Sir Christopher Kelly, the Chairman of the Committee for Standards in Public Life, has now reported.
The Committee was asked to overhaul the parliamentary expenses system after the expenses scandal. The Committee’s report recommends that mortgage claims should be stopped after an 'appropriate' transitional period and employing relatives should be phased out within five years. The Committee’s other proposals include a ban on MPs near London claiming for a second home, an end to £25-a-day subsistence claims, reduced resettlement grants and reduced travel claims.
The new rules will only become law if they are adopted by the newly created standards body IPSA (Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority), but the party leaders have been quick to back the proposals. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown have said that MPs should accept them ‘in full’.
What are we to make of it all?
Sir Christopher has explained that his Committee took a ‘cold, hard look at what went wrong’. Undoubtedly there are MPs who have acted unethically, and possibly in some cases illegally. They have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. It is right that they are held to account and that there should be clear new rules introduced governing parliamentary expenses. It is crucial that politicians - and all public servants - not only do the right thing but are seen to.
However, it is important to keep a sense of proportion and ensure that the morally right desire to clean up the expenses system doesn’t just become an excuse to give MPs a good kicking. It is striking that there are no new proposals on MPs’ pay – Sir Christopher said that was a job for the senior salaries review body.
In a democracy, it is crucial that political representatives are given the resources they need, and remunerated appropriately. They undertake a difficult and important job. The current salary for an MP is £64,766. The average (full-time)
According to the Office for National Statistics' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), the ‘mean’ gross annual earnings across all employee jobs in 2008 came to £26,020. If you look just at the figures for full-time employees, that figure rises to £31,323. On that basis, MPs earn more than double. Is that enough?
On the other hand, if MPs’ salaries are compared with other jobs, their earnings don’t seem so generous. Half of GPs earn over £100,000. Headteachers earn between £39,525 and £104,628, depending on the size of their school. Salaries are higher in
An MP’s job is tough and unlike other jobs. MPs are responsible for representing the interests of their constituents in the House of Commons. This involves highlighting and raising issues of concern, making representations to Government Ministers on behalf of people living in the constituency, attending functions and other public gatherings, answering letters, scrutinising government and legislation, sitting on committees and taking part in debates in the chamber and of course, dealing with constituents' concerns at both a local and a national level.
The job of an MP should be respected, and pay should reflect the importance of the role. If expenses go without an increase in salary, problems are likely to emerge.
It will be difficult to attract good people into the job. Why put yourself through the ordeal of becoming a candidate, contesting an election and representing constituents (often a thankless task) if you could have (much) better pay and conditions in the commercial sector?
As a consequence, the job of an MP will become the preserve of the wealthy, those who have already made their money in the City or elsewhere. Parliament will become less representative.
We need to ensure that politics is cleaned up and that the expenses system is cleared up. But we should not allow the politics of envy to turn this episode into an indiscriminate attack on those who represent us. Squeezing them until the pips squeak won’t help anyone, and it will ultimately damage our politics.
Paul Woolley is Director of Theos.
