There were however numerous people who dismissed what I had found claiming it was not statistically significant and/or there were problems with the methodology I used.
I never claimed to be a statistician (although my work was reviewed by someone who is better qualified on that score than me and he certainly thought there was something in it) but I did think it was striking when split into quartiles how the safer an MP's seat, the higher their apparent chances of being involved in the scandal.
Obviously the fuss from the original research has long since died down and I hope I have proved in the intervening years that I am not some sort of safe seat correlation obsessed one trick pony but when the latest expenses scandal broke I couldn't help but wonder if I was to apply my original analysis to it whether we would see anything different. I actually expected that we would not see the same sort of thing, after all this is a quite significantly changed parliament and as various people were queueing up to tell me before, my original findings apparently were just coincidental.
So surely this time around we would find no link? Certainly not a similar shaped graph to last time anyway?
Well I only have 14 names out of the 27 supposed transgressors so far but....
Er....
I think this analysis will be flawed as the only people who are in a position to undertake these steps (ie rent out a property previously bought under expenses) are those MPs who were in Parliment prior to 2010.
ReplyDeleteAs they will all have held their seats in 2010 there will b a bias to people who have safe seats
@Hywel
ReplyDeleteThat's a fair point. However what you seem to be saying is that if you have a safer seat (i.e. you're in parliament for several terms) then over time you are more likely to be tempted into gaming the system in some way. So in the end I still think it's an argument for reflecting upon how our existing system operates and what sort of incentives it provides for MPs.
Which begs the question, why has the coalition not brought in the Recall legislation that was in the coalition agreement, and why will the libdems not support the boundary changes so we will have fewer MPs ripping the taxpayer off?
ReplyDeleteRecall might just backfire on the LibDems as they are so unpopular for having joined the Tories in Government. Now they have had a taste of power they are not about to support any move to dispossess them.
ReplyDeleteIt is of course possible to look at the marginal effect of a safe seat conditional on time in parliament. The sample size probably isnt large enough (yet) to do that with statistical robustness.
ReplyDelete