Lawyers lead accountants in politics
Only 40 of the candidates standing in next week's general election list accountancy on their CVs, compared with 170 would-be MPs with legal backgrounds.
Four of the current members of the cabinet are lawyers, while accountancy is not represented at all. Just ten of the sitting MPs are accountants.
According to exclusive analysis for Accountancy Age by the Jackson Consultancy, a PR and political agency specialising in the professional sector, there appears to be no good reason for there being so few accountants in parliament.
‘Looking at the backgrounds of those candidates there seems to be little explanation of why accountants are so poorly represented in the Commons.
‘Of the current prospective parliamentary candidates some have worked for large accountancy firms, a number have run their own practices, some have worked in the public sector and others as management accounts in industry. That is a pretty comprehensive cross-section of the business world.’
Of those standing perhaps one of the conspicuous is Alex Finn, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, who will compete for a seat in Middlesborough, at the same time as the other 40 listed on pages 18 and 19.
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