DOMINIC SANDBROOK: What an insult to all of us! MPs' demand for a huge pay rise shows the gap between rulers and ruled has never been so wide
For most people, times are tough. Summer is fast approaching yet, with food prices rising and energy costs rocketing, many families feel too squeezed to contemplate a holiday.
One small group of lucky winners, however, is laughing all the way to the bank. For according to reports yesterday, Britain’s 650 MPs can soon look forward to a £10,000 pay rise, taking their basic pay to a whopping £75,000 a year.
In return for their pay rise, MPs are expected to accept a small cut in their gold-plated pensions, which are far more generous than most public-sector workers’ arrangements.
To be fair, not all MPs are delighted with the news.
‘They should throw this proposal in the bin,’ said Labour’s John Mann, accurately predicting it would ‘just create more bad publicity for MPs’.
‘It would be completely unacceptable,’ he said. ‘We are in the middle of a recession.’
Alas, the admirable Mr Mann is in the minority. When the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) asked MPs how much they thought they should earn, the average answer was around £86,000.
Some politicians even told IPSA they should be paid £100,000 — four times the average full-time salary.
With memories of the expenses scandal still fresh, the nation’s finances deep in the red and so many families struggling financially, it beggars belief that our politicians could be so indifferent to public opinion.
Yet the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, who takes home an annual £142,826, believes that Britain’s MPs earn only an ‘ordinary’ wage.
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In its way, this story tells you everything you need to know about British politics in 2013. Never in living memory has our political elite seemed so disconnected from the pressures faced by ordinary people. Never has the gap between the rulers and the ruled yawned quite so wide.
Like most people, I am quite happy for our MPs to be decently paid. But a close look at the nationwide pay picture, compiled from official tax figures, deals their shameless claims a devastating blow.
Laughing all the way to the bank: Commons Speaker, John Bercow, who takes home an annual £142,826, believes that Britain's MPs earn only an 'ordinary' wageA typical nurse’s salary, for example, is £25,970. A hospital porter earns £16,766; a nursery nurse takes home just £11,630.
Can our MPs really believe they deserve almost ten times more? And can they really be so oblivious to public opinion?
What makes this so shocking is that many people have never felt under greater financial pressure.
Only yesterday, new figures showed that in the past ten years the energy giants have increased their mark-ups (the difference between what they pay for energy and the prices they charge customers) by almost 40 per cent for electricity and 70 per cent for gas, putting an ordinary family’s electricity bill up by £91 and their gas bill by £165.
You might have expected our MPs to do something about it, subjecting the greedy energy firms to greater scrutiny and putting pressure on them to hold down prices. But it appears they are too busy with their own financial arrangements to worry about the rest of us.
To make matters worse, many politicians seem to have learned nothing from the shameful expenses scandal.
When IPSA rejected a claim from one Labour MP, Jim McGovern, who was demanding repayment of a £23.90 rail ticket, the ensuing legal battle cost a staggering £27,000Some MPs have treated IPSA staff with such high-handed contempt that the watchdog recently had to put up signs in the parliamentary office building, Portcullis House, warning that ‘aggression towards our staff will not be tolerated’.
Meanwhile, the expenses claims are flooding in. When IPSA rejected a claim from one Labour MP, Jim McGovern, who was demanding repayment of a £23.90 rail ticket, the ensuing legal battle cost a staggering £27,000.
Mr McGovern lost the case, with the judge deciding that the taxpayer had no business paying for him to go to Labour Party meetings. But who will be footing IPSA’s legal bill? We will, of course.
Indeed, the deeper you dig, the more disheartening the picture becomes. Do we, for example, really need as many as 650 MPs to represent 63 million people?
The United States elects only 435 congressmen to represent 315 million people. And India’s 1.2 billion people apparently need only 545 representatives — more than 100 fewer than we do. Instead of embracing reform, however, our politicians dig in their heels, ceaselessly lecturing us about how hard they are working on our behalf.
But are they? I can’t help thinking that not all of them are entirely dedicated to the job. Take, for example, the Tory MP Stephen Phillips, a commercial lawyer who, while moonlighting outside Parliament, has earned £922,380 in barrister’s fees since July 2011.
Mr Phillips is, of course, entitled to earn as much as he likes. But if I were one of his constituents in Sleaford and North Hykeham, I would be wondering if my interests were really his top priority.
Of course, there are plenty of dedicated MPs, but Parliament is hardly the boot camp its defenders suggest. This year it will sit for just 150 days. MPs had two weeks off at Easter, another break in early May, and will enjoy six weeks’ holiday over the summer. As the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, the Labour MP Margaret Hodge recently remarked: ‘Members of the public would be forgiven for thinking that it is MPs who are lazy and that it is Parliament that is failing to provide good value for money.’
Disturbingly few senior politicians have had any real experience outside the world of politics. Ed Miliband left university, became a political special adviser and moved smoothly into the House of CommonsI cannot be alone in finding all this deeply depressing. When David Lloyd George introduced pay for MPs in 1911, he thought it would open up politics to ordinary people. That first payment of £400 a year, he insisted, was ‘just an allowance to enable us to open the door to great and honourable public service’.
But is that what ordinary voters see today when they look at the Palace of Westminster? I rather doubt it.
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Indeed, disturbingly few senior politicians have had any real experience outside the world of politics.
Ed Miliband left university, became a political special adviser and moved smoothly into the House of Commons. So did George Osborne, while Nick Clegg had a stint in the European Parliament first.
None of them can seriously claim to understand the ambitions and anxieties of ordinary people. So it is little wonder that voter turnout at the last general election was just 65 per cent; that turnout in this year’s local elections was less than one-third; and that so many people are flocking to fringe parties.
At the heart of our democracy is an implicit contract between governors and governed. Yet that contract has frayed almost to breaking point.
We badly need to rekindle Lloyd George’s century-old vision of a House of Commons that represents the nation rather than a Chamber dominated by a narrow coterie of professional politicians.
At the very least, our political representatives ought to be trying desperately to reach out to the British people. Instead, they are moving further and further away, opening up a vacuum for demagogues and extremists.
I always used to think that we get the politicians we deserve. But surely, surely, we deserve better than this?
