Why MPs got this writer hopping mad

Why MPs got this writer hopping mad

MPs are paid enough already!

You know what really makes me mad about the MP expenses scandal? It’s not so much the ludicrous claims – for bathplugs, ugly ceilings, scratched sinks etc – as the attitude from many MPs that this was all OK because they weren’t being paid enough in the first place.

I am enraged by this excuse. The basic salary for a backbench MP is £63,291 – and ministers and junior ministers get more. Yes, that’s less than GPs, management consultants, PR reps, bankers and so on can expect to earn. But it is still around three times the UK median income, which varies from between £21-24,000 depending on measurements. It’s considerably more than the 50% of UK citizens below the national median survive on.

If MPs thought they weren’t getting paid enough then they should have voted themselves a pay increase. In doing so, they should have bothered to make the case to the public.

They should have stood up and said “we do a very hard job, working 80 hours a week, travelling up and down the country doing stressful work whilst labouring under constant scrutiny – so we think you should pay us more”.

Instead, a great many sneaked around and wilfully played the system. Fearing the ill-will of the electorate, they opted to repeatedly delay the inevitable day of reckoning.

MPs should not be comparing themselves to people higher up on the income scale and using that as a justification for why they should be paid more. They already earn far more than most – and more to the point, didn’t they go into politics in the spirit of public service?

This attempted retrospective justification that MPs aren’t being paid enough because all their mates who went into law and banking and management consulting are getting more is greedy, disingenuous and disgusting. And that is what really makes me mad.

By Tom W at Liberal Conspiracy