"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?

You could afford to, Disappointed, you just don't want to. And that's absolutely fine, but it isn't the same thing at all.

I believe an MP should be a very well paid job. I can't imagine anything worse than it being the preserve of braying Eatonion establishment who end up being the only ones who can afford to do it.

Most Mps are highly skilled and educated - lawyers, drs business people- or at least, have the intelligence and qualifications to do so if they didn't before parliament- so a working class/ middle class person will have to make the choice between the salaries those 2 attract. The MPs one has up be decent to compete

I get the feeling that perhaps people are missing the point here, it is not that £67k is fuck-all to live on in London, but that there ARE people living in in London and elsewhere earning less than the living wage!! If £67k is fuck-all then what is £8k per year!?!?

Greedy greedy greedy, and they are supposed to represent us ! don't tell me they work harder than nurses doing 12 hour shifts , can't live on 60k it's unbelievable, Rifkind said himself I have lots of time to read or go walking, well if he has it's not long hours then instead it's a cushy job that leaves plenty of free time, They are paid well if he has all this time off. They should all try getting a real job on much less wages but still lots of responsibility they would'nt complain they can't manage on 60K then. Or offer chance to be a MP to some retired teachers/nurses who did work hard and didnt make 60k.

Othehugemanatee, teachers, nurses, police officers etc work "thanklessly long weeks in the public eye" and earn a lot less than the "fuck all" 60k MPs do.

There is no way MPs have more responsibility than police officers and nurses, and if MPs fuck up their job they don't end up in front of a disciplinary board. They get paid a lot lot more for doing a lot lot less

Most Mps are highly skilled and educated - lawyers, drs business people
really?

Plenty of MPs are NOT educated people who could walk into highly paid jobs, and that's how it should be if they're going to represent us all. Fact is, most of them live outside London - the London part of their lives is what expenses are for.

A good number of those who earned highly before going into parliament continue to earn - Sir Malcolm's register entry is a good example.

I wouldn't be an MP for three times the salary personally. But £67,000 is substantially more than many of them earned before being elected, and more than enough to sustain them outside London, particularly as many of them will have two earners in their households, like many people. Don't forget the excellent non-contributory pension they also receive.

Many people live in London and have to actually live in London, with no allowances or expenses. Many of them are earning less than that and in jobs where we really need high calibre people with good educations and talent.

Successful, politically aware, career orientated teachers, nurses and police officers can all earn more than 60k Georgepigsdinosaur. The payscales for all those roles go well above £60k.

I do think that they should be paid more, if you want the best people to be able to go into the job - which I do. I work in local politics and most of the people that I meet who are involved in national politics certainly do want to make a difference.

I would like to go into politics but for 60k a year I would not want that level of intrusion in my life.

Yes unfortunately a large number of MPs still come from top unis etc and it's not really common in my experience for Oxford PPE grads to
Go on to earn £20k.

MPs don't live in London (or don't need to) they should live in their constituency (in theory) which is obviously more likely to be outside London than not. They do have to travel very frequently into London for work and often must stay because debates go late into the night. However is not necessary to run a London household for those reasons

And although I think they should be paid well, £60k is NOT fuck all in London. At all.

Poor old Malcolm Rifkind though. And jack Straw poor love.

You can't blame them for having to graft at a second job what with being highly skilled and dead clever and having to live in that London and everything from Monday lunchtime til Thursday.

From the bbc
It is claimed that Mr Straw was recorded describing how he operated "under the radar" and had used his influence to change EU rules on behalf of a firm which paid him £60,000 a year.

Yes for senior police officers, (not sure about nurses) bog standard PC's- the ones who do work shifts, who are placed in danger and who have to make life and death decisions and who can go to prison if they get a decision wrong earn considerably less than that. And Riffkinds party decided they should be paid even less!

MPs are not worth 65k. No way. They simply don't do enough

London has 73 MPs, my own much smaller city has 3; we have 650 in total, WHY?
A reduction of a third of MPs would save the country £12960000 per annum at a paltrey £60,000 each. Imagine what that money could do over 10 years. We could have a decent state education for every child, more nurses, cheaper transport, proper public services ....

That is 60k + expenses. Our MP was a teacher. They now own a big house here in The north (450,000) plus a house in London which is now fully furnished and renovated. Employs partner as secretary.

That's not done on 60k- it is the level of living expenses they can claim. Both houses will be theirs to sell but we will have paid for at least one.

"MPs are not worth 65k. No way. They simply don't do enough"

That's not how the jobs market works though, is it? If it was about who works hardest the best paid would be waitresses IMO

If being an MP is such a cushy, well paid number, why aren't all the teachers and police officers leaving their impossibly difficult and underpaid jobs to run for parliament? Especially as you apparently don't need any qualifications, experience or expertise to be an MP, so there are no barriers to entry whatsoever.

AskBasil I think the point is that the millions of Londoners who earn less than sixty grand aren't nobly doing so out of self-abnegation amd a higher calling. They just don't have a choice.

So imagine you have the option. Imagine you're an ordinary woman from a working class family who's made it to London and a successful career at the Bar. You're earning £150k a year and you've worked hard to get there. You're a single parent, passionate about politics, disgusted by some of the policies that are making lone parents' lives harder, and wish you could make a difference.

Will you go into politics amd take a more than 50% pay cut? Your mortgage is over three grand a month and you have to have a live in nanny to cope with the irregular hours as a barrister. To become an MP you'd have to could sell up and move to a cheaper house, uproot your kids from their school amd friends, probably have a longer commute, lose your support network.

Or you could choose to keep earning as you want the best for your kids.

So you ditch the idea of politics. And you bite your lip when your independently wealthy colleague talks about standing for Parliament 'to give something back' as you know he can afford to public-spirited while that just isn't a sensible choice for you.

It's all very well saying sixty grand is a lot to some. But to many of the type who might become MPs it's peanuts and insisting it is not raised ends up skewing Parliament toward the Gideons and Daves and Milibands and Stephen Kinnocks and it's disingenuous to argue otherwise using the example of people who earn less because they have no choice.

"That is 60k + expenses. Our MP was a teacher. They now own a big house here in The north (450,000) plus a house in London which is now fully furnished and renovated. Employs partner as secretary.

That's not done on 60k- it is the level of living expenses they can claim. Both houses will be theirs to sell but we will have paid for at least one."

They employ partners and family members because nobody else would do the job. (Having been woken by more than one MP in the middle of the night because they misdialled their secretary's number I can vouch for that!)

And a parliamentary term lasts 5 years max. Nobody can buy a house on expenses in that time. If they get elected 5 times on the hoof then their constituents are obviously happy with the work they're doing.

Our mp was a taxi driver

I think feckeggblue'has made the point I'm trying to make but has done it much more clearly

The MPs that I know are generally very hard working.

I agree Disappointed one. Also, if that teacher, who became an MP, had a bit about her, was ambitious and able to play a political game (which presumably she was to become an MP) she would have become a leader in school. You don't have to be very far up the leadership scale to earn £60k as a teacher, head of a decent sized school earns much more.

But yes - I suppose we should take account of the working class single parent barrister and the sad loss to public life because she cannot afford to pay the nanny.

I agree unmissable and Huge Manatee I took a significant paycut to become a teacher. We don't have a middle class background, we have not inherited anything and although we had a good standard of living that was totally reliant on us earning the money every month. Coming from a poor background it was important to us that our children had a comfortable life. I was able to take a paycut because my husband at that point earned more than me. I stopped tracing recently and within ten years was earning in the region of 50k. whilst I worked hard, I had my holidays free, I was at home every evening and had my privacy. I would not want have to give up my evenings and privacy for 60k.

Yes, we should Ubik, because whilst an extreme example, that's exactly the kind of person we need in parliament. Otherwise we end up with an overwhelming majority of public schoolboys who don't need their MP's salary, regardless of how much it is, as we have now.

Unmissable because its not as simple as just rocking up to tory/labour hq is it? Now if your family/spouse was a mp....

People are not becoming MPs because its a tough job!! There's no inroads to it as an independent because unfortunately in this country we vote for parties not people