into MPs job-share back in 2016, at the time of The Good Parliament Report, we had approached it from a gender sensitive parliaments approach. We regarded it as one means amongst many others by which to redress men’s dominance of the House of Commons. The most direct and quickest way to bring about gender balance in political institutions remains the use of mandatory gender quotas that require all political parties to (s)elect equal numbers of women and men. The global evidence is clear that well-designed quotas with sanctions for non-compliance quickly removes any demand-side obstacles to equal representation, and can also increase the number of women seeking (s)election as candidates – thereby increasing the supply pool of women. Evidence from the UK shows that Labour’s adoption of All-Women Shortlists (a voluntary party quota) prior to the 1997 General Election transformed that party into one that following the 2019 GE, saw women constitute 51% of the Parliamentary Labour Party. 

Yet, if MP job-share constitutes a way in which women unable to serve as full-time MPs are enabled to participate in politics, we argued for its serious consideration. By the time we came to write Open House, we were even more strongly of the view that MP job-share was a necessary provision for those who might never be able to take up their right to participate: those with a disability, chronic condition, or life-long caring responsibility, that renders them unable to realise the formal equality of opportunity to (seek to) participate as an elected representative.

This is not to say that job-share does not raise serious questions of representation and accountability. Nevertheless, we contend that these are not insurmountable, and can be overcome by the adoption of a considered, but not onerous, set of MP job-share principles and practices. Note too, that salaries and benefits are split between the jobsharers, so the cost to the public purse does not increase. 

Let us tackle The Parliament Matter’s critique head on, and in reverse order: 

1. (Re)producing gender inequality. The obvious retort here is that this criticism assumes that job-share MPs will be split between women and men, with the men taking on the ‘important’ bits of the job leaving the women to do all the ‘social work’ in the constituency. Both parts of this claim can be countered: there need not be a man/woman split. The contrast drawn, and hierarchy implied, between MPs’ legislative and constituency work should also be challenged. That said, we would be concerned if the outcome of MP job-share was men MPs disproportionately taking over the higher profile, legislative parts of the job, and assuming they gain promotion, coming to dominate front bench and Government positions.
2. Disagreement over how to vote. While Darcy drew attention to issues of conscience (where the party Whip is not in play), Fox extended the argument to policies, including those in the manifesto. In essence: what happens when job-share MPs disagree? Will the outcome of a division simply be decided by who turns up (who is working) on the day in question? Admittedly job-share MPs may disagree on a vote, although we suspect that just like job-sharers beyond politics, in most cases the couple will ‘share’ political positions, attitudes and dispositions. Would a pro-choice MP agree to job-share with an anti-abortion MP and vice versa? Is it likely that someone on the left of a party would job-share with one on the right? A critic might still ask, what if a new issue comes up where the job-sharers find themselves unexpectedly disagreeing? For example over a new and unforeseen war or conflict. Although likely to be rare, collective responsibility between the job-shares, the solution is procedural – to abstain in such circumstances. Current MPs sometimes find themselves in ‘two minds’ over a vote, and similarly decide to abstain. There are no rules forcing MPs to vote (on either conscience or any other division), and with their electorate clear about the process in advance, this practice effectively manages the problem.
3. Unfairness between MPs. This criticism speaks to concerns that with a job-share pair of MPs, there are more ‘bodies’ who can - and would  - work more hours. This is a misrepresentation. Job-sharers work at different times: they share hours, not duplicate them. For example, one job-share MP may work the first half of the week, the other, the second half. Or one may work one week (or some other time period) and the other works the next. And if the concern is less the formal constituency or Westminster labour, and more the party politicking in the constituency (as we suspect), then it is important to acknowledge that such inequalities are already in play. MPs are to greater or lesser degrees able to attend events and campaign depending on their other responsibilities, not least family and caring commitments. It would be unlikely too, that any MP who can work full-time would undertake a job-share just so they could do more politics for half the salary.

We have previously written ‘… job-sharing for MPs barely registers on the political or parliamentary agenda. The public are agnostic; most MPs we have spoken to are hostile; and there is, apart from the vocal disability rights campaigns, no broad civil society mobilization.’ Some five years on, we continue to believe that job-share for MPs should not be summarily dismissed as unfeasible or unwarranted. The courts have returned the issue to the legislature, and the 2024 Parliament – and specifically its purported new modernization committee – should, in our opinion reconsider it. The Welsh Parliament may very well investigate job-share as part of the Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidates List) Bill; and is part of Recommendation 3 in the recent Scottish Parliament Gender Sensitive Parliament Audit Report, with the call for more research. So, even if this blog fails to persuade sceptics in and of itself, we very much hope it kick starts the conversation anew, and in an informed fashion; one that appreciates that MPs’ job-share provides for political equality in respect of participation, and gives voters a real choice to elect MPs with a greater range of lived experiences.

Ultimately, of course, the public are protected by their votes; if they do not want job-share MPs, they can choose not to vote for them. With election law in the UK amended to permit MPs job-sharing, it could be introduced on a permissive rather than prescriptive basis – with political parties having the option of selecting candidates on a job-share basis; limit how many job-share MPs there could be in any one parliament (a handful distributed amongst parties); could require selection by open primaries to give the voters even more of say; require job sharers to set out in advance how they would manage their time and the Westminster/constituency workload; and/or a sunset clause could limit the practice for a particular time period, effectively introducing its trial.

[1] https://greenparty.org.uk/app/uploads/2024/06/Green-Party-2024-General-Election-Manifesto-Long-version-with-cover.pdf