Higher pay would tempt to parliament the low performers of high paying professions, thus pushing out high performers of lower paying professions
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, asserting that:
- 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’: Oxbridge graduates are just one per cent of the population but made up 27 per cent of all MPs, and over one in three of Tory MPs, in the 2010-15 parliament.
And let’s 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.
Instead focus on that group of people who refuse to be an MP unless the money can match that of their alternative employment.
For those who measure a person’s merit by their pay:
1) merit is measured by how much they earn.
2) the amount earned is only a measure of their merit within their profession, and not across professions.
For example, if a banker earns more than a doctor that is not because the banker is ‘better’. It is because the banker is in a higher paid profession than the doctor. Just as the thousandth ranked UK banker earned more than a million euros, while the thousandth ranked tennis player earned just a few thousand.
Therefore using money as the measure, to get the ‘best’ we would want people paid in the top quarter (above the 75th percentile) of earnings for their profession.
A look at wage figures for different professions from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) illustrates that by paying MPs more we would actually get a worse quality of MPs. Higher pay would tempt to parliament the low performers of high paying professions (bankers; lawyers; lobbyists) thus pushing out high performers of lower paying professions (teachers; IT managers; nurses…).
The graphs below show the range of salaries for different professions. First we explain how the graph works:
- 25 per cent earn less than the first blue block, marked Q2 (the second quartile)
- 50 per cent earn less than the second blue block, the median.
- 25 per cent earn more than the third blue block, marked Q3 (the third quartile)
For a selection of professions, salary ranges (from the Office for National Statistics, table 14.7a) are:
Evident from this is the fact that the current MP’s salary, £66k, is already above the 75th percentile for postmen, nurses, teachers, IT managers and train drivers. So an MP’s pay is already enough to get the top 25 per cent talent from those professions.
On the other hand, £66k is well below the pay of a 75th percentile lawyer, doctor, or company director.
Even the MPs’ 10 per cent payrise in May 2015, to £74k, still wouldn’t be enough to bring in the best money driven candidates from these high pay professions.
To attract money-driven top 25 per cent (top quartile) lawyers, doctors, and company directors, the salary of an MP would need to rise to £100k. This is clearly ludicrous:
a) Based on market driven supply & demand, there has never been a shortage of people wanting to be an MP. Whether they are any good is a matter of opinion.
b) The statistics show the vast majority are sheep, voting according to the party line.
One possible solution:
1) Parliamentary candidates state in their election campaign literature how much money they need for it to be worth their while representing their constituents, signed off by the party leader.
2) The party leader is given a salary budget after the General Election of £67k times the number of MPs he gets. (ONS figures for 2013 show £67k p.a. is more than 94 per cent of income tax paying Britons’ pre-tax incomes). And it is left to the party leader to share this out.All done in full public view. Now that would be fun to watch!
34 Responses to “Would paying more attract a better calibre of MP? The evidence suggests not”
corinium
The answer is simple. Make being an MP something you do AFTER your career as a train driver/doctor/lawyer/factory worker/whatever, by not allowing people to be MPs until aged at least 40, preferably 50. Public service then is a way for publicly minded people to put something back, having already had a working life where they have made whatever pile of cash their skills/drive/luck has allowed them to. This way you avoid having to compete in salary terms with the top of the income scale, while still providing a decent salary for people to live on if they have no other means.
It would also put a stop to the Oxford/Cambridge PPE graduate/think tank/Spad/safe seat conveyor belt that exists in all 3 main parties. Being in politics as a career in your 20s, 30s and 40s would no longer be an option. It would be an end of career ‘giving something back’ option instead.
It would also provide far more independently minded MPs, as they would not be tied to the party structure so such an extent to advance their careers.
Bosun Higgs
Well, obviously, if one reads Left Foot Forward, one knows all about domestic and outdoor staff.
blarg1987
Yup, as this will be a step change in behaviour, for to long we have been going down the road of I should have a pay rise sod everyone else, with a small group of people enriching themselves.
it would create a carrot and stick incentive, encouraging them to pay professions well while also having a duty to balance things. Lets be honest if your boss said he deserved a pay rise for doing sod all and you did all the work you would not accept that would you?
Guest
And you’d have a lot of rich men very happy with the fact that the common people were priced out of it. It’s not a cheap job to do.
Guest
There’s absolutely no evidence about what you say on parties – age limits in other countries in the past did nothing of the sort.
Moreover, it would likely lead to politicisation of the civil service jobs among “heirs” of parties, and mean that young, dynamic reformers were 100% locked out of Parliament.
It’s completely the wrong answer to the wrong question. The right answer is changing the voting system.