UKC

Yep, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) which was set up in the wake of MPs thieving ways over maximising their expense claims, have awarded MPs a pay rise of 11% from 2015.

Naturally the leaders of the "big 3" have all disagreed with the 11% pay rise at a time when the rest of us are lucky to get a pay rise at all...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25287108

At least MPs will no longer be able to claim for tea and biscuits on expenses, though. That's quite important...

...and hopefully no more duck houses, moat cleaning, electricity bills for the stables at an MPs "second" home, living expenses for their partner (etc etc)

||-)


Remember, we're all in this together. Except for those of us who aren't.

In reply to Dominion:

I don't see an issue with second homes. It is often cheaper than a hotel to rent a small flat. But that is all it should be - a small, rented flat.

Neil

In reply to Neil Williams:

Home flipping wasis the problem.

The MP who recently repaid over £4000 for electricity for heating his stables at his "second home" ?

Do you really think he bought a second home out in the countryside with stables, so he could be near Westminster?



Personally, I think UK PLC should buy or build the houses - blocks of flats? - so they own them, and rent them to MPs. Then the public purse is not constantly paying mortgages.

But that's beyond the point.

It's an 11% Pay Rise when other public servants have been capped at a maximum of 1%

In reply to Dominion:




And, I really struggle to see how they (a backbench MP, not sitting on any C'ttees) earn it.

In reply to Dominion:

so what should MP's be paid?
£74,000 PA for a 5 year contract does sound pretty good mind.

In reply to Dominion:
It has not yet reported, and apparently, the Government ministers have said that they should take into account current economic problems. They also say ministers should not be taking any rise awarded.

however, I am not judging yet, I'm guessing they have over egged the increase a bit, so that when it is revealed , they can say it is not as bad as we thought ( say 8% had been suggested! it would still be objected to, but if it had been touted as 11% then came in less they will still get a big rise with less flack)

The other thing, is that there should be strings attached to any increase on expenses and their pensions, so the headline ! Even if it is 11%, may not be the full picture.

That said , I would cut their pensions, holidays and still not increase their pay.

My pay has not risen with inflation for years, my final salary pension fund is being closed, and I will have to okay thousands to prop that up. That will effectively be a huge pay cut for me, so I have no sympathy.

In reply to Dominion:

Article suggests that there are to be further cuts/restrictions on expenses but doesn't say what those might be and that they plan to go from a final salary pension to a career average but again, doesn't expand on any detail.

All other public sectors have had pensions reduced while pay has been frozen or cut all while being faced with redundancies, when do we get an 11% pay increase to make up for pension cuts?

All in this together?

In reply to Dominion:



The is definitely the way forward, whilst you are actively an an mp you are assigned a room in a complex, within the complex I old have so many areas that ou could book for entertaining ect.
There would be no rent to pay or gas/electric but once your no longer an Mp you loose the room.
I would also have a monitored entry system and those who don't actually use the facilities would lose them.
It would be far cheaper than paying for second homes for people in the long run.

In reply to Dax H:

Unfortunately the security is to much of a problem. For a large development. It won't happen even of cheaper. A reasonable alternative would be to have n flats bought around town and a lottery used to allocate them.

In reply to Dave B:
I didn't think of security

In reply to Dave B:

Yep, fair enough, the details would need working out, but we should not be paying for mortgages for MPs homes - that they sell later for huge profits, which is what has been happening.

In reply to Dominion:

This seems a manufactured "outrage" to me. Though I gues "No change in cost of MPs; payments re-worked" wouldn't sell papers so well.

That said, couldn't we just get MPs salary decided at constituency level? If constituents want to pay more, or less, that is their choice, and they will get MPs that want to work for what is being offered. Everyone could vote for a £5k salary bands and some sort of average be taken.

In reply to Dave B:

Perhaps they could stay in Buckingham Palace, or all the various other places we already pay for security.

In reply to Dominion:

Personally I am surprised they're payed so little. Sure it's quite a lot compared to working in a trade, or working a supremarket, but these people are running the whole damm country. I think that's worth paying a reasonable wage for.

You may well argue that they're a bunch of incompetents, and it might be true, but trying to keep 70m people happy is always going to be a losing game. At the end of the day we live in a relatively functional country. I think £74k is a bargain, I wouldn't put up with all the shit and insecurity of being an MP for twice that.

In reply to remus:

Using the same "supply and demand" argument that gets rolled out whenever anyone else playing a key role in the public sector complains about the slash and burn deployed on their pay and pensions : - there is never any shortage of applicants to every MP post every time there is a vacancy so I'm sure there is some fat to be trimmed from that pay package.

In reply to Dominion:

To misquote Orwell

" All of us are equal, but some are more equal than others"

In reply to remus:
It's not just that it's - possibly - going to be £74,000 (the bottom end of the range of £74,000 to £84000 that was being considered, by the looks of it - but that the - Government - feel that every one else has to buckle their belts in and feel lucky to have a job at all, and sometimes take a pay cut.

But somehow MPs can have an 11% pay rise in the current austerity drive that they are deliberately inflicting on us?

One rule for them, and another for the majority of hard working people in this country, who also have not seen a pay rise in years.

Oh, there's going to be a crackdown on expenses? Well, they've had more than 4 years to sort that out, and still you get an MP who thinks that billing the country for the electricity to run his stables at his "second home" is just an insignificant error in paper work and can be put right by paying it back.

He supposed to be competent enough to govern the country, and he can't even get his electricity bill right. Perhaps if he was only charging expenses on his real "second home" ie the one he has to be near Parliament, then he wouldn't have this problem.

But they cannot even sort this fiasco out, and let MPs get away with this rip off.

So why the heck should they deserve a pay rise?

You can argue the level of initial pay in the first place, but have they earned an 11% pay rise in a time when every else is taking a cut or standing still? Is it justifiable?

In reply to Dominion:

convert half the offices and all but one of the bars, snooker rooms etc into dormitories with bunk beds. the security is already in place for Parliament.

Centralised stationaery store for pens & paper.

All expenses to b e vetted by a person with a headache & big mortgage. We'll treat it as 'detached duty' and let them claim a standard class rail ticket home.
Pensions aligned withe the rest of the civil service, as are any future payrises, terms & conditions, overtime etc etc.

In reply to Dominion:

Has it escaped evryone's attention that MP's aren't actually awarding them selves this rise? Most of them are arguing they shouldn't get it.

In reply to Dominion:

£74k for that job, nobody of that calibre would in their right mind do it. The pay and perks are rubbish compared with what you could get elsewhere if you had that drive/intelligence etc.

Mps should be paid about £100 k at least and no longer have to shell out from their own funds for researchers/support staff etc.

In reply to Dominion:

Which MPs are suggesting this pay rise is appropriate? As far as I can tell it's been universally condemned by MPs, it is IPSA who have proposed the pay rise.

I agree that their expenses are a bit of a farce, if only because it is an abuse of trust rather than a major financial burden. I don't think it is indicative of an overall trend, though. They're just people trying to fulfill an impossible set of criteria, there will always be f*ck ups. Of course that doesn't excuse it, but i think a lot of people home in on one or two issues that are important to them and miss the big picture.

Do they deserve a pay rise? I don't know, but I do think they're currently under payed relative to the level of responsibility placed upon them.

In reply to pec:


It's been suggested / reported that if it was put to a vote, approx 66% would vote for it.

That's most of them in favour, not most of them against.

And again, it's not the basic level of pay that is under discussion, it's whether an 11% pay rise is appropriate in the economic climate that is being forced upon the rest of us by Parliament, which is enforcing a 1% limit on other public employees.

In reply to neilh:


That's why it's called the public sector. If money is your motivator then to be honest you are in the wrong business.

If you want to reward people for the compassion and public service they demonstrate then I suggest we could start with those who wipe the arses of oaps in hospitals.


Oh - sorry I just realised, that post was satirical wasn't it?

In reply to off-duty:


The final bit isnt a bad idea. There is no logical reason why they are given an office allowance and left to hire their own staff and rent premises etc.
Having it managed professionally would remove temptation.

In reply to dissonance:



Maybe we could run it as an independent department. We could call it something like "the civil service" ....

In reply to off-duty:

We didn't used to pay MPs which meant only the rich could stand. I don't think a salary comparable with a headmaster or senior police officer is unreasonable. Nor paying fairly generous office travel etc to ensure it is an attractive job and can be done properly.

However taking the piss by MPs should be more harshly punished. Expenses fiddling should result in being thrown out, as elsewhere

In reply to MG:



You may have a point, however in these straitened times it's paycuts alround for all of us in it together in the public sector.
That is, importantly, regardless of the terms and conditions that you might have signed up for.
Incidentally I always thought the penalty for widespread expenses fraud was jail, not a pay rise.

If you want competent MPs you need a reasonable salary. There are a lot of thieves and rogues but maybe that's because honest hard working people are earning more, or at least enough, doing something else.

I do agree though that their "expenses" should be limited to legitimate business expenses. So no alcohol for themselves, no claiming for tea and biscuits in the office, and accommodation should be rent and essentials for the location they weren't living in before they were elected. The higher salary reflects the inconvenience of the job over another, so if you need a cleaner to gain the time to have off then it comes out of your after tax pay just like the rest of us.

In reply to Dominion:

Should halve the number of MPs,pay them £100k + London accommodation+secretary+three research assistants. They should also all have proper offices to accommodate their teams.
We might then get properly resourced, informed and appropriately talented MPs.

In reply to Postmanpat:


I'm ok with that as long as the assistants and secretaries jobs are advertised, and they are interviewed independently to make sure that the MP's don't just employ their own family , and we get value for money.

In reply to pec:

Unsurprisingly what they're saying in public and what they saying in private appears to differ significantly.

MP's pay is a vexed issue even in the good times, whatever they do they can't do right. If IPSA genuinely think they're worth +11% then isn't that what we pay them for, to make that decision dispassionately? Still, +11% against a background of stagnating/falling pay across the rest of the public sector and across much of the private was never going to wash. I'm surprised it's been presented like this rather than as a series of 3.5% rises or a couple at 5.3%. Of course two or even three successive rises is not much easier to sell but it achieves much the same effect without looking as ridiculous as a headline 11% while pushing some of the presentation difficulty down the road a little, possibly into better economic times.

jk

In reply to Postmanpat:


Aside from there are plenty of highly skilled, informed and talented staff who get paid far less than that.
So the problem doesnt seem to be the salaries but simply attracting the right staff.

As for the secretary + research assistants. Possibly if managed and recruited centrally. As opposed to simply providing a training ground for future MPs of the same party.

In reply to dissonance:


There have clearly been cases of blatant nepotism and employing family members for essentially doing nothing. However, I can see being an assistant to an MP might be more like working for a family firm than just another admin job. Many solicitors and the like employ relatives in small firms - which gives stability and common purpose and so on. When it works well I can see there is case for it for MPs too.

I think MPs are underpaid when you take into account the weird hours they have to work, the countless approaches from complete loons they have to deal with (without telling the loons that they are in fact loons), and the extreme levels of public vilification they attract.

In reply to dissonance:


That is an inherent problem in the existing mainstream parties that we have, that they are increasingly like feudal clans or medieval trade guilds, incestuous, inexperienced in anything but politics, inward-looking and self-refering (all of them, but the trend is strongest by quite a long way in the Labour party, witness the multi-generational MPs like the Benns, the clan Kinnoch and the offspring of people like Jack Straw and Blair being gifted safe seats, i.e. rotten boroughs), where the rotten boroughs are passed from generation to generation with the population have little say in the matter. This is a far more serious, though obviously less eye-catching and emotive problem than MPs pay-rises or how their genuine reasonable expenses are sorted from blatant fiddling and lily-gilding.

The principal parties are deeply embedded in power and control, incestuously intermingled with the media and putting up huge barriers to entry for any new parties, but they increasingly look moribund and interested simply in obtaining power, rather than having any idea what to do with it when they get it, hence no over-arching ideas or real choices for the electorate.

There was a time when the main parties had millions of members, who could actually affect the party's policy on any given issue. This is long gone, the membership is tiny and almost entirely irrelevant, the parties are just vehicles for the advancement of professional politicians, largely motivated by their own careers and intent on scoring silly points for their own side and against their opponents, rather than pursuing any serious policies or tackling difficult issues realistically.

The corruption or sailing close to the wind with expenses and pay is a symptom not a cause.

In reply to Postmanpat:



It is true that we have too many MPs to be useful, also the constituency boundaries are very rigged to favour certain metropolitan areas. There was an attempt to tackle the latter problem at the start of the present government, but needless to say it was done in a typically partisan way and then stopped in a fit of totally unjustified pique by the Lib Dems when they lost the AV referendum, as they entirely deserved to do.

The problem with your idea is that we might pay more and resource MPs better, but still end up with the same self-serving tribalists, if we failed to reform the party system that creates and selects them. It is fairly well known that MPs barely read majority of the bills they are passing, nor do they have any idea or interest in how they interact with existing law (badly, normally), or how it will work in practice.

There is not much point in having local constituencies if the candidates have no real connection with the area but are parachuted in by the centre, either to push a favoured candidate or to reward a loyal functionary with a sweetie. Without the requirement, say, that candidates have to have lived in their constituencies for at least 5 years, we might as well not have local constituencies at all.

In reply to Cú Chullain:

Agreed. I support the IPSA proposals as we need a system of payments that will encourage good people to consider the role in future, rather than the politically trained clones, who have never worked in the real world, who dominate the leadership of the main parties today. I'd say higher pay still and fewer expenses would be an even better solution. Looking at the BBC website anyone who carefully argued why this might be a good idea ended up with large negative votes whilst barmy populist rants got liked: maybe the people get the politicians that they deserve.

In reply to Simon4:


Useful for what though? Too many for effective legislating maybe but as representatives of constituents I would think the number is about right. With 100,000 constituents per MP, they can credibly respond to individual concerns and be an effective "advocate of last resort" for individuals. If you increase the number of constituents, it is unlikely an MP could respond to any individual but would rather have to concern themselves only with matters affecting groups of people, or bigger.

In reply to Simon4:


That would be a massive change to what has been the established way for a very long time. Margaret Thatcher had no affiliation to Finchley before she was elected MP there. Churchill was variously MP in Oldham, Manchester North West, Dindee, Epping, and Woodford. There are many other examples. Requiring residency would prevent many able people from standing.

In reply to remus:

I agree. I wouldn't do it for £74K either. I'd be happy to make it closer to £100K (assuming the system of allowances and pension contributions was normalised) to ensure that people from a 'normal' background would be attracted into parliament. It's all very well for Cameron and his Eton chums to be suddenly so concerned about how this plays with hard-working families when they could afford to do the job for nothing.

There are frequent call for more people from working class backgrounds who have succeeded in business or the professions to enter parliament. The point is that such people spend a lot of time getting qualified and established and then have earnings profiles that are very back-loaded. They aren't going to give up jobs that have just started to have salaries that have made the effort worth it to go into parliament and live in London for £66K. Or £74K either, probably.

Poor pay for MPs has its roots in a system where it was assumed that MPs were of independent means - pretty much where US system has now arrived too.

In reply to Dominion:

I'd like to see some sort of pay for performance - where they'd have a base salary and then get a bonus according their ability to meet the pledges they made the electorate. That way, they only get paid their OTE if they actually met their targets (ie did what they were voted in to do).

It works in most other organisations - so why not in government ?

In reply to ruffydd:

Laws are made by governing parties, often wielding the whip. This government didn't even have a manifesto as such given its a coalition. How on earth can you judge performance like that?

In reply to MG:


We are apparently one of the most of the most over represented countries in the world. But you have hit on a key point. Why are they supposed to combine the complex job a making laws and voting on policy with the job of "tribal elder" dealing with constituents personal problems. It's a bit nuts, especially since they don't have a staff to do either.

In reply to Postmanpat:


Apparently, if you include members of the House of Lords, we have over 1400 legislators (in fact, if you add MSPs and Welsh AMs, it's a lot more than that), and yet you won't find many people who have good things to say about the ways they develop and pass laws in Westminster


Yup, there are so many elements to the job, arguably not enough time to do any of them properly, and tensions between those elements pulling in opposite directions. I wouldn't fancy it at all.

In reply to ruffydd:




Mainly because I'd like my government to be able to make strategic long term decisions for the good of the country, not on short term payback.

In reply to Offwidth:


Both parties made commitments to the electorate on what they would do if they were elected. They would be judged on those commitments. Sure, it's a coalition and so they've had to compromise - as have those who voted for the coalition parties.

In reply to ruffydd:


A manifesto isn't a contract. Its more a statement on where they stand on certain issues. If you don't like the way the party dealt with their manifesto 'pledges' you vote them out (which is a pretty big performance related pay weighting)

In reply to MG:


It really depends what area the MP's are in, some less affluent areas may have more issues than perhaps a more affluent area.
( More parties than poverty if you land a good constituency)

In reply to Offwidth:


Well if you subtract the loss or perks, it may not be as much of a rise as we think.

Take the 'dinner money' they get 15quid a day, that will go. I know they don't work that many days ( 30 weeks only , compared to even the Teachers who do 39) Anyway, this
first cut is say 30x5x15 is two and a half grand off the rise right away.

No more 65 grand golden goodbyes. They would have to work 20 + years to get that at the now 2 weeks pay for each year.( 3 weeks pay per year for older MP's)
No more insurances paid, a cut in allowances for second homes, restrictions on taxis until after 11 pm etc.

The devil will be in the detail, but if we are lucky the 'strings' will more than pay for the increase. And at the same time we will complain that they are getting an 'increase'

( I still don't think that they should have been awarded a rise, even if they are going to claw much of it back)