Politicians – how should they be paid? And what do they do?

Pay the advised salary provided that;

1. It is their only job.
2. Their is a minimum level of attendance to parlimentary discussions.

1. A cap on total expenses per year for each MP

1. Consider introducing performance related pay like in other.occupations

why offset the reduction in expenses - the expenses were ludicrous and totally out of line with what the rest of people have to pay for when commuting etc so why offset it? should we give criminals a pay off to offset the damage they face from the legislation brought in to seize assets accrued from crime? that makes no sense to me.

I think a basic salary of £100k would be needed to offset the proposed reduction in expenses. The pension and pay off should stay.

Pay for MPs was brought in to stop parliament being dominated by the independently wealthy. People like David Cameron. We want well educated intelligent people to become MPs. It shouldn't be the preserve of the Eton set.

MPs should not get a pay rise. Their pay should be a fixed multiple of the median public sector wage. They should vote on this multiple.

The idea of annual reports on MPs is idiotic. There is a wealth of information out there. MPs are not particularly well-known for their lack of self-promotion. It's a waste of money.

The most important message to take away: IPSA should be scrapped. It is a typical Labour solution - create a quango full of Guardian types and over-regulate at a vastly inflated price. The real solution: all MPs have a credit card for expenses, the credit card billl is published in full for taxpayer scrutiny, MPs account for their behaviour to their own constituencts, and Ian Kennedy gets sacked in ignominy.

oh and the pm assumed i must be a student to not understand how much people get paid or get in redundancies - i'm not. i've worked in education: state, private and FE for some time overall.

just had a pm saying ppl in education get as much as politicians and fantastic redundancy payouts. just want to assure that where i work in an FE college the maximum anyone was walking out with at the voluntary stage of redundancies was one weeks pay per year of service to a maximum of 20 years. those now having compulsory redundancy are getting less than that.

may be different for teachers in state schools who still have good contracts and rights but in FE forget it. loads of business support are going - most of whom earned around 16k - at one weeks pay per year of service even with 10yrs in the job you're going to be walking out with less than 3k.

I am interested in political office but as a single parent with 2 children, there is no way I could make it work on the current set-up. Either I move my children to London and stay there Mon-Friday and compromise on work in the constituency, or stay in the constituency for school and find a full-time nanny to allow me to get to London. Either way, I would not be effective at the job or motherhood.

I'd like to see better use of IT to make it easier for MPs to the job in their constituencies and less time in London. I broadly agree with the proposals above but more should be done to make the role accessible.

It's not redundancy it's compensation for loss of office? Or some sort of suppor "allowance" to help them readjust

I agree entirely with familiessharegerms. I do think even career politicians go in to it all for the right reasons though.

I've long thought that a good way to raise participation and interest in politics would be to have 1-2 members of the public on each select committee. Again, fixed term positions, and you would have to pass some kind of test to ensure you were intelligent enough to scrutinise and understand issues in their entirety. No other involvement with any kind of politics though - it would be a way of getting 'person on the street' input.

How can an MPs position actually become redundant? Surely redundancy requires that the role no longer exists. If someone else is doing the role, the position is not redundant.
The only way an MP role can actually be legally redundant is if there are no longer any people eligible to vote in their constituency, surely?

the whole concept of redundancy just doesn't apply does it arbitrary? i could say plenty about the rest of it but it is that redundancy payment that hits hardest out of those bullet points. redundancy payment ffs!

Lots of people are stuck with fixed term and zero hours contracts (even in highly skilled occupations). I don't see why MPs should be any different, especially given that they are only ever elected for one parliamentary term at a time. If they choose to step down during that, that's their decision.

I don't think there should be a redundancy package at all. It's very clearly a fixed term position, by it's very nature. At the end of each term you might get another term, but it will also be fixed term. The post absolutely isn't redundant at the end of the term; it's just that their constituents may no longer want them.

I agree that the needing £74k to get the 'best people' is nonsense. We don't actually want a parliament full of corporate lawyers etc, do we?

my personal feeling is that mps should be paid no more than 50k and be provided with a government owned flat for london purposes and stay in their own home in their constituency. i would want the costs for running for election massively reduced so that ordinary people could afford to run and we'd have people who did it out of conviction instead of eton boys lining their pockets and carving out an extremely lucrative and dubious career upon exit with a tax free pay off to boot.

they get a 'redundancy' payment if they fail to be re-elected? that is INSANE. i'm really shocked by that. people who have worked at the college i'm at (who find themselves several million pounds in shortfall due to cuts in funding for education) for 20 years are leaving with a few grand in their pocket. an mp gets 4years of a huge salary and all the expenses bonus' and everything else that comes in (including great future career prospects consulting etc) and gets a big pay off when their constituents decide they don't want him back? that is criminal imo.

I should start by declaring that I am a civil servant of the grade that MPs salaries used to be linked to. My salary is roughly what MPs get currently paid, but I have been on a pay freeze for a number of years (in effect a pay cut) and my pension contributions have shot up (especially as I am doing what appeared to be the prudent thing and buying added years). I am about £400 a month worse off than two years ago. I accept that I am still well paid, and there are plenty of people in a far worse position.

But - I think there is an easy solution to the questions on what to do re MPs expenses, and that is to mirror the rules already in place for civil servants as far as practicable.

It is legitimate for MPs with constituencies outside the SE to have two residences, for example, but we should pay their rent not their mortage on the second home, so that the MP doesn't benefit unduly in the long term by acquiring another capital asset purely by dint of their job (or, more radically, a Parliamentary body could buy the houses and seek to make profit for the public purse).

Redundancy is a little different, given that a perfectly good and able MP can be booted out by their consituency making a point about national politics (eg how many Labour MPs suffered from the decision to go to war in Iraq?), and the proposal to treat MPs who fight and lose a contest differently from others seems complicated and likely to lead to perverse outcomes. A simple 6 months salary as a redundancy Package would still be generous but a significant saving on the current position.

Annual reports - absolutely. And some kind of accountability from each political party for what their members have been up to. But this report has to somehow get across that not being in the Commons is not the same as not turning up to work - MPs do so much more than debating in the chamber.

No, though it's probably something like 80-90th percentile or some such. It's not the salary itself but the justification of in in terms of "attracting the right kind of people" that seems suspect.

I do think there should be an absolute ban on second jobs. Agree it is an unstable career, though. Perhaps a means-tested support package for MPs who lose an election would be a more democratic way of compensating this instability, so that the job is as available to ordinary people who don't have much of a cushion as it is to the wealthy.

i agree with points 1-5, although i do have similar concern about tying to average wage - a small percentage of people on very high salaries could significantly skew that, although i'm assuming that's been used rather than public sector because of the dropping down as well as rising element.

i think one of our issues is not enough variety in MPs so the thought of limiting it to people over 60 is laughable to me - how is that connecting with the rest of society? people aged 18-25 hardly vote as it is - what incentive is there if they are told they don't really count and their age group cannot be represented?

i also don't agree with no second jobs, being a politician is a pretty unstable "career" so if someone wants to continue working a day a week in their existing career/own business then fair enough IMO.

ButThereAgain - headteachers in large-ish schools currently earn more than unpromoted MPs. The proposed salary may be massively above what my husband and i earn but it is not a ridiculously high one by any means...

If we need a £74k salary to attract the "best people," how do we get excellent nurses, teachers, university lecturers, and a whole range of skilled and conscientious blue-collar workers on salaries of half that? I'm worried that the assumption is that the "best people" are those who, if they didn't become MPs, would seek to be CEOs, bankers, corporate lawyers, etc. Rather than nurses, teachers, lecturers, blue-collar workers. What does that say about the project of getting MPs who are representative of the people? What does it say about the degree of respect Westminster has for the mass of people who work at ordinary salaries?

And it shouldnt rise above 74,000 even if other wages increase.

Agree with 2,3,4,5 though.

They shouldnt be getting pay rises while everyone else like nurses etc get pay freezes, would love to c them trying to work in a hosp. They are not in touch with the real world at all, and dont deserve to get as much as 74,000 yo be honest

MPs are paid enough already, the majority of the country earn far less. A member of parliament is a representative, not a god, they should be paid if they actually bother to turn up . Many MPs don't bother with parliament much if the time, yes some are doing constituency work but realistically many are paid without any regard to the hours put in, in some cases very little. Second jobs a no-no. Being a representative to the constituents is a full time post, not a well paid hobby!
A quick aside...
If Gove thinks its okay to say kids don't need a long break for summer maybe he would also accept the removal of the exceptionally long breaks MPs enjoy! Just a thought

The one thing I would like to see is that our MPs can't hold other jobs/positions that pay them. Therefore, I'd like them to be paid a realistic salary (even though I suspect that this level of salary is really going to piss off the electorate). But no more positions on boards of companies as non-executive directors, etc.

If you are an MP, then you should be paid a decent salary by the Government to do that job, and you should commit to that job only. And not work for anyone else, because that way conflicts of interest will surely lie.