3 arguments for paying MPs more money and why they’re wrong

We looked at three arguments being put forward as justification for the pay rise it is recommended MPs receive this week. Oh, and why they're wrong.

We seem to be doing everything in threes today. Earlier we looked at three questions Iain Duncan Smith should be asked when he appears before the Work and Pensions Committee of MPs later today, and now we’re going to look at three arguments that are being trotted out as justification for the pay rise it is recommended MPs receive later this week. Oh, and we’re going to tell you why those arguments are wrong.

1) Paying MPs a lot of money attracts the best people to serve the country

Does it? Or does it attract the greediest people? Surely paying MPs too much could also mean more people looking to enter politics for reasons of self-interest. On the other hand, if someone is willing to take a pay cut in order to represent their consituents then they’re probably exactly the sort of person we want as an MP.

MPs should certainly be paid well – which they already are; their salary is three times that of the average worker – but why should they be paid exorbitantly? Bankers get paid exorbitantly – does banking as a profession necessarily attract the most virtuous people?

2) It will put off working class people from becoming MPs

Which would obviously be a bad thing. It isn’t apparent how a salary of £65,000 is something the average working class kid would turn their nose up at, however. An MP also only receives this salary once elected. Working class youngsters are put off standing for Parliament long before the point at which they receive their parliamentary salary. Blaming the lack of working class MPs on the fact that politicians don’t get an eyewatering salary seems a rather strange argument to make – to a working class kid a salary of £65,000 a year is the equivalent of winning the lottery.

3) They’d only be corrupt otherwise

If we don’t pay MPs more, they will only file outrageous expenses claims and spend all their time doing lucrative second jobs, so the argument goes. Imagine for a second if this argument were made to justify giving other public sector workers a pay increase – that we had to give nurses more money in case they stole all the drugs, or we needed to pay the police more so they didn’t moonlight on the job and leave the criminals to run free. The person making such an argument would be laughed at. And yet we accept it when it refers to MPs. (In fact, whenever public sector workers do strike for more money – workers who in most instances receive a great deal less than £60k a year – they are accused of holding the country to ransom.)

MPs are public servants and should be subject to the same rules as anyone else in the public sector. They do an important job – an incredibly important job – but so do lots of other people, such as nurses and the police.

26 Responses to “3 arguments for paying MPs more money and why they’re wrong”

  1. evanprice

    The decision to pay judges was in the middle of the 19th Century and within 10 years it was clear that English law was widely regarded as fair and just. The decision arose out of a number of scandals about judicial bias and the following Royal Commission and its recommendations.

    My experience of Judges (I am a practising lawyer) is that they are incorruptible. As to your last sentence, I disagree. Many will take the wage that comes with a job they enjoy and live the life that their wage permits rather than envy or consistently hanker after more.

  2. TM

    ‘My experience of Judges (I am a practising lawyer) is that they are incorruptible.’ If that is the case, they can afford to be can’t they?

    ‘Many will take the wage that comes with a job they enjoy and live the life that their wage permits rather than envy or consistently hanker after more.’ Well, it seems that there are many rich people who own businesses that dodge tax, pay low wages and try to charge as much as they can, and still never seem satisfied. Greed is the problem, but not everyone is greedy I grant you. And I may add that both rich and poor can be greedy too. The rich are not any worse than any other selfish greedy person, but when a person has millions or even billions and still wants more, that is an addiction, the only addiction we seem to enshrine as something good. An addiction all the same, with bitter consequences for many of us.

  3. evanprice

    “They have a collective moral responsibility to reject it at a time when public finances are very tight.”

    Really?

    “We arenot in a normal situation. It ought to have taken into account the straitened circumstances of public finances. It failed to do so.”

    But IPSA have explained that the ‘cost’ of the increase in pay is ‘paid for’ by the reductions in pensions and other benefits …

    Why is it that we are concentrating on the ‘pay’ for MPs but when it comes to other people, we concentrate on the ‘package’?

  4. TM

    Because they are telling everyone else to accept austerity, whilst they have been awarded an 11% pay rise that’s why. It is unacceptable at this time when 500,000 people are going to food banks are 1000s of pensioners die each year unable to heat their homes. If it’s not immoral, it is badly timed at the very least.

  5. Angiepooos

    Seriously? £65K for a job in London is simply not enough to attract good people. It isn’t, as you say, an ‘eye watering’ amount and how patronising to say it’s equivalent to a lottery win for a ‘working class kid’. It’s peanuts for London’s serious jobs. If you truly want fair representation across all of society you have to pay at least £120K so that we can attract MPs who are prepared to accept the lousy job security, can Live in or near London and no longer have to rely on family money or second jobs. Truth is without those second jobs we’d have nothing BUT rich ex-public schoolboys. It’s an important job and I would want to reward people to do it well. Why scrimp on these people who make all the decisions that affect our lives.

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