The Value of Experience

“If only more of them had experience of the real world.” So commented one of the participants at a recent discussion at which I was present. The person concerned was talking about Members of Parliament. He went on to say what it was that he had in mind in terms of ‘real world experience’. Lo and behold it was business experience rather than the present situation, as he saw it, of MPs being ‘full time politicians’.
I have heard this attitude put forward so many times from similar types of individual. It has almost become a cliché but there would be no harm in our elected representatives having such a background, in my view, provided that the experience took the form of running their own business, putting their own money behind it and creating rather than exporting jobs.
Most importantly, the experience should definitely not be as an executive of a large corporation on bloated pay and pension packages, taking little by way of personal risk, being frequently responsible for offshoring jobs, receiving huge bonuses and equally huge payoffs when they have to be got rid of. These characters have far too much influence already.
People making such ‘business experience’ comments seem to think that elected representatives spend all their time politicking, whereas the day job consists mostly of resolving thousands of problems for their constituents every year, many of them complex and heart rending. It would be valuable experience for business people to try this kind of work themselves for a couple of years – they might learn a bit more about the world that their workers, customers and job applicants inhabit and the communities of which they themselves should be a part.
But as far as Members of Parliament are concerned, it has to be admitted that there is indeed a deficit of experience. What is lacking is the experience of living – say for just a year – on the national minimum wage, experiencing the pressurising that frequently goes with such jobs, the often anti-social hours, the threat of having their job exported and the joys of zero hours contracts that those with ‘business experience’ seem increasingly to introduce. The MPs should then live, say for six months or so - including winter – on the benefits slashed by the same government that cut taxes for the benefit of their rich friends and financial supporters. If there really is a ‘benefits scandal’, this is surely it.
Are there many Members of either chamber who have such invaluable real world experience? Precious few I suspect, especially in the parties of government. But this does not stop these London besotted legislators passing austerity measures without any first hand experience of what the effects of their decisions would be like for those affected.
And let’s have much more first hand experience too of what it’s like working at a modest level in an invaluable part of the public sector such as the National Health Service. Also beneficial would be active service as a squadie in the Army, a tough job in manufacturing industry (preferably on the shop floor) and taking frequent night shifts in call or distribution centres. And while we’re at it, let’s have much less experience of the legal profession and, can I bring myself to use the word again, banking.
Are we likely to see these sorts of truly valuable real world experiences gained to any significant extent? Your guess is probably the same as mine. But perhaps until such a distant time those people making the tired ‘real world’ comment about business experience alone will try to gain a broader and more realistic perspective and quieten down a bit. But I for one won’t be holding my breath!