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

Politics should not be an attractive career; it should not be a career at all really, but if it is, it should most definitely be a second career.

Spend time working your way up (or not!) in some other field first. I do think that is one of the most important things. We have been forced to accept the idea that we need politicians who look good on camera. We don't. So my second criteria would be that they must be fairly unattractive, and aged no less than 60, and have a proven track record of probity.

Whilst I think our politicians would gain valuable experience working in other fields before they move into politics, I think these are stupid statements to make.

Politics have to be attractive. People should move into politics if they have a passion for it. If they don't have a passion for it, then they aren't fighting for the people whom they claim to represent.

And suggesting that politics only recruit ugly and old people is horribly offensive.

No. Politicians become adept at self interest and to far removed from normality - look at how distrusted they are? I put it at least partly down to being a career politician.

At least 40%? Really?!

I think that increased transparency around MP pay is vital if we are to regain trust in Westminster. This is an important first step.

I also think that MPs do an incredibly important and demanding job, more so than most people (and media) give them credit for. If we want the best and the brightest representing us, then we need pay to compete with the private sector.

I am passionately in favour of increased pay for MPs, but I think the public need something in return. The proposals outlined above only give a nod to increased transparency. I want to see a more open candidate selection process so we are genuinely represented by the best and not the cronyism that exists currently.

I think that the recent scandals surrounding lobbying are in fact more of an issue for MPs. Any pay rise should be dependent on a wholesale review of standards in public life.

So, I guess if I had to put it into one sentence I would say an emphatic yes, but like those of us in the private sector, they need to earn it.

Are you saying that politics isn't a profession like any, that takes time to become good at? And not all of them are career politicians. I am guessing about 40% have at least 10 years of work experience outside politics before giving it a go.

The part of proposal I object to is linking payrises to the national wage. They are public sector workers and should be subject to the same pay rises as they impose on the rest of the public sector. Linking it to the national wage allows for it to be higher as public sector wage rises are usually low if they exisit at all.

I have had no pay rise for 4 years, followed by a 2.5% cut, and finally a 1% rise. Imcremental progression was frozen a couple of years ago (to coincide with a 'promotion'I received which is name only as I have to stay at the bottom of the scale). I am not by the way, saying that this isn't something that has to happen but it rankles that it is okay to tell workers earning £14k that they have to suck it up for the good of the nation but then not lead by example.

Package sounds great.

However MPs are drawn from a small pool of people who come up via the main political party ranks - not the average man on the street. They are career politicians, there to make a name for themselves, not to serve the people. The whole system of political party whips demonstrates that - they are basically told to vote on party lines or else on some issues - that's hardly representing their constituency. So change that please, although not the role of IPSAS.

Politics should not be an attractive career; it should not be a career at all really, but if it is, it should most definitely be a second career.

Spend time working your way up (or not!) in some other field first. I do think that is one of the most important things. We have been forced to accept the idea that we need politicians who look good on camera. We don't. So my second criteria would be that they must be fairly unattractive, and aged no less than 60, and have a proven track record of probity.

So, on to your questions.

74K is a ridiculous amount imo, particularly when there are so many people struggling to buy enough food for their family each week., and so few jobs around for those who are supposed to be coming off benefits or whose benefits are being cut, to start earning. (Dennis Skinner reputedly took a miner's wage while he was an MP. TBH, I think that MPs should be paid 10% above minimum wage - and with this lot I think that's more than they're worth.) However, I suppose if you take a middle ranking blue collar worker's wages, then that would not be an unreasonable sum for an MP. I agree that if national wages fall, MPs' wages fall, and vice versa.

I agree in principal with 2, 3, 4 and 5.

The media is far too involved in the personality in politics. I would like to see politics graduates writing essays - 1 sheet of A4 only - on each of the issues. One sheet giving background, one sheet outlining possible options, one sheet outlining pros for each course of action, one sheet outlining cons for each possible course of action. These should be published in national newspapers so we are kept informed dispassionately. The papers can collect further questions, requests for elucidation etc from their readers, and otherwise become the sleb gossip sheets they really are but would like to pretend they are not.

Agree mrscog that it is a shit job. But I think it will become a shitter job if we respond to its unappealingness by upping the salary. What kind of MPs will we get if we seek to attract people with the promise of an astonishingly high salary in return for taking on a rather hamstrung, compromised role? I think that might entrench a rather venal approach to the job. Better to make the job more appealing by means of electoral and parliamentary and party reform.

At the moment the only development which might seem to feed MPs self-respect a little bit is the select committee system, which increasingly has the role of scrutinising all and sundry in a very high-profile way. But that seems to have developed in such an ad hoc manner, without much conscious public oversight, and so with failings all of its own. It is alarming really how completely ill-equipped our system is for planned and principled constitutional evolution. Witness the complete debacle over the alternative vote referendum.

Of the proposals above, I think (5) is the most depressing. The whole cycle of submitting oneself for re-election every five years is meant to be one of accountability via report and scrutiny. That is failing, partly because of severe disillusionment with and disengagement from politics on the part of the electorate. Is that likely to be counteracted by some obscure bureaucratic replica of reporting and scrutiny?

In a rush, but I do want to comment.

I think £74K is okay - even on the low side - if and only if it's their only job.

I firmly believe, though, that MPs should not be allowed to have any other job. Aside from the inevitable taint of undue influence, isn't running the country enough work?

I agree with proposals 1,2 and 3.

However I disagree with number 4. There may still be some work to be done on tightening up expenses but if I was expected to stay away from home overnight due to work I would get a meal allowance and a hotel room which would most likely have a TV, I suppose the meal thing is different as they do have a property with a kitchen - maybe this could be the marker. For MPs who choose a low key hotel for 4 nights a week maybe they could get a meal allowance, if they have a property with a kitchen then no.

At some point we have to accept that most MPs need two homes and we need to decide whehter their main home is in their constitency or London. As most of their working week is in London, maybe it would be better if any London residence was considered their main home, then expenses would be claimed on a small property within their consituency.

Being an MP is a shit job. There, I said it. Both Dh and I were interested in doing it, but you're looking at a 60 hour week in Westminster and stopping away from your family. Then at weekends when most Mon-Fri workers are relaxing you're expected to hobnob around at boring school fetes, and massage the ego of your local helpers in your local party. For anyone with a family, I can't see how it's worth it for less than 100K.

I like & approve of the proposed £74k package with the reductions in other areas. I presume that expenses to travel to constituencies will still be covered adequately?

BTW, regarding accountability, I always wonder whether the proliferation in the recent decade or so of consultations like this one is anything other than a floundering recognition that the electoral system and the party system are now failing in their basic function of shaping and legitimating the actions of govt and the legislature.

Politics at the level of parliament and central govt now has such a very poor mandate from the people that it has to manufacture little consultative exercises that provide tiny faux-mandates for particular decisions. That is true of a range of consultative exercises but it is particularly true of those that reach out via places like Mumsnet which of course can't generate representative responses but which can generate a relatively high-profile for the consultation and so generate the appearance of seeking and obtaining some sort of mass authority for decisions that no longer have the traditional mandate supplied by a tolerably well-functioning electoral system.

Not sure that tinkering with salaries is going to do much to improve the calibre and honesty of MPs -- I'm sure I'd manage not to be a lobbying crook or an expenses crook on far, far less of an incentive than £74k. Other important public servants work incredibly hard and with real commitment on half that salary, especially those whose jobs require no formal training at all!

I think that their declining quality and integrity has a lot to do with the disappearance of a traditional party structure. The Labour Party in particular used to be a genuine mass movement (albeit one that was imperfectly democratic!), a mechanism for both a manifesto and a set of potential MPs and leaders to emerge via some sort of grassroots-upwards movement.

Now it is much more heavily controlled from the top, by individuals who are motivated much more powerfully by electoral imperatives than by any party principles set in stone, and who therefore hold themselves accountable only to the media, since it is the media image of their party that overwhelmingly determines their fate. The grassroots have no weight, no power to determine party ethos or principle, and so the MPs that emerge are acculturated only into a managerialist focus-group culture that seeks election for its own sake.

The weakness in party structure is compounded by the horrible, necrotic weakness in parliament. Too much power for the executive, plus an electoral system so rotten that gives no real authority or self-respect to its beneficiaries, isn't conducive to the production of principled MPs.

We are starting to see the emergence of a political class that is quite openly corrupt. The excuses given for backtracking on minimum alcohol pricing and plain cigarette packaging were so flimsy that it looked like the government can't even be bothered to pretend that it is anything other than a channel for commercial interests. Similarly the handing over of the UK blood service to a UK private equity fund.

We need a full-scale constitutional rewrite, not a pay restructure.