If it would improve policymaking by 1%, we should gladly double MPs’ salaries.

[GeneralPeter]

1% of UK public spending is £14bn p.a.

Doubling MPs’ pay would cost £80m (about a one-hundred-and-seventieth of that).

If it would improve policy by 1% it’s money very well spent indeed.

Fine, in principle, but I doubt there's any evidence of causation there in other countries, and in the UK we'd be speculating.

Yes they are ridiculously underpaid. Treble the salary and then ban second jobs and personal donations.

Are you saying that politicians know the best policies but keep quiet about them because they feel they aren't paid enough so come up with policies that they believe are in keeping with their income?

You may well be right but I think it would be very difficult to do the maths on that. You would need a sliding scale of competence against remuneration.

No, but I think we would get a better and more diverse mix of MPs if the job paid better, leading to better lawmaking and a stronger bench to choose ministers from.

I wouldn’t ban second jobs (because I think if constituents want to elect someone who will continue to do a few shifts as a doctor or investment banker they should be able to).

But I would ban receiving gifts, and I’m surprised it’s not already banned.

I realise that creates loopholes. Not sure how to manage that. Maybe MPs need to describe in advance who they plan to work for and any variation needs a vote or something. Not very practical I guess.

Here’s the evidence…. Singapore pay their MPs c$1m+ a year so they are above bribery and they attract the brightest and the best instead of losing then to the professions.

By contrast we attract wealthy power hungry nutjobs and people banging the drum of some singular cause or other

I think mps are on a high salary though. Look at teachers and nurses in comparison.

This is a Labour government so they won't be reducing spending.

Maybe a give them that as a bonus if they do manage to save that much but it looks like taxes will be going up again.

True, MPs earn about what a nursing director or headteacher might.

The difference to me is that if we make a school 1% better or nursing in a hospital 1% better, it’s important but it doesn’t scale very far.

If we make national policy 1% more effective that pays for the MPs’ pay rise hundreds of times over.

This.

I think I’d make a great MP, and do a better job than a lot of them, but it’s a harder job than mine for way less pay. And it’s got so much less job security than my job, which would normally demand a premium.

How are you going to measure this?
How will you ensure that the same lazy, self serving, fuckwits don't just stayy in a job that they are just coasting through?

It won’t

hth

I think it has bad effects on both sides. On the left we get a massive overrepresentation of people from the politics, charity and public sectors, and on the right a massive overrepresentation of the independently wealthy.

I want more people in the middle. So that after 15 or 20 years of success in many normal professions like doctor, architect, local business owner, going into politics doesn’t require a massive pay cut. We would get a much healthier mix of candidates and experience I think.

More like evidence of comparing apples with pears.

Hard to measure. But the lazy, coasting MP is going to feel a lot more pressure at re-selection time if there are ten impressive, varied candidates with successful track records in all sorts of fields, than if there aren’t.

I also don’t think there are that many lazy MPs. Just that we have narrow pipelines of lanyard types on the left and independently wealthy on the right. To take five years out of a successful career to do public service in a stressful and derided job is a huge step. More people would do it if the pay were better for what should be one of the most important roles in the country.

You don't know how many MPs are not lazy, self serving, fuckwits because the system that we have is not transparent enough.

Again how are you going to measure there abilities?

And given the cureent system that we have and that there are so many constituancies that are majority party held, how will you stop them form getting back in?

Hardly. MPs tend to make their money after leaving office.

I’m not going to measure their abilities. I’m going to double pay so that more strong candidates apply.

The party selectorate will still exist. But they will have better material to work with, with more interest in their role, and more competition from the other parties too.

If you think the logic doesn’t hold, would you support halving MPs’ salaries?

If you think the logic doesn’t hold, would you support halving MPs’ salaries?

That's a very strange take on something that I have never mentioned.

Just like you haven't mentioned how doubling the money that MPs take home will stop the nepotism and old boy network from selecting the same dross that we have now.

How would more pay make them them make better decisions?

If they increase every other skilled public servant’s wages, or reverse the ridiculous mismatch between wages and cost of living that’s built up over the last 25 years now, then yes. Otherwise no. They should practice what they preach. The rest of the public sector has had to do more with less and so should they.

They shouldn’t have second jobs though, any more than the rest of us do.

Yes. For a lot of people who've reached a senior role in almost anything - business, education, law, healthcare etc, being an mp is a long hours, inflexible, london based job on a mediocre wage.

Its not going to attract the talent & expertise we need.

I'm a tax specialist with over 20 years experience. My peers and i would probably be genuinely useful, knowledgable & experienced in roles like exchequer secretary or financial secretary to the treasury. We understand HMRC & their international equivalents & work with them regularly.

However, if any of us ran for election & actually succeeded in being voted in as an mp, our wage would be cut in half, for an insecure job in the public eye. We have mortgages & kids, we can't afford it.

So instead, we tend to get a lot of people who've studied PPE and predominantly worked in political spheres - policy think tanks, charities, political parties, trade unions. Often they've worked in something non politics related but only for maybe 5 or 6 years after uni and moved into policy etc before they ever reached a remotely senior level in a non political career.

We need more people with 15 plus years experience outside politics. Former head teachers or university department heads, business leaders, senior nurses, doctors. People who've run divisions in a pharma company or major engineering contractor. People who've overseen a large building site or steel works, tradespeople who've built up business & created jobs, senior military & police.

It would attract smarter,more capable politicians with more diverse experience.

you haven't mentioned how doubling the money that MPs take home will stop the nepotism and old boy network from selecting the same dross that we have now

I have explained. If you don’t think it’s plausible then you’re welcome to remain unconvinced. The reason I asked if you would support halving pay is that what you are doubting is whether pay affects the level of talent a job can attract. I was curious what your intuition was when the direction was reversed. Or take something more day to day. If you want to get your kitchen redone but you want to pay half the rate that others do, are you likely to get the same range of quality tradespeople offering to do the work?

On old boys network, here’s a parallel. The finance sector was very old-boy network until about the 1980s. Then deregulation opened the field up and brought in lots of new types of people. More money, fewer barriers, more competition. You don’t now get a job at Goldman Sachs because you went to the right school. The competition is too fierce for that.

In politics now, there is a small circle of people who tend to become MPs. In Labour, it’s the NGO class and Spads. That’s your old boy network.

One reason is that MPs salaries compare reasonably to what you might earn in those sectors, but not with salaries at senior levels in many other sectors. It’s a useful way to keep unwelcome competition out.

On the right, too, if you are independently wealthy and want to be in politics, it’s quite helpful that the salaries mean you won’t be facing competition from those who can’t afford to take the pay cut.

Why would it make any difference if it's the same people making the decisions? It won't improve their IQ or level of common sense.