"MPs can't live on £60K a year" says Sir Malcolm Rifkind

[CFSKate]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/investigations/11429070/MPs-cant-live-on-60k-a-year-says-Sir-Malcolm-Rifkind.html

Is he being unreasonable?

60k works out at £3500 a month after tax.

The average wage in London is a lot higher than the rest of the country, at something like 40-45k compared to 23-26k. This reflects the higher cost of living, amongst other things, including higher property prices, etc.

We are expecting MPs to duplicate their domestic arrangements, running two homes on their 60k salaries, one of which will need to be in London and within striking distance of Westminster. MPs are supposed to buy or rent both of their homes personally, and as an electorate we have given them a very hard time in relation to the addition costs of doing so, and seek to limit their expenses/rental costs/contributions to mortgage payments.

Such are the demands of the job that their partner/spouse may need to step in and take virtually full responsibility for kids and house during the week, impacting on their own earning ability.

Whilst I do not want to defend people flogging their contacts books, I do think it would be impossible to maintain a sensible lifestyle with London and constituency homes on 60k and work the antisocial hours demanded. If we carry on down this route, the only people who become MPs will be those who have inherited money and have the benefit of an ample private income in addition to their MP salary.

That is not a political class I want to be in charge.

We need to rethink how we conceptualise MPs pay and what it is supposed to relate to. Linking it to the average wage or 9-5 office jobs or whatever isn't the way forward.

I suppose the other side of the equation is , does someone have to be a city lawyer, high flying type, to make a decent MP? I'd think some level of good education and intelligence would be required, but are the skills to be a good MP the same as the skills to be a good city lawyer?

The thing to remember is that all these peole are all coming from the upper class where having money and lots of money compare to 'us' is the norm.

So £60k is little compare to business people (he means the ones who own the business or the the really high ranking ones, not the people working in them for a minimum wage). And that's his point of comparaison because these are the people he is daily contact, the ones he sees as friends and family.

Whether it is right or not is a different issue and I suspect that if we had politicians coming from a much wider range of the society, the situation would be different.

The next question of course is what would then make a good politician and how can you ensure that the right people will go into politics rather tan the business sector. But I think we are miles away from even needing to think about that (class system and all that)

TBF, treacle, that is what he's done. He isn't saying he wants to be paid more as an MP, that he should be allowed to make money in other (legal) ways, to supplement his salary.

I agree treaclesoda.

MPs should be under the same conditions as other public servants, which at the moment means no more than 1% pa pay rise, and if you need to work away from home, standard class rail travel, a room in a Travel Inn and a meal in the Brewers Fayre next door, with no alcohol costs reimbursed because it is not appropriate for alcohol to be paid for by the public purse.

We are all in this together, my arse.

Rifkind and Straw are two of the straightest most dedicated MPs in politics and they have done nothing illegal. I think the sting is awful. Also their search for a job for after one ends is normal too.

As for whether MPs can live on that it's all relative. My daughters earn more than that in their 20s and find it hard enough to live in London as it is. I would never be an MP - the pay is tiny compared with what I have earned for decades and the job security is awful and the terms of the job horrible. I don't know why anyone bothers to do it.

undecided that rather ignores the fact that MPs have to live in london and maintain two households regardless of their background. you could be a working class labour MP from the north west and still find 60k a year doesn't go far in London for your family of 4

But being an MP doesn't actually require any qualifications nor are there minimum hours...so being paid £60k for that is being overpaid.

However, an MP travelling to Parliament daily and talking to constituents and doing a good job representing them probably is not being paid as much as they should BUT the level of expenses they get is HUGE. What other £60k a year person gets a second house on expenses????

Once you factor in legitimate expense repayments then £60k is ok. They are given the money to hire a secretary as well, which most of them give to their wives so is effectively more income.

Perhaps we should say MPS get £150k but NO expenses other than train travel from their constituency?

BoffinMum makes some very good points above.

However:

Mr Rifkind should hang his bloody head in shame.

'I am self employed... nobody pays me a salary ... I have loads of free time on my hands...' I charge £5K for a speech...

Who the Actual Fuck does he think he is?

i can see why some people who are public sector workers might be bitter about the idea of paying MPs more but can't you see that bitterness will actually make the problem of MPs not being able to relate to you worse

the thing is that people who become MPs are largely earning that already in management jobs
To then fund two houses etc is harder.
I dont think for that degree of responsibility 65k is much

I would rather them have more and a ban on any other paid work

Kelly what's good for us is good for them surely?
They think they can drop the starting wage for police officers and still get the same calibre of candidates. So why doesn't that work for MPs? Fuck me, you even need qualifications to become police these days, you don't to become a MP

Besides, how is being a MP a skilled job? Am I missing something? They attend meetings and that's about it. They are virtually unsackable, so even if they make poor choices there's no recourse.
To be fair, Its not like they even make their own decisions, they vote on policies how they are told. It is the senior civil service who have to implement their decisions. I cannot see anything remotely difficult about their job

Do you think it would be plausible, or desirable, to have fixed terms for serving in parliament, in the sense that you could only serve for two terms of parliament or something like that?

I don't particularly object to the ideas of MPs earning money elsewhere, as long as it is separate to their position as an MP, iykwim. I suppose the problem with that is knowing whether or not they are actually using their position as an MP to help their business life, or if they aren't. Hard to police I suppose...

I consider myself an ethical and upright sort of person, but I know for certain that if I were in a position where I could vote myself a payrise, I would almost certainly do it. I think most people would. MPs have, as people have already pointed out, presumably not done so because they know people would hate it and they might not get elected again next time.

My DH is exactly the kind of person that should be an MP.

Raised by small business owners, first in his (extended) family to go to university - went to a top uni and graduated with a first in a 'hard' subject. Attention for detail, economically and politically aware, is sensitive to the circumstances of others, places great regard on issues such as labour laws and discrimination. Straight as an arrow, personable and hard working.

It's bullshit to tell his that he should be 'selfless' and go and halve his salary to be an MP. If he halved his salary - the first thing that would go is the £££ that he sends every month to support his widowed mother (and by proxy the rest of his family - of whom he is the only one with a steady salary). Obviously his views might be different if he anticipated inheriting something other than debts.

i am no apologist for MPs but they work very long hours and although recesses are long, they work in those too.
I think pay needs to reflect status too.

No work outside parliament - no being an advisor or doing after dinner speaking or any of that shit

george you've clearly said it doesn't work to drop the salary and still get the same calibre of police officers, and that obviously applies to mps too. clearly you are so angry at the current bunch of MPs that you can't see that paying MPs more in general will result in better MPs and better government in the future. it's not like it will impact david cameron or tony blair either way, so i'm sympathetic to the situation of the police and public sector workers but you really are cutting off your nose to spite your face

BoffinMum is the average wage in London so high because of the living costs or is it that the only people living in London who can afford to do are the ones with such a high living wage?

It is true that renting a flat there will be expensive but I though that was going under 'expenses' for them rather than running the cost of two homes?

Why do they have to maintain two homes? Parliament has quite long holidays which means they don't go every week, and when you see the House of Commons on the TV, it's clear they don't all go there when it is in session - sometimes it is half empty.

There are plenty of people that live elsewhere in the country and travel to London for work and rent a room or stay in hotels.

What they should do is build a big complex in the midlands that includes the House of Commons facilities along with average not posh catering and hotels. No expenses need to be paid, they just use it as they need it.

In fact, the catering should be provided by someone like Sodexho and the budget should be set in line with what is available in NHS hospitals etc .

Pay peanuts get monkeys.

Ilkley Moore, it's actually a bit more flexible than that. It varies according to your employer, but the public sector generally caps hotel costs at roughly what a 2 or 3 star chain hotel costs, dinner is often a couple of courses at an equivalent price to Pizza Express or Cafe Rouge, and occasionally a glass of wine is fine if that's roughly the same price as a soft drink (so a glass of house red, perhaps, but putting an expenses claim in for a bottle per person would not go down well and you would probably have to pay it back), rail travel can be first class if you get a cheap first class ticket within a small amount of a standard class ticket price (sometimes it can be less than a fiver to upgrade, or less than a tenner on Eurostar at the right time of day, and you then get your tea/coffee/sandwich/dinner free with the ticket, which actually constitutes a saving for your employer). We are encouraged to see spending the taxpayers' money as a serious responsibility, but not to wear a hair shirt while we are at it (if you cut costs to the bone you can end up too knackered or ill to perform the job, as colleagues travelling to places like India have found to their cost). For women, you are allowed to think more about personal safety as well and pick hotels in reasonable areas where you don't have to be worried. The key is to be thrifty but realistic.

treaclesoda, having MPs for only 2 terms would be similar to saying that one could only be in a certain job for 10 years and then they had to move on. You would use all the exerienced people which we need to take the right decisions.

Senior police officers earn much more than £60k, as headteachers, GPs and even senior nurses. Loads of public sector workers.

As far as the required skills/qualifications are concerned, I find, in all works of life being a good MP/Doctor/Solicitor/teacher is completely different to being a successful one.

Sadly, successful people are the ones who can talk a good game and network well. The head of your DC's school probably isn't the best teacher there, but is the best political animal, the Chief Superintendent of your local police force, is unlikely to have been the best police officer of his generation, but did the networking bit well.

So yes, the skills required to be a "successful" MP are much the same as those required to be successful in any other career.