In our opinion: To prevent Parliament becoming the preserve of the wealthy, something needs to be done about pay and MPs. But not what IPSA is suggesting.

Those arguing to raise MPs pay say they just want to help and to be fair:

1) Help: to help poorer people, without independent wealth, to be able to afford to be MPs

2) Fair: to be fair to MPs, allowing them to earn what other professionals in equivalent jobs earn.

Both are nonsense. We look at the "equivalent jobs" ruse in a seperate post - >>CLICK HERE<<. In this post we consider helping poorer people into Parliament.

The time to help poorer people become MPs is not when they are MPs with all an MP's generous earning opportunities (see below). The time to help the poorer is before they are MPs when they are still 'poorer'. The time to help is when they are still in the scrum trying to get an MP’s job: first to get selected as a candidate, then to get elected as an MP.

Once in Parliament an MP’s basic pay, even without the 2015 10% payrise, puts them in the top 6% of wage earners in the UK. Squirm into a minister’s salary, and they are in the top 3%. Scrabble into the Cabinet, and they are in the top 2%. Even an ordinary backbencher, by employing their spouse as helper, can get more than 98% of UK wage earners.

Apart from money paid to them by Parliament, MPs are in addition allowed to hold as many other paid jobs as they like. Some earn far more in the spare time being an MP gives them than their basic MP's salaries. The reality is MPs are already very well paid for what they do, both as an MP and all the other stuff.

Those who worry about helping the poorer into Parliament need to adjust the aim of their generousity. Once they are MPs, the poor are no longer poor enjoying as they would be an MPs various remunerative opportunities. Those who worry about the poor need to help them BEFORE they become MPs.

The wealthy can afford to play at getting into elected politics without having to earn a salary. The not-wealthy have a greater need to focus on their day-jobs to pay their bills.

Therefore the pay rise should not go to MPs, but to anyone who is not an MP. Raise the minimum wage so even the meanest of us can afford to take time off to get into politics. 

Or, in a time of austerity when we can't afford to give all non-MPs a payrise, limit it to those who are not an MP but want to be an MP. An “MP’s Job Seeker’s Allowance” (MP-JSA).

If those who call for more money really want to help poorer people get into Parliament, they would institute an MP-JSA

Would that get public support? Probably Not.

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In our opinion: To prevent Parliament becoming the preserve of dopey coasters, something needs to be done about pay and MPs. But not what IPSA proposes.

To support its contention that MPs are underpaid, IPSA helpfully provided a graph showing the pay of a basic bog-standard MP compared to other senior professionals. Here we see how our MPs are at the bottom of the pile of what IPSA considers their peers.

IPSA GRAPH

To even more helpfully contribute to the debate we have reproduced IPSA's graph with some additional information:

a) MPs' earnings when they hold additional responsibilities in Parliament, from Assistant Whip to Cabinet Minister.

b) An example of an MP who earns an extra £250,000 a year doing other work (as a barrister) outside his MP duties. Search the "Register of Members' Financial Interests" and you will find many MPs with paid spare-time hobbies earning them tens and hundreds of thousands of pounds per year. 

So what is the truth? There is no answer to that question. But the data shows:

1) Is being an MP a risky job? According to the Electoral Reform Society, taking results up to the 2010 election, the average parliamentary seat had not changed parties since 1960. Some had not changed since the time of Queen Victoria. While there are casualties at every election (and the occasional massacre e.g. in 2015: Labour in Scotland and the LibDems everywhere), most MPs are in "safe seats" they are unlikely to lose.



2) Do we need to pay MPs more because of the great responsibility they bear? When it comes to voting, MPs either do what the rest of their party do (63% of the time) or don't turn up (36% of the time). Data from The Public Whip, for the 2010-15 parliament, shows out of all the votes during that parliament, the average MP only voted against his party 1 time in 100. MPs march through the voting lobbies with the predictability of sheep herded by a well trained collie. For those who say "pay peanuts you get monkeys", sheep are even cheaper.

So what is to be done? The Tory government has been against standardised pay in the public sector. In the 2013 budget, the Tories stated their plan to snuff out "progression pay":

"In the Budget 2013 the government announced that it would seek significant further savings from progression pay in the 2013 Spending Round. In the 2013 Spending Round it announced that departments would be putting in place plans to end automatic time-served progression pay in the civil service by 2015 to 2016; also that substantial reform to progression pay would be taken forward or was already under way for teachers, the health service, prisons and police."

How about applying the government's public sector pay philosophy to MPs:
a) £5,000 reduction in pay for "safe seat" constituencies that have not changed party in the last 3 elections. [like a pay premium for teachers working in tough schools]
b) £5,000 reduction in pay for "nodding donkey" MPs who have rebelled in fewer than 5% of votes. [like a pay reduction for 'coasting' doctors]
c) For "swinger" MPs who will not sign away their right to outside paid jobs: zero hour contracts paid per vote, per select committee attendance, and per speech in Parliament. With a 25% surtax on external earnings. [like the 700,000 UK employees on Zero Hour Contracts]

IPSA proposes to reduce other MP benefits, to appear to put a pill under all the sugar:

• to reduce MPs’ generous pension benefits [as has been done in both public and private sectors, with changes to retirement age, indexation, closure of Defined Benefit schemes];
• to scrap resettlement payments for MPs which had been worth up to a year’s salary [perhaps a benefit they actually do deserve to keep];
• to tighten MPs’ expenses further ["further"? According to the Guardian, for 2013/14 MPs claimed more expenses than at height of 2009 scandal. Though IPSA said, taking inflation into account they claimed the same as at the height of the 2009 scandal!]

Will our Parliamentarians take the same medicine they give to the rest of the Public Service? Instead they sit like Trollopian vicars holding out their plates saying they couldn't possibly manage another slice of cake. 

In the end they will politely force themselve to manage another 7,000. So as not to cause offense.

[The other favourite argument for giving MPs a payrise is to help poorer people become MPs. Also nonsense - >>CLICK HERE<< to read why]

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Graphs at a glance: Are MPs paid enough? Even before the May 2015 pay hike, an ordinary back bencher plus spouse on payroll could collect wages in excess of £110,000

When asked by a member of the audience in the BBC Question Time programme why MPs had taken a 10% pay increase, Grant Shapps MP said this was "a complete and utter myth". Shapps was correct in a slippery way. That particular Question Time programme was in February 2015, and the bumper payrise wasn't coming in for another couple of months:

a) 1% rise in April 2015 from £67,060 to £67,731
b) 9% additional rise the following month straight after the May 2015 general election, to £74,000. 

Note while Shapps, the Tory party chairman, was being characteristically slippery none of the other three MPs on the panel, from Labour, Liberal Democrat and UKIP stepped in to clarify this.

We have in other posts pointed out that an MP's basic salary is more than the wages of 95% of UK taxpayers. However, putting aside all the expenses and all the 'under the radar' consultancies and directorships, MPs have plenty of opportunities to bolster their incomes with funds from Parliament itself.

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Graphs at a glance: Would we get better MPs if we paid them an extra £10k per annum? The data suggests we would actually get worse!

MPs caught plotting ‘under the radar’ lobbying (on behalf of clients) for cash, are quick to use their mischiefs as an excuse to lobby (on behalf of themselves) for even more cash. 

They claim if MPs were paid more we would get better quality MPs. Their assertion being:

• Some high powered people don't apply to be MPs because they don't want to take the pay cut.
• If they didn't have to take the pay cut, they could become high powered MPs. 

Let's put aside the copious evidence that the existing rewards of being an MP are sufficient to pull in a plentiful number of people who consider themselves 'high powered': for instance, Oxbridge graduates are just 1% of the population but made up 27% of all MPs, and over 1 in 3 Tory MPs, in the 2010-15 parliament.


And lets overlook that there are many high powered MPs in Parliament who do the job for reasons of public service, regardless of the pay. Just as there are many high powered people with vocations to work in other relatively low paying professions.

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Graphs at a glance - British Social Attitudes Survey shows Tories and Labour have lost swathes of their core supporters. Politicians should be very afraid of us. Don't let them forget it! Make sure you Vote!

[Updated Aug 2016]

Whatever you think of Jeremy Corbyn, one thing he's done that all the others in the Labour or Tory parties haven't, is get hundreds of thousands to join the party.

Corbyn's strongest card is his promise to go much further than this. To get a significant portion of the millions who never vote, to vote Labour. Can he do it? Who knows. But getting non-voters to vote is no longer crazy talk. Think UKIP. Think Brexit. 

It matters because, for decades, UK elections have been decided as much by who doesn't vote as by who does. 


In politics how high you reach depends less on how tall you stand and more on who you stand on. For decades political parties have gained power standing on people who don't vote.

In the twilight weeks of the electoral cycle, like little children at bedtime, politicians see terrors lurking on every sofa across the land. Millions of zombie voters who might be roused if they get annoyed enough. Not to vote for what they are for, but to vote against what they are against.

Consider the sudden ejection of Maria Miller from her role as the Secretary of State for Culture. Miller was given the boot in the month before the May 2014 local and European elections. When Jeremy Hunt, the previous Secretary of State for culture (what is it about that ministry?), was caught up in far more serious allegations David Cameron rescued Hunt by promoting him to Secretary of State for Health. Luckily for Hunt there were no key elections in sight then. What ultimately did for Miller wasn’t her sin but her timing - getting caught during the witching hours that run for the few weeks before the Local and the European elections.

This is a lesson you must remember dear voter. It is a lesson you must not let our politicians forget you remember. You must keep them afraid of you.

Once the dark electoral hours have passed, politicians of all parties forget about us electors. For example the key strategy of successive Tory governments is to appear to cut taxes and spending. A graph from the 2013 British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey shows fewer than 1 in 10 Britons have wanted this in the 30 years since 1983. More than 90% have consistently wanted the level of tax & spend to remain the same or to increase.

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IPSA can't be over-ruled when giving MPs a bumper payrise, but can be over-ruled when taking back MPs excessive expense claims

Compare and Contrast

1) IPSA decision that cabinet minister is required to repay over-claimed expenses:

• IPSA: Recommends that Maria Miller repay £45,000 for mis-claimed expenses

• MPs: Over-rule IPSA, reducing the amount to be repayed by £39,200 down to £5,800

2) IPSA decision that MPs get bumper payrise in 2015:

• IPSA: Recommends MPs get an 11% payrise, taking their basic salaries up from £66,396 in 2013 to £74,000 in 2015

• MPs: State they are forced to accept this salary hike as they have no power to over-rule IPSA. With great reluctance they will courageously loosen their belts and swallow it.

 

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Graphs at a glance - Do we deserve MPs who are paid more?

One almost has sympathy for our MPs. They are being tantalised mercilessly by IPSA waving wads of cash at them. IPSA's proposed pay-hike is as cruel as leaving a diabetic Billy Bunter locked in a dorm with a plate of lemon meringue pies and lashings of ginger beer. Shame on you IPSA! Is this revenge for when all but one of your predecessors were de-facto sacked in January 2013 for refusing to be MPs' doormats? Though we do appreciate the black comedy of MPs protesting through clenched teeth "I couldn't possibly".

MPs have convinced themselves they are underpaid. Even though the supply of politicians has in all our recorded history wildly exceeded the demand. Even though:

• They, and we, know that in Parliament MPs just do as the whips instruct them. They serve up their votes to order with the same level of contemplation as a hotdog seller handing out hotdogs. 
• They are chosen not by the electorate, but by schmoozing up to tiny bands of 'swivelled eyed loons' on constituency selection panels.
• There is a heavy over-representation among MPs of Oxbridge graduates (thought by many to be really really clever and high calibre, so the money is already good enough for them)
• They are already paid more than 95% of Britons, not including their expenses.
• Their expenses have grown wildly faster than inflation in recent decades.
• they get paid more for holding Parliamentary offices (from £26k extra for being a whip to £79k extra for being a cabinet minister)
• They are allowed to do other paid work which in many cases dwarfs their MPs salaries
• A quarter of MPs employ family members on salaries upto £45k.
• Much of the UK is covered by 'safe seats' that haven't changed hands in decades, according to the Electoral Reform Society.

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A quarter of all MPs give parliamentary office jobs to their family members, costing taxpayers £4m

KJ and Fee try to look on the bright side of nepotism...

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New “tough stance” means all benefit fraudsters face increased sentences of up to 10 years in jail

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George Osborne to stop energy firms exploiting £900m tax loophole

Chris asks an energy fat cat about this new dodge...

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In one week, three Lords and one MP are caught agreeing to payment from lobbyists

Cameron promises rapid new laws to stop dodgy lobbying...

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MPs' Expenses Watchdogs ejected and replaced

In January 2012 we wrote a post about "The House of Commons Committee on Members' Expenses" calling for £20,000 pay rises. This would be achieved by converting certain 'expenses' that must be costs proved to be incurred for the sole purpose of MPs doing their jobs into 'regional supplements' that are just paid to MPs regardless. That Commons committee last met in December 2011, and has patiently waited, with no  minuted meetings, for the whole of 2012.

No meetings in the whole of 2012? In spite of the committee's recommendation, made in December 2011, that:

"In not more than six months' time, the House should have the opportunity to consider the merits of that cost-benefit analysis and evaluation and to make a decision on whether there should or should not be a system of regional supplements instead of the existing travel and accommodation provisions."

What ever were they waiting for? 

In the summer of 2012 an advert appeared on the parliamentary website:

Applicants invited for IPSA board membership....Individuals put forward for appointment by the House of Commons must have been selected by the Speaker on merit on the basis of fair and open competition, with the agreement of the Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. 

In case you were wondering, IPSA (the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority) was, in its own words:

"created in 2009 by the Parliamentary Standards Act. We are tasked with independently monitoring and controlling MPs’ expenses, pay and pensions. We set up new rules to make a clean break with the past."

"The past" being broken with is the parliamentary expenses scandal. The scandal that shocked and entertained the nation with stories of duck houses, moats, mortgage flipping, and more mundane dodgy expense claims by MPs and peers giving their incomes a dubious top-up. 

January 2013 saw the end of the terms of members of the original IPSA board created in 2009. There had been an expectation that those board members who wanted to stay would be automatically extended for one further term. However, the anger of MPs continuing to get their fingers caught in the public purse demanded revenge. Which the Speaker, John Bercow, provided by ruling that the entire board of IPSA must reapply for their jobs, and by putting a member of his own committee on the selection panel. Unsurprisingly apart from the chairman (whose appointment goes to 2014) all the members of the original board decided to leave, making the following statement on the 13th November 2012:

"The four ordinary members of IPSA’s Board have today announced they did not reapply for their positions. Of course, these are individual choices but one contributing factor was their concern about the process used to appoint and reappoint members to the Board. 

These concerns were first set out in an exchange of letters between IPSA chair, Sir Ian Kennedy, and the Speaker over the summer. The letters are available here: http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/offices/commons/speakers-office/speakers-publications/general-correspondence/

Sir Ian Kennedy will continue as IPSA chair."

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Commons speaker John Bercow accused of trying to rig MPs' expenses watchdog

Chris and Fee despair...

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Calling all public servants: if you want more cash in your pocket you have to put your arguments effectively. To see how this is done: nobody does this better than our Honourable Members of Parliament.

[UPDATED FEB 2016: MPs got another pay rise, of 1.3%, in April 2016, taking their salary to £74,962. This was on top of a 10% rise decided in August 2015 and backdated to the general election. The increase is an annual adjustment decided by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), which takes into account average public sector pay rises. However, it is slightly higher than the 1% public sector pay cap introduced by Chancellor George Osborne.]



Doctors, nurses, teachers, and all other public servants - if you want some tips on how to plead for more money you have no better example to follow than our members of parliament. You all may be having your pay and pensions sliced. But remember our poor Parliamentarians too had a chunk taken out of their incomes - when they were stopped from making dodgy and fraudulent expense claims that netted some of them tens of thousands of pounds.

Frustrated at the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) having the cheek to check on their reimbursements, and wanting to get a boost to their incomes from more carelessly doled out expenses, our Members of Parliament produced the following survey of themselves and statistics from their navel-gazing report published in 2011, which aim to show:

a) They reckon they work much harder than MPs from previous years, citing the number of pages of legislation, the number of meetings, number of reports, and the number of questions asked. They skate over the probable reason of the increase - computers and word processors spewing out padded verbiage that 30 years ago had to be laboriously produced by hand.
b) IPSA, the people who control their expenses really don't understand what they do, and why they really do need moats and duck houses.
c) We Ripped-off Britons really don't appreciate how lucky we are to have them, and they are cheap at twice the price, and they are really high calibre people, and we should be grateful, and... (I think you get the message)

In short, while the rest of the country's public servants are required to accept cuts to pay and pensions for the sake of the nation, the MPs want IPSA to get out of the way and hand the public purse back to the Honourable Members.

Questions in the survey include:

4. Do you agree with the following statement? IPSA's expenses system is adversely affecting MPs' family lives.	Response %	Response count
Strongly agree	41.0	84
Agree	36.6	75
Neither agree nor disagree	16.1	33
Disagree	4.4	9
Strongly disagree	2.0	4
answered question		205

5. Do you agree with the following statement? IPSA understands what I do in my role as an MP.	Response %	Response count
Strongly agree	1.0	2
Agree	3.4	7
Neither agree nor disagree	8.7	18
Disagree	34.0	70
Strongly disagree	52.9	109
answered question		206

Annex 2

Statistical information on the workload of MPs

Number of electors/people per MP 1922-2010

Source: Railings and Thrasher, British Electoral Facts: 1832-2006 (2007), pp 88-92.
House of Commons Library data.
Office for National Statistics population data.
B R Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (1988), pp 13-14.

Pages of legislation (Public and General Acts and Statutory Instruments)

Source: Parliamentary Trends: Statistics about Parliament, House of Commons Library Research Paper 09/69, 12 August 2009, Table 2.

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MPs make a try for a discrete £20k+ pay-rise in the face of the public sector pay-freeze

The British Army has a brave tradition known as the "Forlorn Hope": a band of soldiers who would make the first assault against a well defended position. None of the Forlorn Hope was expected to survive unscathed; few were expected to survive at all. In spite of the extreme danger there was rarely a shortage of volunteers. Ambitious men who had a forlorn hope of being plucked from obscurity, veterans who hoped forlornly to show they still had what it takes, or those on their last legs forlorn and yet hopeful of leaving the mark they had failed to leave in their careers so far. Survivors were rewarded with promotion, glory, and cash.

British Members of Parliament have set up their own Forlorn Hope, in the form of the Committee on Members' Expenses. Their objective is to scale the heights of public outrage and outflank the entrenched disgust of voters at our MPs' pilfering, and breach the defences of the public purse. If their assault is successful they will earn the whispered gratitude of the whole House of Commons, perhaps with ministries for the survivors and peerages for the fallen.

As Britain was distracted by thoughts of Christmas food, presents, and relatives, our intrepid MPs quietly made their opening gambit. Objective, to sneak through a remuneration rise in the face of the current freeze on public sector pay. The committee, set up in July 2011, published its first report early in December 2011. One of its key recommendations (Recommendation 17):

1. IPSA provide a detailed explanation of the rationale for its existing London supplements (especially the Outer London one) and make transparent its current methodology for calculation of the rates.
   
   
2. A body independent of both Parliament and IPSA be commissioned by the House Service to undertake a financial cost-benefit analysis to determine whether extending IPSA's current system of London and Outer London supplements to other regions in the UK could provide greater value for money for taxpayers..
   
   
3. In not more than six months' time, the House should have the opportunity to consider the merits of that cost-benefit analysis and evaluation and to make a decision on whether there should or should not be a system of regional supplements instead of the existing travel and accommodation provisions.

(IPSA=Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority)

The committee, you will note, has identified “a system of regional supplements” as a means of capturing a few extra £000s using the Outer London allowance as its Trojan Horse. So, what is this all about? Referred to as the London Area Living Payment, the details are:

Eligibility:            MPs for constituencies in Greater London, plus 24 MPs who are outside Greater London but are in the “London Area” (within 20 miles of Parliament).

Value:               £3,760 per annum for MPs in Greater London

                        £5,090 per annum for the 24 MPs in the “London Area”

In order to reinforce the argument for inflating these relatively modest amounts, the committee asks IPSA to ‘make transparent’ its methodology for calculation of the London supplements. IPSA publishes an FAQ document, with the following statement on how it calculates the additional £1,330 per annum for the outer London MPs:

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The Occupy protesters at St Paul's...

Chris and KJ have pretty strong opinions on certain people

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A better alternative to the Alternative Voting system

Fee comes up with a novel political solution.

[KEYWORDS: UK Votes 'No' To Alternative Vote, Alternative Vote 'Would Have Kept Brown In', David Cameron ignores calls to rearrange alternative vote referendum over royal wedding date Electoral reform: The case for alternative vote Alternative Vote: the wrong referendum on the wrong question What exactly is fairer about the Alternative Vote? Would the alternative vote have changed history?]

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Eton, prison and parliament

Chris, Fee and KJ mull over the real reason why MPs have been convicted of expenses fraud

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