MP's allowed to claim £160 on groceries a week when DLA is only £77 per week!

[wantstosleepnow]

I think that says it all really. I've always said if MP's were on NMW or similar then things would change very quick in this country.

I've been hoping that someone (more organised and with more time than me!) would start a campaign to end it.

I am friends with our MP. I will be seeing him tonight. Would anyone like me to ask him about it ?

I am saying that other people have had their incomes frozen, but they dont have an expenses pot to dip into.

If the MPs job needs to be made more affordable, what about all the NMW jobs? Why arent they making companies pay a living wage instead of promoting unpaid placements and underpaid apprenticeships.

The MPs cannot say their job doesnt pay well while they are supporting policies which undermine NMW.

The title and original tone of this thread is very misleading! As others have explained this is an allowance for when working away from their constituency.

This is no different to what the majority of professionals are offered when working away from home (my employer gives me the choice of submitting receipts for all expenses or I can claim the same amount).

As the educated professionals that most MPs are they are not paid huge salaries in comparison to what they could earn in the private sector and they have a thankless task of trying to keep us all happy and run the country. I do not begrudge my taxes being used in this way at all. If you want to attract the best people to the role the remuneration needs to be appropriate and comparable with other roles elsewhere.

Arbitrary - you obviously either don't know what an mp does or have a very bad one. It is a joke to compre them to the payments clerk!

They need to earn respect, I accept. But MPs in a democracy are making important decisions in our behalf

I have an idea which would allow "country" MPs to attend parliament at no expense to themselves but would significantly decrease the cost to the taxpayer. As expenses are provided to assist them with their costs of keeping up a London residence I would favour the building of a purpose built block of studios where MPs could stay overnight and be provided with food at a subsidised rate. It would provide work for cleaners, catering staff, managers etc and would stop the practice of expenses being claimed which are not actually for the MP's costs in attending parliament.

I was talking about in comparison to their actual authority. Comparing ordinary MPs to the chief executive of the local authority is silly. If we want to compare MPs to something in local government, lets just be honest about how much power and responsibility they actually have.

(And I've had several really crap MPs in my time. Nadine fucking Dorries for one).

Yes OhDearNigel, I was wondering why they didnt just have a canteen if food in London is so expensive.

Good idea you have there.

They do have a subsidised restaurant in the house of commons

And please do remember that not all MPs claim expenses. My friend (I won't name him) only claims his overnight accomodation which is cheap and cheerful, I don't think he claims for his food. He also doesn't do anything other than represent his constituency and does MP things when he not at parliament. He is always going to functions, doing charity things (he recently did a skydive for Refuge, spent his Saturday a couple of weeks ago off bag-packing at a local warehouse for a charity working with disabled people), is very accessible doing clinics in our shopping centre and station. He is very passionate about representing our town and has worked extremely hard to try and improve job prospects; he managed to get a new supermarket to pledge that all new unskilled jobs would go to people who had been out of work for 12 months or more. He also finds time to show lots of school kids and constituents around the houses and asnwer their questions. He lives in an ordinary terraced house not dissimilar to ours.

Not all MPs are grabbing, lazy toffs.

Seriously??? For food? That is outrageous!

Why is anyone surprised. MP's are just like the pigs in Orwell's "Animal Farm". "We are all equal but some are more equal than others". And no, we do not live in a real democracy.

But OhDearNigel, your friend is probably exactly the kind of MP who isn't whinging about not being paid enough. He'd probably do the job for far less money because he actually believes in it (and probably thinks £65k is a bloody good salary). Does this sound like it might be the case?

And then there are those whinging about how they could earn loads more if they were bankers. They should all go an be bloody bankers then.

Oh, absolutely. He's what an MP should be and takes his public duty very seriously.

I stayed at the Westminster park plaza hotel last year. A stones throw from parliament. It made me wonder why we don't build a block similar and let the out of town mp's stay there.

The was the suggestion that County Hall be used for 'dorms' but it got sold to private business.

Yeah McDonalds and arcades! Dorms would have been a much better use!

The dorm idea is making me laugh, does anyone have a clue what sort of price prime land in Westminster for that sort of project goes for?

I can just see the Daily Fail headline now, "Outrage at MP's Billion pound apartment block funded by the tax payer" Amid fury and outrage by all!!!

Ok, build it out a bit and run a shuttle bus. :o

wannabe

I like your thinking but then the headline will be "outrage as thousands spent on shuttle bus for MP's funded by us the tax payer"

If the MPs were perceived to be helping the low paid and poor, outrage would lessen.

Still, I love the idea of MPs queuing up together and getting on a bus to go to work, complaining about the bland food in the canteen.

MPs are paid incredibly low salaries for what they do.

Not all MPs take the money on offer. I've worked for a few, I should know.

It doesn't need to be Westminster though, does it. It could easily be in one of the London Boroughs.

MPs don't get paid that much. Even the PM doesn't get paid an awful lot. They're not getting paid millions, MPs don't even get three figures.

Its just a perk of the job, much like firms that offer private healthcare. Some jobs have better perks than others, that is how life goes. Pointless comparing it to benefits, its a seperate issue. Not saying that it is right but I doubt anyone would bitch on about a private firm offering the same.

In my experience some MPs are great and really know what they are talking about. From what I see many others are genuinely poor. I am not at all convinced that a fair few of them would be capable of earning more than in the private sector! Even if they could, would you just want to use that as a yardstick for what makes a good MP and how the salary is set.

They can also claim for more than just subsistence, which would push their salary up further. They also get a good peniosn, although obviously potentially poor job security.

I do agree though, that what they get should be clearer and rely less on expenses, and not preclude those who are not rich from being MPs. For me, over £60k should probably do that, with accomodation which is owned by the Crown provided. That probably would be a little way from Westminster, but no need for a shuttle bus...maybe public transport apart from late sittings when it has stopped.