Job training? Yes, minister

MPs can be catapulted into ministerial office overnight and are left to sink or swim. Barry Sheerman thinks they need to be trained

On taking over as chairman of the Education Select Committee after last year's General Election, I looked at the talented group of parliamentarians on my committee and knew that we had the potential to show just how effective the select committee system could be.

Taking time out to ponder the role of select committees, we decided that, if the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) was so wedded to baseline assessments and performance review for teachers, why shouldn't our committee turn the tables on the ministerial team to assess them? In October we began to interview each one of the six DfES ministers, with no civil servants sitting alongside, on their hopes and aspirations for their jobs, and the way in which they intended to carry out their responsibilities and the Government's manifesto commitments.

It was, and remains, our intention to appraise the ministers annually and to assess their performance. This approach will, it is hoped, allow us to get closer to understanding how ministers see their jobs and take the committee back to the essential principle of checking and scrutinising the executive. As the interviews proceeded, I became more and more interested in how the men and women appearing before our committee saw their task as ministers and how they prepared themselves for the job.

Politics and parliament are strange places when it comes to training and skills. Members, especially after election landslides like 1997, tumble into Parliament fresh from a variety of careers and backgrounds, but none of them has had any serious training for the new job that they are attempting.

Many colleagues are utterly baffled by the lack of career guidelines, job descriptions and management structures. They find they are on their own in the Parliamentary jungle. After a perfunctory stab at induction, MPs are left to sink or swim, to pick it up for themselves or to learn at Nellie's knee.

As chairman of the education select committee and a member of the majority party in parliament, I am ashamed of this. It is nothing to be proud of to have to admit that 300 to 400 individuals have little training or attention given to the development of the skills needed for the job.

This lack of preparation is even worse when we look at the two career tracks that we in Parliament are attempting to promote – one into the administration as a minister, and the other in Parliament as a backbencher (as a select committee member, chairman or parliamentary office-holder of one kind or another).

There is no relevant training for either career. In the select committee system, MPs need skills in research. They need to hone their interrogation techniques, and the ability to work across party lines. They need to learn how to make compromises, and even how to be diplomatic. On a good committee that has the right leadership and where the membership is interested in acquiring the pertinent skills, the results can be positive, but too many colleagues miss the opportunity to make the most of their abilities.

Ministers are, as the Americans used to say, something else again. Backbenchers can be catapulted into office overnight and expected to perform ministerially immediately. But what are the skills that a minister needs? What is the job description and what competencies really count? Does a minister run the department? Or is that the job of the civil servants, who do have plenty of appropriate training?

Should the minister be a policy maker, policy deliverer, departmental manager, or just a good performer at the despatch box or on the media? Our questions to the clutch of six education ministers gave us a fascinating range of responses, but not one of them raised the issue of relevant skills.

If we have only a very vague notion of what skills ministers need to do their jobs, we are equally hazy about the way in which we judge whether or not a minister is competent.

What are the benchmarks of success? Is it about public approval? It is said that the final straw for Stephen Byers who resigned as Transport Secretary last month, was not the Transport Select Committee report, but rather the opinion poll suggesting an overwhelmingly negative public perception of his performance.

Delivering the party manifesto, gaining the necessary legislative time and programme, driving the policies forward and obtaining adequate funding – are these the hallmarks of the successful performance?

Holding on to office over time could be an important criteria of success. If it is, the political landscape is littered with ministerial failures, the average term of office being something more than two years. A trip down the corridor of remembrance close to the Secretary of State's office in the DfES is a sobering experience – we can see a photograph of each Education Secretary, their often brief period of office and frequently forgotten names.

What kind of Government can we expect when such little attention is paid to the management of the skills of the people who are running the country? And how serious is a system where a schools minister such as Stephen Timms is in post less than a year before being moved on to another post, and where two of the team we interviewed after the recent general election are already on their way elsewhere?

The writer is chairman of the House of Commons education selection committee

education@independent.co.uk