MPs’ Pay
Posted by Ali Gledhill on 1 January, 2007
According to the Independent, Labour backbenchers are asking for a pay rise to put them in line with GPs. This is a peculiar move from a group of people who are attempting to take more money from the taxpayer, who put them in their positions to begin with. MPs already earn over £60,000 before expenses: several times the average wage nation-wide.
I know they work hard to do their jobs, but are they really worth £100,000? If we are to keep the electorate engaged in politics, surely we must keep the politicians in touch with the electorate? If so, giving them such a high salary almost guarantees growing levels of apathy, so must be discouraged.
Given that MPs are funded by the taxpayer, I think we need to ensure that the taxpayer wants to pay their wages. If we ever have a minority of the eligible electorate actually voting, we should disband the House of Commons to teach them a lesson.
I suspect they are hoping to receive an increased pay packet, and are setting the bar unreasonably high to make their final settlement look fair. They should earn no more than twice the average wage, and learn how the other half live. If they complain, vote them out!
I do wonder why it is Labour MPs who are pushing for this pay increase: it doesn’t look like there will be many of them around after the next General Election!
The New Constitution 
bgprior said
What is your yardstick for measuring the just level of wages, for MPs or anyone else? On what basis do you determine that “twice the average wage” is the amount MPs deserve, rather than 1.5 times or 2.5 times?
For my suggestion how to approach this, see http://www.pickinglosers.com/index.php?q=node/217
thenewconstitution said
I must confess to have merely skim-read your
dissertationarticle on the issue, but it clearly represents a more thorough consideration of the issue than I have managed. My yardstick is simple: if MPs are earning vast amounts of money, some of their constituents will feel that they are not represented by someone who knows how they live, or the issues they face in life. This is not to say that poorer people cannot be adequately represented by a rich MP, but if an MP never uses any of the services that their constituents do (the local NHS hospital, for example), then it is difficult to see how they can feel in touch with their politician.bgprior said
I suppose we can agree that it is the job of an MP to represent what they judge to be the best interests of all their constituents, not any particular subset. And we may also agree that no constituency is so homogeneous that all the constituents lead identical lives on identical wages. Even of those on similar wages close to the average, there will be a wide variety of circumstances. If MPs had to live similar lives to those they had to represent in order to understand the issues they face, we would have 60 million MPs in the House of Commons.
One of the worst-off families I know earn well above the national average. A combination of bad choices, bad luck and the perversity of our tax, welfare, education etc. systems have brought them to a point where they have no capital, no savings, and disposable income so limited by an IVA that they can barely afford to buy clothes for their kids or get a broken boiler fixed. Others I know on much lower incomes are significantly better off than them. Should a prospective MP also lead something approximating to their life in order to understand their predicament, and so that they also feel in touch with their politician? How many different lives should a prospective MP lead?
Even if your argument held true, I don’t see how earning double the average wage would help an MP to understand those who earn the average or less than that. National average income is about £25,000 p.a. Does someone earning £50,000 face the same issues as someone earning £25,000? The logic of your position (such as it is) is that an MP should earn the average, not double that.
What matters is not whether an MP earns a specific amount of money related to the average wage, but whether they have the wisdom and empathy to understand the variety of circumstances in which their constituents live. Some very wise and empathetic people may be willing to work for modest wages, but I have little doubt that you will expand the pool of such people if the wage offered is higher. As my dissertation ( 😉 ) argued, it really ought to be upto constituents to decide what they think their representative is worth at the same time as they are deciding who that representative should be.
I would agree with you, though, that MPs who promote the provision of public services by the state should use those public services. But it does not seem to me to be necessary or effective to stipulate a particular wage that is intended to force them to do so. Will you also force them to be ill, in order that they can experience the joys of the NHS? Or will you have to rely on their sense of responsibility, and the pressure of securing re-election?
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