Prior Career as a Source of Policy Expertise: How the Former Profession of British MPs Shapes their Issue Attention in the House of Commons

There is a growing body of literature in legislative studies regarding the determinants of issue attention and policy priorities of legislators. It has been found that committee membership on certain policy area help explain legislator’s focus on particular policy brief which is explained by expertise acquired in committees. But what about a legislature with relatively underdeveloped and weak committee system such as the House of Commons? Little attention has been paid in the existing literature on another source of policy expertise: the prior profession and experiences of legislators. This paper seeks to explore if legislators’ attention among various policy area is affected by the amount of prior experience that they have acquired in related professions. A unique data set of MPs prior professional and political career is collect and used to test against their attention on particular policy area in parliamentary debate which is determined by topic modelling on the corpus of legislative speeches in the 2010-2015 British parliament. The result seeks to demonstrate that MPs’ prior profession does affect the kind of policy that they focus on once elected to Westminster, which has implication on the idea of representation based on profession and sectorial interest.