Pick a sport: new jobs jamboree for MPs

Wanted: advisers on football, yachting and greyhound racing. In fact any sport will do. The only qualifications: being a Labour MP with nothing better to do. There are some perks involved: free tickets to major sporting events for instance.

These are the kind of "jobs" being offered by the Government to Labour backbenchers with time on their hands, giving advice to ministers.

Some are already in place and bombarding Whitehall departments with questions about their new specialisms. They are being answered by civil servants, with the taxpayer footing the bill.

And the first appointees will advise ministers on sports from football to motor racing - putting them at the front of the queue for free tickets to major events.

First off the mark was sports minister Richard Caborn. His 11 new Parliamentary advisers include persistent critics of Tony Blair such as Left-winger Alan Simpson, a leading opponent of British military action against Iraq - and now the Government's adviser on tennis.

Richard Burden, the member for Birmingham Northfield and new motor sport adviser, began a Leftwing revolt against the Blair leadership in 1995, criticising the new regime for centralising power and pressurising MPs to toe the line.

Jane Griffiths, the new cycling adviser, has been MP for Reading East since 1997. She frequently speaks out for the rights of prisoners of war and has criticised the sexism of the House of Commons.

Other new appointments include Kelvin Hopkins, MP for Luton North, who has become the adviser on yachting, Jarrow MP Stephen Hepburn, who lands the plum job of football adviser and David Clelland, the member for Tyne Bridge, who will from now on represent the interests of the greyhound racing industry.

Tory shadow Cabinet Office minister Tim Collins said the new advisers were totally unnecessary.

He said: "These sporting posts could be an excuse for doling out free tickets. Civil servants have a duty to look after ministers, not to run around on behalf of people appointed to keep backbenchers sweet. It looks like another way to buy off dissent."

More ministers are expected to appoint Parliamentary advisers soon. A Labour spokesman said: "The aim is to provide an opportunity for greater communication between backbenchers and the Government."

The posts sit right at the bottom of the ministerial ladder. They are a rung below Parliamentary Private Secretaries, the traditional unpaid bag-carriers who form part of the "payroll vote" - forced to back the Government in every vote, on pain of losing their job.

Labour insists that the new advisers will not be bound in the same way.

Last year the Parliamentary Labour Party called for backbenchers to be given more say in policy-making, and for MPs to be offered an alternative career structure other than the traditional ministerial route.

A Whitehall spokesman said Parliamentary advisers would have no more rights than any other backbench MP to demand information or help from civil servants.

However, a civil service source said that at least one of Mr Caborn's advisers had requested, and been provided with, information from another Whitehall department which related to his sporting brief.