John Penrose: Want better behaved Tory MPs? Decide what we’re looking for in candidates and ministers

John Penrose is a former Minister and MP. He is Chair of the Conservative Policy Forum and Founder & Director of Centre for Small-State Conservatives

Infighting, splits,“effing useless” Ministers and rescuing MPs from brothels.

Former Chief Whip Simon Hart’s diaries expose just how badly-behaved and incompetent some Conservative Parliamentarians had become in the dog days of the last Government. We looked divided, exhausted and, in the worst cases, in it for ourselves rather than to serve constituents or to make the country a better place. No wonder voters decided we didn’t deserve political power anymore.

It wasn’t everyone, of course.

As a former Conservative Whip myself, I saw most of our MPs were hard-working, professional and loyal public servants. But no team performs well if some of its players are rubbish, or decide they want to play a different style from everybody else, or are too busy signing autographs to get on the pitch. In that situation it doesn’t matter how talented or hard-working the rest of the squad may be, because relegation beckons.

Most of the problems are ones we’ve caused ourselves.

Capable Conservative MPs who are good at teamwork aren’t systematically identified and promoted, while less-talented egotists often are. Good skills or subject knowledge, particularly from previous roles outside Parliament, count for less than factional loyalties or personal friendships. Frontbench roles are reshuffled quickly, before anyone knows if people were doing them well or badly. Individual strengths and weaknesses aren’t systematically identified, communicated, developed or addressed. Political advisors (‘Spads’) undertake many tasks which junior frontbenchers would previously have done, making skill development harder and increasing the chances that Conservative MPs will reach senior roles which they aren’t ready or equipped to perform.

The result has been a consequence-free culture amongst some Conservative MPs, where bad behaviour doesn’t harm your prospects, and good doesn’t improve them.

The challenges of forging staff into motivated, dedicated, effective teams aren’t unique to politics.

Well-run companies, charities and public bodies do it all the time, and their staff perform far better as a result. So how do we weld Conservative MPs into a tighter, stronger, higher-performing team which uses everyone’s abilities to the full? Where talent and merit are systematically recognised, developed and rewarded, and which is admired and respected for the way it performs and behaves?

The answer is a full-scale culture reset in the way Conservative MPs are led and managed, and the first task is to be clear what we’re looking for. Most well-run organisations define and write down the specific behaviours which their teams need to deliver good results, with lots of examples of how to recognise good or bad examples in each case. For Conservative MPs the list includes things like strong team loyalty and support; in-depth understanding of important issues and subjects; high-quality oratory and debating skills; inspiring followership and building networks of influence with stakeholders and other MPs; and effective media handling.

Once we know what we’re after, there need to be regular performance reviews with every Conservative MP who wants to be considered for promotion, to agree what they are good or less good at, and to create a development programme so they can grow and improve. And, of course, the whips and the Party Leader must refuse to promote anyone who isn’t performing well enough, no matter who their friends are or which Party faction they belong to.

Next we should replace disruptive and distracting annual reshuffles with a small and steady trickle of individual job moves whenever they are needed to improve team performance, so talent management becomes a steady and continuous professional process rather than a moment of Westminster theatre.

The Press will hate losing all the drama, but reshuffles damage morale by upsetting three times more people than they please, and kill productivity as everyone spends weeks lobbying for their next job instead of doing their current one properly. Kemi has already promised no reshuffles for several years,  so we should make it a permanent change.

Conservative MPs will be far more motivated and higher-performing as a result.

Finally, we should enrich and upgrade frontbench roles so they offer more opportunities for talented MPs to develop and grow, and to show what they can do. That means flattening the frontbench hierarchy which, absurdly when Governments are legally limited to a maximum of 95 Ministers in the House of Commons, still has 6 levels from the most junior Parliamentary Private Secretary or ‘PPS’ up to the Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition.

And it means capping the ever-growing number of Spads, so poor-performing frontbenchers can’t cover up their shortcomings either.

None of this is rocket science.

Most of it is completely normal, modern leadership which anyone working for a good and meritocratic employer will recognise. But our Parliamentary talent-management has been left behind and needs an urgent upgrade. Two generations ago most Conservative MPs had been to the same schools and then served in the armed forces together, so unity and teamwork came easily. But now our Parliamentarians are, rightly, much broader and more diverse so the bonds of loyalty and the mutual trust of high-performing teams have to be deliberately forged and earnt instead.

But the prize will be worth it. Not just because Conservative MPs will be a tighter, stronger, happier, more-capable team which delivers better Governments by using everyone’s talents to the full. But also because it will prove we’ve learnt the lesson of our election defeat; that we’ve got to reform ourselves before voters will trust us to run the country.