Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Thu Dec 12, 2013 9:29 pm  

The Video Ref wrote:

£65K ish is not a lot to have every aspect of your life open to public scrutiny. Many MPs are from a legal background.

You could get that as a newly qualified solicitor at a half-decent London firm. If you are at the commerical bar, and any good, you will clear £100K in your first year.

How many newly-qualified solicitors end up at a half-decent London law firm? The vast majority of newly-qulified lawyers will be lucky to earn the average wage. They'll also not benefit from a £400 per month food allowance, or fully-expensed travel to work, or 2nd home allowances, or have their energy bills picked up by the taxpayer, or be able to employ their spouse or other family member on a salary of £40k etc.

Not a single MP has to "get by" on £64k per year

Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Thu Dec 12, 2013 9:45 pm  

Standee wrote:

looking in the mirror again?

QED.

Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Thu Dec 12, 2013 9:51 pm  

cod'ead wrote:

I doubt there are that many on here who have been involved in legislating to ensure the salaries and benefits of others were capped at 1%

I can't argue with that, but I dont think it answers my enquiry. There are a lot of critics on this site who take the moral high ground. Could they resist such an offer?

Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Thu Dec 12, 2013 10:11 pm  

Euclid wrote:

I can't argue with that, but I dont think it answers my enquiry. There are a lot of critics on this site who take the moral high ground. Could they resist such an offer?

I have resisted such an offer, or at least I seem to have resisted such an offer, can't remember actually saying I didn't want a wage rise at all since 2007 (when I took a 60% DROP), but it seems that I must have.

Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Thu Dec 12, 2013 10:56 pm  

Euclid wrote:

I can't argue with that, but I dont think it answers my enquiry. There are a lot of critics on this site who take the moral high ground. Could they resist such an offer?

I would expect that for many it would depend on who was making the offer and who was funding it.

If I was working for a company that I knew was in financial difficulties and struggling to pay their bills, then suddenly I was offered a sizeable pay rise by someone who didn't even work for the business but thought "I deserved it anyway", no matter what happened to the other people I worked with and on whose support I depended. I'd like to think that I'd politely decline.

What's currently happening is little different to the remuneration committees of major companies, awarding executives a raise so out of kilter to prevailing conditions. Plenty of MPs have comllaied about such practises in the recent past

Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Thu Dec 12, 2013 11:49 pm  

I'd :-
- raise the MP's salary to £125,000
- Raise the PM's salary to £250,000
- Raise Ministers salaries to £200,000
- introduce a ban on all other income.
- MP's personal accounts made available to a Parliamentary auditor and any additional income must be explained
- either build an (or several) accommodation block(s) for MP's whose constituencies are more than 50 miles from Westminster, or the state should buy sufficient properties.
- A ban on unpaid interns


Probably not perfect, but would, in my opinion, reduce the effects of lobbying and potential for corruption/unrepresentative influences to sway politicians.
Plus the higher wage might tempt some better candidates, but I don't see that as a major issue.

Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:44 am  

cod'ead wrote:

How many newly-qualified solicitors end up at a half-decent London law firm? The vast majority of newly-qulified lawyers will be lucky to earn the average wage.

London accounts for around 50% of qualified lawyers in England and Wales (i.e solicitors and barristers). At anywhere half-decent in London, doing commercial or corporate work, the absolute minimum starting salary for a newly qualified solicitor is about £55K.

Some firms double that, but expect your heart and soul in return. By 3 years post-qualification, if you are earning less than £75K, you are doing something wrong. At the commerical bar, even in Leeds and Manchester, you can exceed £100K in your first year out of pupillage if you are good and in the right chambers. But, earnings wise, this really is the legal equivalent of the Premier League.

Note I am talking about people who are formally legally qualified, not just someone who has left uni with a law degree and got a job as a paralegal at the local personal injury sweat-shop.

They'll also not benefit from a £400 per month food allowance, or fully-expensed travel to work, or 2nd home allowances, or have their energy bills picked up by the taxpayer, or be able to employ their spouse or other family member on a salary of £40k etc.

I guess it's the perks of the job. Most people in professional or management roles will have such benefits, albeit perhaps not to the same level.

Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Fri Dec 13, 2013 8:20 am  

The Video Ref wrote:

I guess it's the perks of the job. Most people in professional or management roles will have such benefits, albeit perhaps not to the same level.

Unfortunately thats a very naive opinion, if you think that a senior manager of a decent sized company can slip his home electricity bill into the pile of invoices on Maureen-in-accounts desk in the expectation that it will be paid with no questions asked, or that they will receive a meal allowance when working at their desk, or that they can employ members of their own family at twice the minimum wage in spurious jobs then you are very wrong.

Even if your company provide you with a car for business and personal use they have to declare it to HMRC and your tax code is lowered to reflect the benefit in kind, you can even be taxed as a benefit in kind if your employer provides you with free parking for the car and any other kind of expenses that you claim of any description have to be proven with receipts and properly recorded so as not to attract further benefit in kind penalties.

There are no perks outside of Westminster like the perks that MPs grant themselves.

Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:16 am  

Interesting to see that Sir Ian Kennedy claims "Ipsa had saved the public more than £35m since 2010." Maybe we really should be grateful to the old bill, after all just think of the £bns they must save the country by preventing us all from robbing ourselves blind.

Re: Christmas Cheer! MPs' pay to go up 11% : Fri Dec 13, 2013 12:35 pm  

Dita's Slot Meter wrote:

This.... The truth is that MP's are actually underpaid for what they are expected to do - Granted, some of them are incompetent and should never have been elected into their jobs in the first place (though that is the result of an even more incompetent electorate). However, if you want the job doing properly, maybe it would be wiser to offer a decent, competitive salary, then you might attract people who are actually upto the job?

The problem with this whole subject, is that we live in a society where we pay celebrities and sportsmen vast amounts of cash (and seem happy to do so), yet we elect people to run and sort our lives for us and only want to give them relative peanuts in comparison - Its quite bizarre in my opinion.

The most ironic thing was listening to Jeremy Vine being all self-righteous about this on his radio show, yet wasn't exactly forthcoming about how much he takes off the taxpayer in salary for doing 10 hours work a week - I'm betting its more than those overpaid MP's??

This is the best and most sensible post on this thread so far. £70k - 80k a year is not excessive in relation to the position of responsibility and power that MP's hold and the work they generally carry on. Even in the public sector you would expect senior officiers in local authorities to be earning more. The merits and performance of specific MPs in another matter and that's up to the electorate to decide on.

The whole p1ss take with expenses came about because for years and years we didn't have a proper system that paid MPs effectively, and pay rises were seen as politically unpalatable, so instead a regime of "expenses" built up which then became misused and ultimately outright abused by some. This reform is entirely sensible, the problem is the stupidity of the knee-jerkers who don't look at this clearly and instead fixate on one aspect (the base salary).

There is also the public's general dislike of paying for politicians at any level whilst paradoxically expecting politicians to be there to do the things they want. The consequences of refusing to pay sensibly effectively narrows down the field of candidates, so you end up with people who are already rich, or people who are bankrolled by interests. This impacts all parts of the political spectrum whether it is people being bunged by lobbyists or being funded by trade unions, these people end up in hock to the respective special interests paying them (now you might personally agree with some of those special interests, but that's a different issue to whether they should have politicians in their pockets).

In terms of restricting freedom of employment for MPs, this I'm not sure of because it's tricky, I think there is merit in banning MPs from taking personal contributions from outside organisations whether it's lobbyists, campaign groups, unions, private companies and even private individuals but there would need to be a convention on ring fenced fund raising for election purposes otherwise genuine independent candidates would suffer. I'd also ban them from directorships of companies. But then what would you do about other income sources? If someone owns a business, you can make them step down as a director but you cannot force them to sell it (they'd just move the directorship to another family member etc), if someone has written a book you cannot stop royalties from coming etc... These are real world issues.