The MP’s expenses debate is a perennial issue. Instead of debating claims for pay-per-view porn, bath plugs or Brown’s proposed attendance allowance let’s hear the case for paying politicians a salary commensurate with their executive role so that ridiculous expenses claims can be eliminated.
Backbench MPs earn £60,000 a year which is less than a communications director or a director in the PR industry according to PR Week’s 2008 salary survey. But, it’s still a damn sight more than the average salary of £25,000 in the UK. Which I guess is why no politician of any party will ever tackle the issue.
You wonder what kind of educated person chooses to be a politician when it pays – financially and in terms of work life balance – to pursue a more conventional career. Should we be surprised that we end up with so many apparently dysfunctional individuals as politicians?
Paying politicians properly rather than a dubious cocktail of salary and expenses might even attract some new talent and raise standards. But, in politics, like most other areas of life, it seems that you get what you pay for.
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It would be better to have genuine conviction politicians who have a real passion to make people’s lives better, rather than those to ready to stick their snouts in a big trough funded by the tax payer. Back benchers should receive the average wage of the constituents they represent and whilst in London live in reasonable, but not extravagant, rented accommodation paid for by the state; they shouldn’t be allowed to profit from 2nd homes paid for by taxpayers. MPs with ministerial responsibilty should earn more, perhaps the same as very senior civil servants. They should aim to enrich other people’s lives, not to line their own pockets..
Well said. The details of British MPs’ expenses reads like a plot from a Carry On Film: Gordon Brown played by Sidney James, Hazel Blears by Barbara Windsor, Peter Mandelson by Kenneth Williams and John Prescott by Hattie Jacques. Still, the most important thing is to pay MPs more, and then move on. More on my PR blog here:
http://paulseaman.eu/2009/05/mps-carry-on-fiasco/