MP's salaries

[narmour]

Does anyone else think it's a little off colour that MPs will more than likely receive a huge pay rise? amongst the current cut backs and austerity it is rediculous, but for me, the real irony comes from George Osborne's announcement less than a week ago that he is removing incremental pay increases for all civil servants. Surely MPs are civil servants too?

:hmm:

 

[Dave1970]

It's more than just off colour, rather puts the whole "we're all in this together" idea to bed doesn't it.

The thing is the independent review body has decided that due to inflation and previous pay freezes MP's probably are due about 15% to maintain their quality of life. They're probably right, the same is true of most of us....BUT.... If the teachers or NHS independent pay review bodies recommended a 15% rise it wouldn't happen because pay rises for the rest of the public sector apart from MP's have been capped at 1%.

So the situation would appear to be that the government is more than willing to overrule independent pay recommendations except for MP's where they are "powerless" to intervene

 

[narmour]

It disgusts me how blatantly they squirm to conserve their priveleged lifestyle while the rest of us struggle. I wonder how many of the 'Independant review panel' are golf buddies or bridge club friends of cabinet MPs.

My main point though is the irony of this announcement coming out a week after Osborne's announcement about civil service pay increases. As a civil servant myself, I have never been in favour of incremental pay increases. I don't believe that anyone should get paid more money just for doing the same job as me, but for longer. Pay rises should be performance based, which is what Osborne is proposing. But with an organisation which doesn't deal in profits, how can performance be measured? the reality of the situation is that the mechanism for awarding pay increases will be so convoluted and impossible to understand that no one will be ever be able to get their heads round it, and thus, no pay awards will be made. What better way to demotivate the workforce than to remove any possibility of a pay rise?

They did the same with procurement, the gov't announces that the service has to cut back on spending, and they make purchasing and procurement so complicated that the majority of civil servants don't have the first clue how to do it anymore. Hey presto, magic saving. What is wrong with having a department credit card with a credit limit equal to the department's budget. This would be easy to audit and any misusers could be easily identified and fired. But I digress. They don't seem to realise that we don't have the proper tools to do the jobs now, which will ultimately lead to huge fines from Europe for non compliance to European Directives (I work in Dept. of the Environment and it's frightening what we are heading for), but hey, that's the next govt's problem.

:hat:

 

[graysalchemy]

I am a picture framer and the what I am going to say didn't happen to me but to a framer i know.

He was invited to quote for a large order of frames for a council body. He tendered and was rung up by the 'civil servant' regarding his quote. She liked what he was offering bar the price.

He said 'Well if price is an issue I am sure I can shave something off it to get it into budget.'

'No no', the lady replied, 'they are not expensive enough, I have been paying x amount and if I put them in at that price then questions will be asked why I have not got this price before.'

You couldn't make it up could you and I am sure she is not the only one who did that.

 

[Dave1970]

I was chatting to a mate about issues like your procurement one at the weekend. We need to save money in public services so the default response has been to sack people and reduce the wage bill. This disastrous for those involved and for service standards, it also increases the welfare bill and drops consumer spending helping to stop economic recovery.

What's needed is an attack on bulls**t rules. Maybe a hotline for public sector workers to ring and a minister in charge of sorting it out. The public sector is wasteful in many ways but it has a lot to do with the rules under which it operates, which are ultimately made by government.

An example. I'm a teacher, at the start of this year a colleague broke his leg, he was off work for about 3 weeks, once the swelling settled and he was comfortable on his crutches he wanted to come back. He wasn't allowed to because in the event of a fire he might not be able to lead his class to safety. Never mind that his room is right next to the main doors. We were not even allowed to temporarily employ someone on minimum wage just to be there in case the fire alarm went off. Instead we had an extra 8 weeks of a supply teacher at £150/day and he sat at home bored out of his mind.

CRB checks to work with kids are another example. Once every 3 years I have a CRB check to make sure I'm fit to work with kids, this costs the school about 80 quid...fair enough. If I do any work in another school I need another one, volunteer at my son's scouts - another one. I have a colleague who does a lot of football coaching who's had 11 in the last 3 years. What's the point of having a centralised system that issues a certificate if that certificate has no validity elsewhere?

I'm convinced that tens of thousands of people could still be employed now if we just attacked stupid, wasteful rules.

Sorry, off subject on MP's salaries but does follow on from other comments.

 

[Jeltz]

The whole system is wrong. If you look at top academics and business leaders the amount they earn is many times higher than politicians so the chances of attracting truly competent people into the role is slim.What we have at the moment is a mixture or idealists and rich people who crave power, i.e. (proverbially) we are paying peanuts and what have we got?

Running the country ought to be the most important job around and paid accordingly. There should be very little by way of expenses as there should be provided transport and accommodation. In these days of easy transport and communications do we really need over 600 MPs, I don't think so we could manage with about 300.

As it stands I wouldn't be an MP for £66k or even £70k a year (although my earnings are less than a third) as you are hated by the vast majority of the population who are up for jumping on any band wagon.

Our problem is that we have been conned for decades, we've had politicians who tell us what they think we want to hear rather than the truth. The last government managed to double the national debt before the banking crisis and let that banking crisis happen. During good growth a country should be reducing its national debt but what happened is a bit like getting a better paid job and using i as a signal to run up a higher overdraft; the last time there was a budget surplus was in 2001, i.e. they were bribing us with high spending through borrowed money.

I don't buy them blaming the banking crisis on other people, either they knew what was happening which is dishonest or they didn't which is incompetent.

We currently have a national debt of around £1.3trillion and growing, selling off our stake in the banks won't even make a noticeable dent in that. As adults we all need to sit down with our children and apologise that our generation has cocked up so badly that they and their kids will be paying off our debts, we put these people in power so ultimately its our fault. I can't see any of the political parties with a credible way out of the mess that Tony and Gordon left us with.

So in summary in order to attract some people who would actually be able to do the job properly I think we should be paying them a lot more but have far fewer of them.

 

[calumscott]

The thing with this pay review body, whoever they are, is that there will be a specific brief to which they work. The likelihood of that brief allowing adjustment for parity with other civil servants (although I think technically MPs aren't civil servants...?).

That would make it very fair IMO - if the civil service gets capped by parliament, then by definition they also cap themselves.

 

[oldbloke]

Two points

MPs didn't vote for or ask for this rise, it's put forward by an independent body

All party leaders blocked it

 

[Aleman]

I think that we should all write to our MPs and ask then what their response to the question was. Then kick the wankers out!!!!!

As a contractor if I took a fixed term job in London I would pay all my expenses, pay my pension contributions, work long hours and get called in at short notice. . . . I am not likely to get the job if I insisted that I should be allowed to increase the cost of employing me at a whim!

 

[Dave1970]

Two points

MPs didn't vote for or ask for this rise, it's put forward by an independent body

All party leaders blocked it

This is true, but all the other 'independent' pay bodies can be overruled by government, this one apparently can't. Government makes the rules, MP's approve them, how surprising that they came up with a system whereby their pay rise can't be blocked like the rest of us. The party leaders were always likely to say they were against it, safe in the knowledge that this probably wouldn't stop it.

 

[graysalchemy]

As adults we all need to sit down with our children and apologise that our generation has cocked up so badly that they and their kids will be paying off our debts, we put these people in power so ultimately its our fault. I can't see any of the political parties with a credible way out of the mess that Tony and Gordon left us with.

Don't get me started on T&G but in fairness it has been successive governments for the last 70 yrs which have left us with this debt. Not to mention the housing market based economy which many baby boomers have benefited from and left our children without affordable housing.

As to giving MP's a pay rise well they should on principle refuse it, but with regards to does it attract the right people to run the country? In my opinion no. And there lies the problem it attracts too many idealists and mavericks, and certainly too many power hungry egocentrics, who like the sound of their own voice.

Is Borris Johnson fit to run the country?

I rest my case.

 

[bobsbeer]

I say don't feed them. It only encourages them. Whoever was under the impression that 'we are all in this together' will be being paid a visit by people in white coats shortly. They are clearly delusional. The problem with the pay rise and no doubt organised for this very reason is that it will only come into effect AFTER the next general election. So yes we can kick all the bu**ers out, but the next lot reap the rewards. And the next lot will be no better than the first lot. Most probably don't need the money anyway, and will no doubt go to great lengths to say how pious they are being by not accepting it. Then go on to charge double for their expenses in their subsidised restaurants and bars in Westminster. Poor little darlings.

 

[Jeltz]

Don't get me started on T&G but in fairness it has been successive governments for the last 70 yrs which have left us with this debt. Not to mention the housing market based economy which many baby boomers have benefited from and left our children without affordable housing.

True but in periods of high growth they've tended to try and pay it down rather than hike it up.

The housing market does provide a massive boost to the economy when its active. Its not just the estate agents, solicitors, surveyors and removals companies that benefit, the very least that people do is buy a few pots of paint when the buy a house. Many have new kitchens, bathrooms, gardens landscaped; it is the trigger point for many houses to be re-wired, treated for damp and numerous other things. Not to mention the people that sell up and buy a new house creating work in construction and of course while all those trades are working they aren't claiming benefits.

It is healthy to have a strong housing market with a good volume of transactions what isn't healthy is a rapid increase in prices as we saw. Estate agents are frequently blamed for pushing up prices but in truth I can sell twice as many houses at £150K than I can at £200K and I charge a percentage so its in my interest for the prices to remain stable and reasonable. The house prices rose the way they did as banks would lend more and more and more, to people with lower and lower credit ratings. If the banks had been regulated against such risky lending then the bubble wouldn't have been allowed to expand so much and the resulting burst would have been less damaging.

 

[graysalchemy]

I agree with you Jeltz on the housing market, my industry has suffered because people aren't spending on their houses. But it is the buy to let market and associated cheap mortgages since the mid 80's which have buggered things up, and the resulting tightening up of mortgages has ment that more people have had to rent as they can't afford the deposits which in turn is fueling the buy to let market.

I doubt my kids will ever be able to afford to buy a house and i doubt I will be able to help them get a deposit either, let alone move out of our small cramped house into a larger one which may parents and their friends seemed to be able to do on a regular basis when we were growing up.

 

[Aleman]

MPs didn't vote for or ask for this rise, it's put forward by an independent body

All party leaders blocked it

Actually the independent body as part of the process questioned MP's and asked them the question . . .Do you think you deserve a Pay Rise ? . . . And How much should it be?

For some reason that escapes me . . . the vast majority of the lying cheating scroungers said Yes we need more money!!

 

[bobsbeer]

I say give them a 20% cut, then they might understand what the rest of us have had to endure.

 

[Jeltz]

If we cut their wages the only effect would be to force out people who can't afford to be an MP in favour of those that already have money but want power!

The issue is that the current batch are **** and if you have a poor quality work force you have to invest to get a better one.

 

[Gayle]

Why should MP's be paid a salary at all? Having a huge amount of power, control and influence should be awarded to those who genuinely want to do their best for the people they are responsible for, without the issue of money coming into it. At least one of our own political parties is run by people who have many financial and personal interests in running the country, and they wouldn't be there if there weren't any private gains, rather than them actually wanting to change anything for the better. Surely someone who is compassionate about the interests of humankind would be happy living on reasonable expenses and it would keep out the nutters who don't give a sh*t. Obviously this wouldn't really work in real life, not with the system requiring you to be reasonably rich before you even get into politics.

 

[dolcevita]

I don't object to people being paid a reasonable salary for what can be a demanding job; what I don't feel is right is when they seem to have enough 'spare time' on their hands to write novels and take on outside directorships, consultancies, etc.

One of the most overlooked areas of MPs' remuneration is their pension scheme - still final salary and although they do have to make a contribution, it's one of the most generous in the country. Interestingly, when there was a change in the law that governs pensions a few years back, two classes of 'professions' were exempted from the laws that apply to everyone else - judges and MPs. Call me cynical.......

 

[TRXnMe]

If we cut their wages the only effect would be to force out people who can't afford to be an MP in favour of those that already have money but want power!

The issue is that the current batch are **** and if you have a poor quality work force you have to invest to get a better one.

Sorry, but I heard this argument when Maggie was in power, and they got the pay rise back then, look who that got us!!!