The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is likely to recommend on Friday that MPs receive an inflation-busting pay increase of £10,000.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is likely to recommend on Friday that MPs receive an inflation-busting pay increase of £10,000.
The independent body, which ironically was set up so that MPs were not voting to increase their own pay, is expected to propose that MPs’ salaries rise from their current level of £65,738 to around £75,000. IPSA head Ian Kennedy is thought to prefer an even greater rise to £85,000.
Understandably many people are going to be incensed by this.
Update —————- As expected, the IPSA has today (11 July) recommended a pay rise for MPs of £8,000, taking their total pay to £74,000.
Here are five reasons why awarding MPs a pay rise is wrong.
1) People often argue that paying MPs more attracts the best people to serve the country, and to an extent this is probably true. It would be counterproductive, after all, to make a job in parliament prohibitive to those without vast reserves of cash.
But surely paying MPs too much could also mean more people looking to enter parliament for reasons of self-interest.
When people argue that “the best people will go elsewhere because the money is better”, I want to reply that they can’t, then, really be the best people, for if they care so much about making pots of money (as opposed to serving the country) they probably aren’t the sorts of representatives we want.
2) MPs are already paid nearly three times the average UK full time salary. There are no fixed hours, you get a long summer break and you can retire at a time of your own choosing. You are also in most instances – unless you do something particularly egregious – guaranteed tenure for four to five years, something increasingly rare in our ‘flexible’ economy.
As someone who has worked in a number of poorly paid, insecure jobs in the past, I’m not sure I wish to play the world’s smallest violin on behalf of our MPs.
3) Most people are seeing their living standards squeezed and public sector workers have just seen annual pay rises limited to 1 per cent. The boring cliche has it that we’re “all in it together”. If MPs get a bumper pay rise, we obviously aren’t.
4) As an MP you are perfectly entitled to work as many hours as you like in a second job. Moonlighting, in other words. There are already questions over whether this should be allowed to continue (I believe it should not, for the reasons Mark Ferguson sets out in this excellent post at Labour List), but while it is going on (according to recent analysis, Conservative MPs declared more than £4.3m in earnings from outside directorships or jobs, versus £2.4m for Labour) MPs do not need a pay rise.
As for the argument that MPs only have second jobs because they aren’t paid enough, see point two.
5) A very large salary ensures that the travails of everyday life which most people have to contend with are all the more incomprehensible to our MPs.
When socialists used to promise that if elected they would only draw the wage of an average worker, they weren’t merely striking a pose. The more money you have the more you can insulate yourself from social problems like crime, inequality and exploitation. The class system still exists, and people tend to want to look after people most like themselves.
Why suppose this would be any different for our MPs?
23 Responses to “Five arguments against paying MPs lots of money”
Duke_Bouvier
As some people say below, the national average salary really isn’t a relevant benchmark – that is just rabble rousing. The kind of people who (a) have the personal motivation and social skills to get elected and (b) have the kinds of skills and intelligence to do the job well will if they bother to earn more than the national average wage.
As was pointed out below, paying them £100k would only put them on par with a successful GP or head teacher. And this a job you have to re-apply for every 5 years.
It is unrealistic to ask successful people who are not independently wealthy (or do not have a high earning spouse) to take a significant pay cut (especially when the unrecoverable out of pocket expenses are considered) at an age when they may often have children to raise.
Which is why you find a lot of the wealthy, spouses of high earners, and people for whom the salary is a step up not a step down. A significant part of the pool of the most capable people is already excluded.
This is all aside from issues of abuse of the expenses system – reform it, stop the egregious abuse, but lets not treat them like venal scum. If you think that, what it is the point of democracy at all.
Daft Dave
The “Independent Pay Bodies” set up to report on pay for teachers, civil servants and other public sector workers have often over the years recommended pay rises only for the government (of whatever party) to refuse to implement them because they were ‘un-affordable’; there is no reason why the rise put forward for MPs should be sanctioned.
AB
I agree. The first point is particularly important because it is often said that the level of pay determines the quality of candidate. While this is true in many jobs it does not reflect the dynamics of the process of becoming an MP.
The single biggest determinant of candidate quality is the way in which Parties select candidates. A small proportion of very highly paid people might self-select themselves out of the running and never consider becoming MPs, but this must be a very small proportion given the backgrounds of many actual MPs. There does not seem to be any shortage of senior lawyers, accountants and management consultants coming forward as candidates. Pay will have some impact, but as with the selection of High Court Judges (who typically will see their income slashed by over two thirds when swapping the life of a busy QC for the Bench) the other aspects of the role tend to compensate; if anything the problem with judicial recruitment is getting more “ordinary” lawyers in solicitors firms doing less glamorous work to be in a place where they can realistically apply.
There’s a similar problem in becoming a PPC – if you haven’t done the right amount of leafletting, or served as a councillor or been in a thinktank/union, it is difficult to get selected by any party. Being an activist or a councillor are both things which are probably hardest to find time to do if you are “ordinary” – ie on an average-ish wage, working hard and wanting to spend time with family and friends. If you have an employer who will support your political ambitions, that’s fine. But, outside the thinktanks/unions and public sector (subject to the rules limiting such activity), if you’re employed, few employers will see it as a priority.