Happy New Year.
Some readers won’t have heard of All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs). They lack the status and influence of select committees, and there are several hundred of them, in contrast to the 20 or so committees that scrutinise government departments.
Unfortunately, APPGs have been in the news in recent weeks for the wrong reasons, including reports of heavy drinking on trips abroad and, on one trip, MPs said to have found sex workers in their hotel rooms when they checked in. At this stage the reports are only allegations.
There may well be a case for new rules for APPGs. But even if this proves to be the case, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the groups do important work and are not even sending MPs abroad, never mind seeing any questionable behaviour.
As the name implies, APPGs are required to have MPs (or Lords) from different parties involved in their running. There are various rules about meetings, minutes and finances. They illustrate the range of issues that come across MPs desks as there are groups for almost every area of policy, region, country, major medical condition and so on.
They’re used by MPs/Lords to promote issues by undertaking research, holding meetings with speakers (which the public can generally attend too) and campaigning for changes to policies and laws.
I chair 3 APPGs. One is the APPG for Social Mobility. This was the key theme of the charities I ran for disadvantaged young people before coming into politics and it lets me keep working on this issue alongside the many others I do as an MP.
Another is for the AEAT Pension Campaign, the local pensioners who saw their pensions decline in value after the company they were transferred to went bust in 2012.
The third APPG I chair is the group for Community Energy, which we formed last year in large part as a vehicle to promote the Local Electricity Bill I am the lead sponsor of. The bill would remove the barriers that currently exist to community-based sources of renewable energy being able to supply their local areas.
I am then a Vice-Chair of the Chalk Streams APPG and a member of one or two others, such as the one seeking justice for Equitable Life policyholders, which a number of constituents were.
None of the groups I chair have any money – common for APPGs – nor send anyone on trips abroad (or indeed anywhere else!). Bad behaviour in APPGs is very rare, so any changes made to the rules governing them should not throw the baby out with the bathwater and inadvertently reduce the amount of positive work undertaken by them.
