Pay Rise for Politicians?

After the darkest of periods in history for our politicians in Westminster over their expenses, the perception of many that members’ of Parliament are there to line their own pockets returns to the minds of those not easy to impress, the Great British Public of course.

MP's currently earn £66,396 per year.

The Commons expenses Watchdog, IPSA, has proposed that members’ of parliament should receive a pay rise of around £6,000 or a 9.26% hike taking effect from 2015. This is part of wider changes to be implemented by the regulator in the wake of the 2009 expenses scandal.

The Chairman, Sir Ian Kennedy made clear that it was simply ‘wrong’ that MP’s should continue to receive low pay and also went on to comment about the previous expenses scandal in which too much restraint was the root cause of the abuse of expenses, or in other words, MP’s were paid the low pay which MP’s received in 2009 led them to claim on expenses in order to almost ‘top up’ their salaries.
Sir Ian has been subject, quite rightly, to criticism even from MP’s over the proposed rise in pay, it is a move that will seem out of touch, further damaging the confidence that the public have in our Westminster politicians.

All three major party leaders have also condemned the move by IPSA, a statement was released from Number 10 earlier today expressing the view of the Prime Minister in which it stated that 'the cost of politics should be going down and not up.' A perfect reflection you might think to everything else going on around the country. The cost of most things must come down, especially in the public sector where cuts are being made to reduce the budget deficit. It would seem only fair that MP's feel some of the pressure.

All three party leaders condemn the proposal.

Labour Leader, Ed Miliband said 'I don't think MP's should be getting a 10% pay rise when Nurses and Teachers are facing either pay freezes or very low increases and people in the private sector are facing similar circumstances' 

Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg added that this was simply the worse time to be advocating a double digit pay increase for MP's.


The Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen, however, has publically supported the proposal, saying that members' of parliament are paid around the same as primary school head teachers and there are many of them around my constituency. 'I cannot think of another job where there are only 650 of these roles in the whole of Great Britain that are paid this sort of money.'  As controversial as this argument is at a time of cuts and pay freezes, does Mr Bridgen have a point? Of course I am only playing the devil's advocate but what sort of people would we attract if there was a pay increase? Would we attract more highly qualified people who currently earn more than an MP, who could perhaps do a better job than most of them? Everyone will no doubt come to their own conclusions, but I can safely say that at a time where people are struggling, it would not be in the interest of the public to press ahead with such an increase.