Another Scottish Labour No Show

There was a big vote in the House of Commons today. We know it was big vote because the Labour Party told us it was. It was on transparency on equal pay put forward by Labour MP Sarah Champion to ensure that any employer with more than 250 employees be forced to detail any gender pay gap. It was a fantastic bill that would go a long way to ensure that employers were shamed into acknowledging sex pay differentials and obliged into putting it right. It was accompanied with ‘made in Dagenham’ references that were most definitely deserved. The SNP certainly though it was important – that is why we all turned up to vote. All other Scottish MPs would be there, particularly our Scottish Labour MP colleagues, you would think? Well, yeah, some of them turned up, but 11 of them obviously had better things to do. Shadow Scottish Secretary, Margaret Curran wasn’t there neither was the new Scottish leader, Jim Murphy, who this weekend said he would only turn up for the ‘big votes’ in the House of Commons. This apparently was not a ‘big vote’ for Jim. The curious thing about this vote was that the Tories didn’t oppose this Bill so Labour called it themselves. In the cause of transparency here are your Scottish elected members who couldn’t be bothered to turn up for their own vote on equal pay for women.

Scottish Labour leader – Jim Murphy
Shadow Scottish Secretary – Margaret Curran
Former Labour PM – Gordon Brown
Leader of ‘Better Together’ – Alistair Darling
Shadow Foreign Secretary – Douglas Alexander
Labour ‘socialist’ leadership candidate – Katy Clark
Labour front bencher – Russell Brown
Pamela Nash
Anne McGuire
Michael Connarty
Tom Harris

Some of them may have good reasons to have not been there, others may have had better things to do. You may want to ask them.