Salaries and pensions
Throughout our history Members of Parliament have collectively been regarded as self-seeking. Snouts, greed and other similar words have freely entered the vocabulary of parliamentary comment.
Recent insupportable events have made the public even more suspicious and indeed angry, also because of the impossibly arcane way we are either remunerated or reimbursed. So reform is in the air, quite rightly, and David Cameron is leading the charge with his own MPs. I am personally only too happy and eager to comply.
Moreover in the interests of transparency, I would like to publish a couple of important elements of MPs arrangements.
Firstly, my own monthly salary. After deductions it is exactly £3,250.53. Deductions include 10% of the gross figure of £5151.67 for the parliamentary pension scheme (£515.17).
This is now what I want to examine. By June next year I will have been an MP for 17 years. If I were to stand down as an MP then and elect to draw my pension, my pension would be £22,952.41 per annum, slightly above the average parliamentary pension.
Now it is true that our once hugely successful national pensions arrangements have been brutally undermined by Gordon Brown when he abolished advanced corporation tax in 1997. Many, particularly younger employees, face a grim pensions future, and our national savings rate is at all time low. Of course we as MPs are well protected compared with many of our constituents, grappling with high and rising prices, but whether readers of this blog feel that my own contributory pension is generous enough to be described as ‘platinum plated’ or a ‘goldmine’ is for them to decide. I simply state the facts.
However the biggest understandable flashpoint is reimbursement of expenses for a constituency property. MPs are now toiling with how to deal with this openly and with transparency, again quite rightly. The only point I would raise is that it would be difficult, living in London, to run a second home on £3,250.53 per month, so some form of reimbursement seems fair and reasonable.
Now nobody needs to be an MP – if we do not like the financial arrangements, we are at liberty to seek more lucrative pastures elsewhere. However there is a balance to be struck. But most crucially our electors need to be reassured. That is our fundamental responsibility.
I hope what I have written today sheds a bit of light on the matter.
Meanwhile I am off now to work in Hammersmith and Fulham to help to get Boris elected.