MSPs must follow Westminster's lead over jobs for the family

Published on Thursday 19 November 2009 21:55

IN MATTERS of their expenses our elected politicians should be beyond reproach. In this respect Holyrood has a better record that its begetter, the United Kingdom parliament. In the devolved parliament there has not been the systematic abuse of the system by MSPs that there has been in too many cases by MPs at Westminster.

This has led to MSPs adopting a rather superior attitude to their cousins who sit in the parliament by the Thames, a tendency they would be wise to control given the figures released by Holyrood yesterday.

They showed that taxpayers spent 11 million on MSPs' expenses and staff costs last year, a rise of 8.7 per cent. Although the rise came as a result of an independent review of pay for MSPs' employees, this is still a substantial increase at a time when both the public and private sectors are being forced to adopt austerity measures.

The figures also raise the issue of MSPs employing relatives, as 26 of them currently do. New SNP MSP Anne McLaughlin, for example, immediately took her sister and her niece on to the taxpayer-funded pay roll. In Westminster the practice of employing spouses is to be banned, increasing the pressure on Holyrood to follow suit.

There is an argument for parliamentarians to be allowed to employ spouses. They know them well, many politicians' spouses are part of a team and it may help keep marriages together in a calling where divorce is an all too obvious risk.

The counter-argument is that the state could end up paying elected representatives and their family a substantial sum of money. An MSP can pay his or her staff up to 58,000 a year. With MSPs paid just over 55,000 it is possible for their family to be receiving more than 110,000 from public funds.

At Holyrood there is no system of monitoring the work levels that MSPs' staff do, and there is no human resources procedure to recruit them or assess them, as there would be in most public and private sector jobs.

Given the ambiguity over this and the suspicion that, as with other expenses, the taxpayer may be subsidising party political activities, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this system needs to change.

It would be best if all jobs for MSPs' staff were publicly advertised, with proper, professional recruitment and selection procedures administered by Holyrood's politically neutral civil servants.

Wives, husbands, cousins, nieces and nephews would not be precluded from applying but the result would be that most, if not all, would not be recruited. To cushion the blow, the appropriate time for this to be introduced would be after the next Scottish election.

It might be a high price for some elected representatives and their spouses to pay but they must realise that being beyond reproach, and being seen to be beyond reproach, are vital if politicians are to regain the respect of a deeply disillusioned and sceptical public.