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.

Well, let’s say you want a builder who will make good decisions.

A lot of building jobs in the neighbourhood are paying £100 (or whatever) for experienced roofers to work in good conditions.

You decide you will offer £50, but will also ensure a quite hostile work environment where your roofer’s competence and integrity are constantly questioned by passers by.

On which worksite are you likely to find the best roofers and the best decisions being made?

Well it won’t be the same people. You will attract a different mix.

MPs are elected by the population not chosen for their expertise in any particular field, they are amateurs. You are asking Bob next door to do your building work, which he may or may not be any good at.

It’s a good salary but not very competitive if you consider OP’s question of ‘how do we attract the best talent for the role’.

You can make a lot more in finance / consulting / law / tech etc - how do you get that talent working as MPs, when they can make double that salary (or more) elsewhere.

I agree they are underpaid, and this creates problems.
They should receive a higher salary plus a housing/travel allowance for those out of range of Westminster, this could be zoned.

Overhaul expenses.
Second jobs permitted but always declared.
Personal donations never permitted.
Political donations to e.g. leadership campaigns, party funds are standard and should continue but with revised rules.

You are saying that if they got better results (eg cost of living) then you’d support it?

I think it’s worth a try.

With most other public sector roles, if you improve work quality by 1%, the effect is fairly small because 1% is a small amount and there’s a natural limit to how many people one person affects in their job.

With national policy, a 1% improvement in how our economy or public services are run is massive. In money terms, £14bn. If you are looking for ways to improve public services, £14bn goes a decent way.

No. You are asking Bob next door to choose the builder.

If there are five builder candidates and they are all experienced and capable, Bob has a much better chance of picking a good one.

If they are five people who showed up when you offered half the money an experienced builder can earn, Bob’s chances of picking a good one go down a lot.

No, you are putting out an open call for people to bid to do your roof work, with an offer salary on it thats too low to attract any experienced roofers. So bob next door who loves DIY applies, and in the absence of any competition from actual roofers, he appears to be the better bet vs the racist old guy who's usually 3 pints deep at the bowls club and is the only other person to go for the job.

It is easy to disparage those who've done politics as a career, but other sector experienced but politically inexperienced people can bring other problems.

Politics is a huge ecosystem, you need the think tanks etc.

Working at senior level in any other industry is so different.

This

I would hope MPs do the job because they want to improve the lives of everyone and society as a whole. If you make pay the main incentive, you will get people who are more interested in making money money and themselves. Do the massive bonuses paid to the water bosses improve the water infrastructure and supply?

We need different experience.

The people with "experience in politics" are demonstrably not doing a good job.

We have had among the lowest investment in the industrial world for decades & instead of tackling that with a UK equities ISA or a requirement for public sector works to use UK contractors or a min 10% uk pension holding regulation, we have politicans capping bus fares at £2. Our whizzy startups leave because to go where they can access investment and take their value driving IP with them.

Meanwhile in other countries, there is investment which drives growth, wages grow and they can simply afford the bus fare at £3.

Pensions linked to future prosperity. They would be keen to hand over a prosperous country to the next party if their pension was affected.

I do believe many use it as a stepping stone to an advisory career for a multinational. I’ll be shocked if some are not in parliament working to ensure the multinational is looked after - not on the payroll yet, but paving the way to be on the payroll.

Edited to say if not a multinational than maybe another countries aid / investment package.

We need a wide range of different inputs yes.

But we do also need the people who understand the mechanics of both national and international politics.

I agree you don’t want pay to be the main incentive, or you probably get a different type of distortion. But I don’t want it to be a disincentive to all the sorts of people who TaxDirector mentions.

So, I wouldn’t 10x salaries, but I’d happily 2x them for MPs.

As for water… good example. It’s one of the most highly regulated sectors we have. How many MPs understood or even read the terms on which they legislated for it to operate?

One of the issues surely is that (in the vast majority of cases) in order to be an MP you need to be selected by a political party. The sort of professional people that we might want to encourage to become MPs may be more likely to be independent critical thinkers and less likely to be party loyalists happy to vote blindly with their party whatever the issue.

We definitely need both.

Right now though, there is no shortage of MPs who know how a political party or an NGO operates. We need more who know how other things do too.

I agree with doubling the MP’s wage but along with they their expenses have to be better scrutinised and they should not be allowed to have second jobs/roles in companies. If living in a certain radius to London why do they need a second home for example?

Also I am sick of seeing/hearing MP’s on the tv rounds/radio/podcasts and while doing all this writing books and promoting the book.

Being an MP is an honour and a full time job or it should be but so many seem to have so much time of their hands so their should be limits to this

basically it’s a role that should have a lot of boundaries around it not a role as a stepping stone to making money

You couldn't do that, obviously, as the decisions of the governing party are not the responsibility of the opposition.

Plus when a war starts, or there's a global economic issue, or the problem is linked to an old decision (Brexit!) the (current) MPs aren't to blame.

I am absolutely happy with a wider range of people becoming MPs, that's to be encouraged.

How would this change the party political system, the policy ecosystem, and how policies get developed?

Just making MPs and public sector pensions the normal type linked to investment growth would help (ie defined contribution).

I’d also give local government a stake in growth by allowing them to keep more of the tax raised locally, and allow them to benefit from planning approvals. Right now the incentives are set up all wrong.

I agree - also, their salaries should be set by an external body and they shouldn't get to vote on them. It's ridiculous that right now you can get paid more as a local council executive than an MP. Something like pegging the salary to 50% of the salary of the average FTSE 250 CEO seems about right to me (would be more than £500k).

I completely agree we set a salary that will only attract mediocre people - i think we can all see that in the performance of our MPs. Personally I'd link the salary of a typical MP to their salary for the past 5 years prior to becoming an MP. Then anyone could stand to be MP without it having a negative impact on their earnings and equality no one would stand to just to get a big pay increase.

I don't really think MPs should have second jobs.

Well it’s only one bit, obviously. But the three main routes I see: I) better options for candidate selection (ie we’re not tearing down the parties, we’re giving them better material to work with, 2) better ministers, becuase there’s a much stronger bench to choose from, and 3) better committee scrutiny.

Imagine if we had more real experts on the committees. A minister who knows they are going to be grilled by a Dan Neidle type on tax is going to govern and prepare differently from one who knows they are facing amateurs.

Likewise a minister who is going to face people who have run a prison or police force, as well as people who spent their twenties writing policy memos about them.

There’s an obvious unfairness, but interestingly I think reservists in the military are paid like this (up to a cap).