AIBU to be surprised by MPs earning £98k plus expenses?

Thissssssssssss

Probably controversial but I think it should be more. Most of the decent ones could get way more in the private sector.

I don't think they get paid enough for the crap they have to put up with. My DS earns more than that and he's under 30 years old.

Do you SERIOUSLY think MPs are fiddling their expenses??? SERIOUSLY? Get a life!

Auditors, members of the juduciary and ex-MP's according to their website. Not too impressive TBH.

I personally think they should be paid more and then we might get better talent and more competition for the jobs.

YABU they are paid far too little, you will never get very talented people in government unless they are paid better.

https://www.theipsa.org.uk/who-we-are . Not MPs.

And who are members of the IPSA?

Oh, for goodness sake. They don’t make the rules, IPSA do. You’re stuck in 2009.

You don't have to heat your racing stables to 25-30 degrees on expenses though- but sadly this has happened, and even more flagrant breaches have also- the new rules are not much tighter- if you make the rules you can make them very advantageous.

They’re wildly underpaid. I wouldn’t do it for any money - the death threats and abuse would put me off, funnily enough- but I’m amazed anyone with half a brain is willing to do it. And if you’re also a minister, that’s more money but also two full-time jobs.

Absolutely not low seniority civil servants earn that and so do many of my friends it’s not an unusual wage for a professional

Some earn more. One of the MPs where I live is also a Minister of State, so that is another £31k on top.

Yep, I would agree with this.

It's an intensely frustrating job, where if you want to do it well you'd need to put in 80+ hours a week.

You have hundreds of page of legislation to read. That legislation refers back and alters previous legislation, which in turn alters other legislation and so on. So to understand the bill you're reading, you might also need to read another 5 acts of parliament, all dense legal texts, many many pages long.

Then you need to actually debate it - so you need to have planned the points you're going to make and also sit and listen to the points other people make.

Then if you're on a select committee you need to read the reports for that - hundreds of pages more, and then agree with your fellow members your priorities and who will cover what, the. quiz the civil servants and MPs who come before you to hold them to account, and then come up with actions you wish them to take to resolve the issues in front of you and then understand whether those actions have been taken.

And then you need to keep on top of local issues - planning etc. And keep on top of constituency business - so places where the state has failed your constituents. Yes you have staff to deal with that but you need to manage the staff, understand the case load, contact people personally in the most difficult cases.

And on top of that everything you do gets scrutinised by the media, you get death threats, have pretty much the highest mortality rate of any profession (maybe barring fishing) and you could lose your job every few years. And if you don't end up in cabinet it's not like you end up with a lucrative public speaking round at the end of it.

The expenses are for running a constituency office though. It’s not boozy lunches etc… it’s the rental of a property and associated costs of running that office. They don’t have any choice but to do it.

First order of business in Parliament when it opens in November is MP wages, it's been like that for years. Much more shocking is that the expenses often outstrip wages by some way.

I don't think it's high.

They work hard, get no respect, get a lot of scrutiny, get a lot of death threats.

Some yes, but certainly not all.

Tbf, it’s ego. And I don’t say that negatively, because ego doesn’t have to be negative, but that’s why drives them to do it

I earn this working 4 days a week in a very flexible role. I don't deal with the public, don't need to travel, I'm not under constant scrutiny, I'm not on call or work overtime, my life is not endangered.

They’re on what I get in mid management at a bank. I leave at 5 and have my weekends and evenings to myself. The pay is terrible. Unless you’re an SNP MP who’s got no discernible skills and therefore no other career options.

It's not an unreasonable salary. And if they are doing the job properly it's not an easy job. You should try and shadowing an MP for a week to fully understand how hard a good MP works.
And on top of that they have to cope with constant abuse.

I don’t think they earn enough for the huge amount of work they do under immense scrutiny and very little job security. A middle manager in the company I work for is on about the same without any of the bullshit that comes with being an MP.

And the expenses thing is just tedious - are you suggesting that MPs who live in the north have to pay their own travel and hotel bills when they have to get in London? Do you not think MPs need a team of people to run their offices? That’s what expenses pay for…

Exactly.

Why would a bright young spark go into politics instead of business where they can earn many times more? 100k pa is not even that high salary in London anymore. But your entire life can be exposed to public. This is partially the reason why we mostly have such mediocre MPs, many without basic understanding of economics.