MPs are showing contempt in the court of public opinion

Published on Sunday 8 November 2009 21:41

AMID all the doubts about Afghanistan, mega-bucks being poured into banks, and the wisdom or otherwise of Stephen Fry rejoining Twitter, MPs may quietly be getting off the hook.

Last week, Sir John Baker, former head of the Senior Salaries Review Body, said what many in high places are thinking: the expenses crackdown may have been a bit… harsh. The way out may not be to argue, but to purge the worst offenders, repay whatever sums have been demanded, sacrifice flipped homes, resettlement grants, subsistence allowances, employed spouses, first class travel, second homes, gardening expenses, moat cleaning, duck-pond maintenance and state-paid mortgages, and opt for a rise in the basic MP salary instead.

He said: "Once the new expenses regime is in place and the last repayment made there should be a substantial increase in MPs' pay no matter what the 'court of public opinion' or tabloid headlines may say."

Well, that's us told then.

Sir John thinks the number of MPs should be cut from 646 to 450, to help justify a salary rise from 65,000 to almost 100,000 – a triumph of perverse logic about as colossal as the latest banker's bonuses.

The idea that a random cut in numbers will increase parliamentary productivity is laughable. The retention of first past the post voting for Westminster renders half of all MPs effectively redundant. The retention of Westminster as a UK legislature when it functions primarily as a devolved parliament for England renders another set of MPs largely redundant. Will the great and good use this opportunity to think deeply about radical change? Evidently not.

The angry British public is in danger of getting foxed by the succession of grey-faced, similar-sounding Sirs involved in reforming parliamentary practices.

The first runner in this complex relay race was Sir Thomas Legg – commissioned by Gordon Brown to examine all MPs' second-home claims over four years. He sent repayment demands to MPs in October, and effectively handed over to Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, who has been hearing evidence on expenses reform. His final report, received as a baton blow by MPs last week, is now in the hands of the final parliamentary reform runner, Sir Ian Kennedy, the new chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA).

Unhappily, Sir Ian appears to have no intention of carrying the baton straight over the line but instead intends to conduct a wide-ranging review of his own, "looking at MPs' allowances, pensions and pay as a whole."

That's why parliamentary protectionists believe the tide is starting to turn.

Sir John's remarks, together with rumbles about a legal challenge from MPs spouses, have encouraged MPs like Julie "two-separate-homes" Kirkbride to think that her decision to stand down as MP was a tad premature. In a plot twist that outdoes Dirty Den reappearing in Albert Square, she is apparently planning to submit her name in the all-postal open primary to select a new candidate in her constituency, Bromsgrove.

A senior Scots MP was sufficiently emboldened to tell The Scotsman last week that there's "nothing modernising about working for slave wages". Presumably slaves are in the top 10 per cent of earners on the planet that MP inhabits.

Sir Stuart Bell, the MPs' "shop steward", reinforced the notion that MPs' salaries are too low, saying that a pay review would "marry pay structures with allowances (so] the dreadful allowance system is abolished for all time". Ah right.

Poor MPs, forced against will and conscience to operate a dreadful, deceitful and dishonest system just to clothe the weans and feed the cats. Its positively tear-jerking – except for the fact that most of those same MPs voted twice against expenses reform and tried to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act.

Clearly though, they're sorry now. In exchange for forfeiting some of their perks, MPs are prepared to take a pay-rise. Sweet.

We all know the gap between rich and poor has widened during 12 years of Labour government. We know now what that looks and sounds like. Governors inhabit a different world to the governed, illustrated by the Daily Telegraph and demonstrated by MPs in unguarded bits of double-speak.

Last week, the English Solicitor General, Vera Baird MP observed: "If there is a danger that people who are just ordinary but who have a commitment to public service are going to be priced out, then of course pay will have to be looked at. I don't want a care worker who has decided to come to Parliament to feel they can't run two houses on the new terms." She said the IPSA would have to decide "whether there needs to be compensation" to stop MPs from being "frightened" away.

How dare a wealthy woman like Ms Baird try to justify higher wages for politicians by suggesting Britain's most undervalued workers will otherwise be deterred from becoming MPs?

Manual workers represent 30 per cent of the working population but represent 0 per cent of Conservative MPs, 1 per cent of Liberal Democrats and only 10 per cent of Labour MPs. There currently are no care workers in parliament – even with "gravy train" expenses. The average care worker, according to website Salary Track, earns 15,950. Could he (or more probably she) manage to find a place to lay her head in London for three nights a week for 50,000? I'd imagine she could.

MPs are in denial about the scale of necessary change that lies ahead. But however distracted they currently appear, voters aren't.