It’s less than a fortnight until MPs return from their hols and already familiar faces are being spotted around SW1. But having publicised their own recommendations for books to read this summer, Mr S thought it only fair to look at what the MPs themselves have been perusing in the House of Commons library.
Some £208,000 worth of newspapers and periodicals subscriptions are currently funded each year to aide our rulers in their search for enlightened judgement. Some 57 different regional and national newspapers are available to honourable members, from the Belfast Telegraph to the Yorkshire Post. While the Fleet Street giants account for much of the sales, it is the Birmingham Post – yours for £2.70 – which cost the Commons the most last year at £2,660, the equivalent of roughly 985 editions.
Representation is of course fundamental to the Commons’ raison d’etre and judging by the reading materials available, that purpose is being kept alive and well. The professional grievance-merchants at The National will no doubt be delighted to discover they get their own version of the Barnett formula in the £620 spent by the parliamentary library each year. Similarly the good comrades at the Morning Star get £341 a year in subscriptions – presumably at the instigation of Jeremy Corbyn.
Other regionals on which marginal backbenchers are clearly keeping a close eye include the Eastern Daily Press – on which £1,034 was spent – the Western Morning News in Devon (£1,135) and the daily Glasgow Herald (£1,063). The Western Daily Press print edition costs ran to (£1,129) and is no doubt required reading for justice minister Alex Chalk as he seeks to assiduously nurse his ultra-marginal Cheltenham constituency. Some £2,382 was also bizarrely spent on the Times and the Sunday Times – despite MPs and staff being given free online access by virtue of their parliamentary email addresses.
Similar fun can be found in the £185,000 worth of periodicals. John McDonnell no doubt appreciates the £60 deal with Socialist Worker while Brexit supremo Lord Frost could benefit from flicking through parliamentary copies of Fishing News. Matt Hancock meanwhile can enjoy his copy of Parliamentary Affairs with his new found free time. The Freedom of Information reply notes sniffily that the £105 Catholic Herald subscription was not renewed – a sad indictment of Britain’s possible first Catholic premier.
The priciest subscriptions are for legal research service Westlaw at a cool £52,000, followed by the Oxford University Press Premium on £20,000 and the Health Service Journal at £14,000. Other august outlets did not fare so well, with Commons bosses lavishing just £206 on the intrepid hacks at Politico – slightly less than the £207 spent on copies of Methodist Recorder.
Steerpike hopes that the copies of Foreign Policy will be among those closely studied when the Commons returns to discuss the disaster of Afghanistan.
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