Speech at the launch of Jericho Road Solutions, 15th May 2013

Welcome, and thank you for coming to wet the baby’s head.

I’m going to revisit a speech I first gave in November 2010 which was the first time I used the Jericho Road quote. Goes to show you never know where an inspirational quote might take you!

“On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will only be an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s history.”

Martin Luther King, ‘A Time to Break Silence’, 1967

At that time the Government was busy drafting legislation [now law] to ‘give’ a series of rights to local communities. After many years of the rhetoric of ‘community empowerment’, the cliché that ‘local people know best’ and the fundamental failure to do anything practical about it, this new language of community rights had to be welcomed. And we will not wait to see if they mean it this time: we must make it true.

In the real unequal world rights are not legislated by government. The Equal Pay Act did not close the pay gap, anti-discrimination laws do not end prejudice. In his Civil Rights Message on the day the Alabama National Guardsman were called to enforce the rights of two black students to attend the university, JFK said that Congress had to act but that civil rights would only be achieved by the human decency of every American citizen. He also famously acknowledged that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Even in 2010 the parallel shock-and-awe of spending cuts, welfare raiding and mass asset disposal made his words more relevant to us than they had been for 25 years. That was 2 ½ years ago and we’re still only a third of the way through the deficit. One of you told me last week that there are bigger horrors to come and asked how to give communities as good a chance as possible in that world?

How can we possibly remain optimists? I suppose the reason I am still optimistic despite everything is that I always knew that it wouldn’t be the state or the market that creates the positive local change that people long for.

It is collective local action that will transform the Jericho Road.

In 2010, working for Locality, I spoke specifically about community anchors – independent, neighbourhood-based organisations led by local people – with their long history and impressive geographical spread, their commitment to social justice through collective social action, creating local wealth and keeping it local, building resilience for themselves and throughout their communities – surviving in order to adapt in order to serve.

I’ve often said that Locality members are bi-focal organisations. As well as dedicating passionate energy to their own fine-grain patch and its people, they care about and support each other across the country.

Jericho Road Solutions is also bi-focal. I came from 10 years of neighbourhood work, into 10 years of national roles. Now I want explicitly to do both.

• On the one hand, Neighbourhood coaching – to help local leaders make change that is fulfilling, balanced and done well.
  
• On the other, National POP Design –creating policies, organisations and programmes that make local change easier.
  

If collective local action will transform the Jericho Road, then the bonds between localities will make sure that’s not an isolated right enjoyed by the few, but a control-shift that genuinely enables people in any neighbourhood to get on with what needs doing.

Jericho Road will be an active pollinator. Those of you who follow @LocalityJess on twitter will know that one of the few non-neighbourhood causes I promote is Bees. That’s not just cos they’re so cute and fluffy and brave and useful; it’s a total admiration for the bee as metaphor – the pollinator whose self-interested busy-ness is so fundamentally for the common good.

[I said in 2010] This is not a bid for power-over, for ‘communities at the helm’ of big budget regeneration – we know that time is over, for what it was worth. This is a demand for power-to, for groups of local people to be allowed to make our own change, using whatever resources we can collectively marshal.

The challenges ahead [at the end of 2010 and still now in mid 2013] are undeniably frightening and the opportunities are hard to grasp before they slip away. I believe in the value of individuals and communities. Not all communities are ‘good’, any more than all individuals are ‘good’; but they all have the potential. I believe in the economies of small scale; the power of Margaret Mead’s small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens; the hard craft of cooperation as described by Richard Sennett.

Lindon Johnson said “The Great Society is not… a resting place… a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us towards a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvellous products of our labor.”

We need to be sketching the new horizon. What would our world look like if the rights & resilience of neighbourhoods
were given
due weight?

Imagine this…

By 2020: Scorched-earth regeneration and maturbatory masterplanning are old-fashioned and discredited. New regeneration focuses on supporting ideas, conversations, leadership and collective action.

It’s based on values: compassion, equity, integrity, courage

• COMPASSION: We feel for each other, not for charity but for solidarity. And because as listening and collective action becomes increasingly normal, we are less scared of each other.
  
• EQUITY: No decisions about us without us – the recognised signs of a good LA or LEP (or whatever has replaced them) are its creative outreach, multiple networks , visible accountability
  
• INTEGRITY: We approach challenges in good faith. We say what we mean and mean what we say – an old cliché but one still worth living by
  
• COURAGE: Often we say and do things that fail. Failure is the development cost for the next attempt. We need the courage of honest doubt, to have a go anyway, to feel your way in the dark. We need the optimism bias that allows us to take risks for innovation, for change, for freedom.
  

On that new horizon is an approach that squeezes every single resource – it roots out ‘waste’ like a truffle pig. Not the waste of giving people a biscuit at meetings, but the economic and social wastelands left by the failures of the paternalist state and the reckless market.

In their place, supported by an enabling state and an incentivised pro-social market, self-renovating neighbourhoods go with the grain of the three great grassroots virtues – impatience, thrift, and sociability – that were ignored for so long.

• People are doing stuff right now, they are used to meanwhiling, it’s part of how you make change. Even the funders have caught up, admirably led by Heritage Lottery Fund back in the day.
  
• People are proud to be resourceful, thrifty, to make things happen by unlocking the hidden resources
  
• People are actually enjoying themselves. All that energy and money wasted on fake consultation has been diverted into what I call the Biscuit Fund. No more draughty church hall meetings… instead picnics and pot-luck dinners, bake-offs and curry nights. Bringing the food bank and the planning workshop together… bringing hospitality back into community action.
  

And by 2020 there has been a big change – one that has released many millions of pounds back into the economy and begun to heal the scars of the welfare wars . The danger and stupidity of the foul talk of ‘scroungers’ was finally exposed by a campaign of the stature of ‘Cathy Come Home’. It became obvious that the abiding principle of 21^st century welfare should be communities. Welfare policy must recognise the role communities play or could play in an individual’s transition to productive work and personal independence. Welfare spend must be an investment in communities as well as individuals. The Community Allowance – which lets community organisations pay local people to do work that is good for the neighbourhood, without losing their benefit status – is part of a wider shift towards a pro-social economy. Picture it…

OK, open your eyes! Here we are in 2013. When will we start towards that horizon?

The rest of the evening is a taster of the Social Salon which we aim to launch later this year. Let’s use the idea of ‘sketching the horizon’ to seed some conversations. So what do you see when you look at the line where NOW joins the FUTURE? What are you doing in your life/work to move towards that horizon to make the good things better and the bad things less scary? And how might enlightened conversation in mixed company help?

A toast to the rights and resilience of neighbourhoods.

TO NEIGHBOURHOODS.

And a toast to Jericho Road Solutions, which gives me the opportunity to be useful and brave (if not cute and fluffy!).

TO JERICHO ROAD

Is this real? The evil of targets

I was forwarded this by one of our community organisers. As I read it I kept thinking this cannot be true. I hope it is fake but I have a horrible feeling that it’s a true reflection of JobCentre/DWP culture in any case.

131781238-DWP-Whistleblower-Letter

Welfare reform & communities

Today’s second speech was at Respublica’s event to launch Julian Dobson’s excellent report “Responsible Recovery: A social contract for local growth”.

Welfare reform and communities

Jess Steele, Locality Innovation Director & Chair of CREATE Consortium

I’ve worked for the past 12 years to get welfare and communities into the same sentence, onto the same platform. It’s hard to imagine now, but in 2001 there was so little talk about benefits in politics, in the news, on TV, in the public discourse, that if you mentioned it you were seen as some kind of policy nerd. People’s eyes really did glaze over.

Among the few people who did talk about it, benefits was seen as entirely about individuals. In fact this was a deliberate policy. The idea of a unified group called ‘claimants’ is so scary to the powerful that they run divide and rule even when they don’t realise they’re doing it – why do you think the system got so complicated, so many different benefits?

I joined the National Community Forum in 2001 – a group of 24 people who lived and worked in deprived neighbourhoods throughout England and were recruited to speak up for those kind of areas, to be a sounding board for ministers trying to get policy right. At our very first meeting we knew that the thing that mattered most in our communities was the benefits trap and the argument we needed to make was that welfare is a neighbourhood issue and we will never transform poor neighbourhoods without transforming the benefits system.

I hoped that the day would come when we could get the people who designed benefits and the people who designed neighbourhood regeneration into the same room – so we could do something truly positive, something that would be a win-win-win for individuals and their families, for neighbourhoods, and for the taxpayer.

I never imagined that when people finally realised the interconnections, finally saw that welfare is a community issue, it would be because of welfare policies that degrade whole communities and evict people from their neighbourhoods.

A lot of my efforts went into revealing the hatefulness hiding behind New Labour’s weasel words about ‘tackling social exclusion’. The Victorian doctrine of less eligibility – the old trope of making it as horrific as possible to be on benefits – the language was there but hidden. Now that hatred has leapt into the open and brazenly knocks lumps out of our compassion with the toxic public discourse of ‘strivers and shirkers’.

There is no more Orwellian word than ‘reform’, with its positive connotations that can be attached to such viciousness. I have never been in any doubt that the system needs to change or that there would be people who lose out financially from those changes. But reform would make a system that was both more effective and more civilised. That means reflecting people’s real lives and the world as it is that they live in.

It would be flexible as lives change, it would be responsive to wide-ranging needs.

It would encourage and reward effort rather than punishing initiative.

(Muhummed Yunis quote: if a man on welfare earns a dollar, give him another dollar, don’t take the first one away)

It would be not an on-off switch with dangerously exposed wiring but a safe bridge towards greater independence and contribution.

A reformed system would use the £200 billion welfare spend as an investment (mind you since we seem incapable of using even the banks we almost wholly own as investment vehicles, why would I expect the capacity to grasp the idea that spending that much money could be transformational rather than transactional?). It should be an investment because it can provide the baseline income that gives people a chance to make change in their own lives through making a difference in their neighbourhood.

Let me tell you what I would do and you can judge….

The Community Allowance would allow community groups to pay local people to do work that is good for the neighbourhood for up to a year without losing their benefit status. We never asked the state to pay the wages, just to let people keep them. ‘Allowance’ as in permission rather than pocket money.

I believe that in neighbourhood regeneration, if local people aren’t doing the job then the job is not getting done. I want to see neighbourhoods where everyone is working on the neighbourhood to-do list and that process is planned and strategic because it actively prepares people for economic contribution – not least by expanding their social networks

Welfare has never only been about the giro. That was our point when we talked about not risking benefit status. All the passported benefits – free prescriptions, free school meals, help with school uniform and of course the most important of all – secure shelter, the home.

In May 2006 we presented the Community Allowance to Margaret Hodge (the 8th of the 12 ministers I presented it to). She was very supportive but said “I’m sure you can do this within the rules” and asked her officials to work with us on it. That was the Friday, by Monday she’d been reshuffled! The civil servants did look into it and their initial response was positive, at least for people on Incapacity Benefit who were permitted to earn up to £92 a week. But with a bit more digging their claim that the permission to earn was “not relevant to Housing Benefit” turned out to mean not that HB would be protected but in fact the opposite, that the permission was not relevant to HB which would be removed pound for pound.

The fact is that 12 years on it is still not possible to pay people to do work that is good for the neighbourhood. We have been through the ‘boom’ times in which some neighbourhoods have received concentrated regen worth up to £12k per household, where a place like Deptford (a third of a London borough) saw over 20 regeneration programmes, spending over £200 million, yet relative deprivation hardly shifted at all and local people didn’t get to make the difference. Those days are gone; the old regeneration (dependent on government funny money and housebuilders’ bribes) is dead. Yet even in the bleak midwinter of austerity there is still some money, wages are cheap compared to infrastructure, and it is more important than ever that we use all the resources we can muster because what we need now is self-renovating neighbourhoods.

So what are the impacts of welfare reform on communities? What should have been transformative has become destructive, a policy not only of punishing the poor, this is a clearance policy – ruining the balance of all kinds of places, impacting on neighbourhoods everywhere, and nowhere for the better.

Welfare is a community issue.

The benefits trap has community solutions.

But communities will have to wake up if they want to survive. Doing this differently is no longer an interesting public investment proposition for nerds. It’s an urgent response to a very real and present danger, not just for individuals but for communities and neighbourhoods.

East London – 10 years of regeneration

I gave two speeches today. The first was at an event organised by Community Links in Canning Town.

REGENERATION OF EAST LONDON

[I'm going to see if you can multi-task! While I'm talking, sketch a little map of a bit of East London you know well – a patch, a piece of neighbourhood (a few roads around a junction, or maybe a block of flats, a scrap of land and a dead pub, or a parade of shops with space behind, or a high road with a tube station and shops). It doesn't have to be accurate but it will help focus you on the scale I want to talk about.]

1897 BOOTH MAP IN BACKGROUND

I want to say something about timescales – we focus too much on electoral, developer or academic timescales. The timescales I’m interested in are RIGHT NOW, GENERATIONAL, and THE 100 YEAR HORIZON.

There are 4 types of regeneration:

Laissez-faire – not really an option in East London since Booth revealed the extent of what they called ‘the Social Problem’ in the 1890s.

Traditional regeneration has barely touched relative deprivation, though it has tidied up very well – everything from the great public health infrastructure projects to shopfront improvements, from employment and training to healthy living. It was starting to infiltrate every area of life (I remember when km of road built and number of LA dwellings demolished were regeneration outputs, joined by childcare places and pupils benefiting). But rarely transformative either of places or power.

Radical (neo-liberal) regeneration certainly shifts the demographics around. At best its massive interventions have their own public good (eg Olympics); at worst they are ideological clearances, either physical through major demolition or fiscal as with benefit capping and the bedroom tax. They change places by shifting people with the equivalent of shock and awe.

True regeneration

• redistributes power and agency so that people can make change without losing their footing.
  
• believes in people and nurtures mix
  
• about consciousness-raising to take charge not capacity building to sit round the tables of the powerful
  
• is obsessed with growing leadership and trust, rather than not partnerships and monitoring
  
• changes the physical and social landscape, one patch at a time, rather than focusing on master-plans and flagships
  

Thinking about ‘true regeneration’ has led me to the idea of ‘self-renovating neighbourhoods’.

4 key elements of self-renovating neighbourhoods

1. Self-defined, fine-grain neighbourhoods
   
2. Local people initiating, managing and making it happen for themselves
   
3. The importance of self-interest as motivator – selfish versus selfless. Greedy selfishness cannot motivate collective action. Worthy selflessness might mean you will save a child from running into a road, but that’s a one-off act, it cannot sustain motivation. Only collective self-interest can do that.
   
4. The three grassroots virtues of thrift, impatience, sociability – so ignored by traditional/neo-liberal regeneration.
   

Overall – self-renovation is about unlocking trapped resources – people, land/buildings, money.

In the next 10-100 years I want to see:

a) prioritising of systematic listening, networking and leadership support

b) groups of people with a mutual self-interest coming together to agree to self-renovate a patch

c) all the top-down stuff being about enabling (the state as enabler) and all the bottom-up stuff being about doing.

d) community anchors – creating wealth in local communities and keeping it there

I’m ambitious – I want neighbourhoods where everyone is working. It’s not like there isn’t enough to do in our neighbourhoods. But it will require a shift in the way we understand ‘work’ and how we reform welfare, not to punish the poor and clear out neighbourhoods but to reward work that is good for the neighbourhood – the Community Allowance.

So how did you get on with your sketch maps?

• How does it feel to think fine-grain rather than master-strategy?
  
• Can you imagine the self-interest that might drive the change at that scale?
  
• What is in the way of self-renovation?
  

What can you do right now?

• Spread the word, help to embed the elements of self-renovation – fine-grain, self-interest, listening, leadership development
  
• Reject or, if you’re brave enough, subvert authoritarian, neo-liberal regen wherever you encounter it
  
• Be ambitious, and don’t make assumptions about people or places – given a chance they will usually surprise you.
  
• Help develop the National Grid for Neighbourhoods (as with electricity grid) – drawing down funds to undertake self-renovation, mini-agreements with the beneficiaries, uploading funds as the results come through. We will need to challenge funders to think differently.
  

Ba-Ba-Boom! Huzzah! Wow! OMG! Thank the Gods!

Sometimes when things work out well we can hardly believe it’s because of us. We want to feel the thunderbolt and praise Thor!

I’m really pleased that tonight Hastings Pier was saved. This is how I felt when I knew:

But you know what? It wasn’t Thor. I know for definite that it’s all down to the dogged persistence of local people. Tell the story one way and it’s a classic Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has” but tell the true story and it’s actually loads of people – the whole of Hastings and our allies far beyond.

This pier is going to make a lot of differences. It’s a catalyst, and it’s ours, all of ours. That’s what’s so brilliant about it – it’s classless, ageless, baggage-free, it really is for everyone.

This will transform Hastings, slowly and with lots of help. I know that there are business people thinking of investing; there are artists who want to make something happen; there are local residents who met their husbands and wives long ago on the pier who want to rekindle; there are people waiting for jobs and the chance to learn something right here at home, there are anglers who will catch the biggest fish; there are teenagers wanting to snog; and somewhere there’s a couple who love each other very much who are waiting till the pier is rebuilt to get married.

The People’s Pier is on its way. Check out www.hpwrt.co.uk for all the news.

I’m just fit to burst with pride and happiness.

Jess

Self-renovating neighbourhoods

Here is the presentation I gave to the #Locality12 convention 7th Nov 12.

Jess Steele Self Renovating Neighbourhoods Locality12

Comments and further discussion welcome.

The full essay is available here 

Ministerial list, 5 Sept 12

It’s been annoying me so much not to be able to get a full list of government ministers anywhere on the net that I decided to nick this one from Conservative Home as soon as I found it!

Cabinet Office

• Minister for the Cabinet Office, Paymaster General – Rt Hon Francis Maude MP
  
• Minister for Government Policy – Rt Hon Oliver Letwin MP
  
• Minister of State – Rt Hon David Laws MP (jointly with the Department for Education)
  
• Parliamentary Secretary – Nick Hurd MP
  
• Parliamentary Secretary – Chloe Smith MP
  

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

• Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills; and President of the Board of Trade – Rt Hon Dr Vincent Cable MP
  
• Minister of State (Universities and Science) – Rt Hon David Willetts MP
  
• Minister of State – Michael Fallon MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Jo Swinson MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Matthew Hancock MP (jointly
  
• with the Department for Education)
  

Department for Communities and Local Government

• Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government – Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP
  
• Senior Minister of State (Faith and Communities) – Rt Hon Baroness Warsi (jointly with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office)
  
• Minister of State (Housing) – Mark Prisk MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Planning) – Nicholas Boles MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Rt Hon Don Foster MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Brandon Lewis MP
  

Department for Culture, Media and Sport

• Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; and Minister for Women and Equalities – Maria Miller MP
  
• Minister of State – Hugh Robertson MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Hon Ed Vaizey MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Women and Equalities) – Helen Grant MP (jointly with the Ministry of Justice)
  

Ministry of Defence

• Secretary of State for Defence – Rt Hon Philip Hammond MP
  
• Minister of State – Rt Hon Andrew Robathan MP
  
• Minister of State – Rt Hon Mark Francois MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Dr Andrew Murrison MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Philip Dunne MP
  

Department for Education

• Secretary of State for Education – Rt Hon Michael Gove MP
  
• Minister of State – Rt Hon David Laws MP (jointly with the Cabinet Office)
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Matthew Hancock MP (jointly with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills)
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Edward Timpson MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Elizabeth Truss MP
  

Department of Energy and Climate Change

• Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change – Rt Hon Edward Davey MP
  
• Minister of State – Gregory Barker MP
  
• Minister of State – John Hayes MP
  

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

• Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – Rt Hon Owen Paterson MP
  
• Minister of State – David Heath CBE MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Richard Benyon MP
  

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

• First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs – Rt Hon William Hague MP
  
• Senior Minister of State – Rt Hon Baroness Warsi (jointly with the Department for Communities and Local Government)
  
• Minister of State – Rt Hon David Lidington MP
  
• Minister of State – Rt Hon Hugo Swire MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Mark Simmonds MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Alistair Burt MP
  

Department of Health

• Secretary of State for Health – Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP
  
• Minister of State – Norman Lamb MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Anna Soubry MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Daniel Poulter MP
  

Home Office

• Secretary of State for the Home Department – Rt Hon Theresa May MP
  
• Minister of State (Immigration) – Mark Harper MP
  
• Minister of State (Policing) – Damian Green MP (jointly with the Ministry of Justice)
  
• Minister of State – Jeremy Browne MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – James Brokenshire MP
  

Department for International Development

• Secretary of State for International Development – Rt Hon Justine Greening MP
  
• Minister of State – Rt Hon Alan Duncan MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Lynne Featherstone MP
  

Ministry of Justice

• Lord Chancellor, Secretary of State for Justice – Rt Hon Chris Grayling MP
  
• Minister of State – Damian Green MP (jointly with the Home Office)
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Helen Grant MP (jointly with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Jeremy Wright MP
  

Northern Ireland Office

• Secretary of State for Northern Ireland – Rt Hon Theresa Villiers MP
  
• Minister of State – Mike Penning MP
  

Scotland Office

• Secretary of State for Scotland – Rt Hon Michael Moore MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Rt Hon David Mundell MP
  

Department for Transport

• Secretary of State for Transport – Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin MP
  
• Minister of State – Rt Hon Simon Burns MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Norman Baker MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Stephen Hammond MP
  

HM Treasury

• Chancellor of the Exchequer – Rt Hon George Osborne MP
  
• Chief Secretary to the Treasury – Rt Hon Danny Alexander MP
  
• Financial Secretary – Rt Hon Greg Clark MP
  
• Exchequer Secretary – David Gauke MP
  
• Economic Secretary – Sajid Javid MP
  

Wales Office

• Secretary of State for Wales – David Jones MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Stephen Crabb MP (jointly as a paid Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury (Whip) – House of Commons)
  

Department for Work and Pensions

• Secretary of State for Work and Pensions – Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP
  
• Minister of State – Mark Hoban MP
  
• Minister of State – Steve Webb MP
  
• Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – Esther McVey MP
  

Attorney General’s Office

• Attorney General – Rt Hon Dominic Grieve QC MP
  
• Solicitor General – Oliver Heald MP
  

Office of the Leader of the Commons

• Leader of the House of Commons, Lord Privy Seal – Rt Hon Andrew Lansley CBE MP
  
• Parliamentary Secretary (Deputy Leader) – Rt Hon Tom Brake MP
  

Ministers without Portfolio (Minister of State)

• Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke QC MP
  
• Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (and Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party)
  

Whips

• Chief Whip (Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury) – Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP
  
• Deputy Chief Whip (Treasurer of HM Household) – Rt Hon John Randall MP
  
• Deputy Chief Whip (Comptroller of HM Household) – Rt Hon Alistair Carmichael MP
  
• Government Whip (Vice Chamberlain of HM Household) – Rt Hon Greg Knight MP 
  
• Government Whip (Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury) – Rt Hon Desmond Swayne MP
  
• Government Whip (Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury) – Anne Milton MP
  
• Government Whip (Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury) – Stephen Crabb MP (jointly as an unpaid Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Wales Office)
  
• Government Whip (Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury) – David Evennett MP
  
• Government Whip (Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury) – Robert Goodwill MP
  
• Government Whip (Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury) – Mark Lancaster MP
  
• Assistant Government Whip – Greg Hands MP
  
• Assistant Government Whip – Karen Bradley MP
  
• Assistant Government Whip – Jo Johnson MP
  
• Assistant Government Whip – Nicky Morgan MP
  
• Assistant Government Whip – Robert Syms MP
  
• Assistant Government Whip – Mark Hunter MP
  
• Assistant Government Whip – Jenny Willott MP