Growing debate in Britain over salaries of MPs
By Olly Barratt, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 20 November 2009 1719 hrs

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LONDON: There is a growing debate in Britain about whether Members of Parliament (MPs) should be paid higher salaries in the wake of the recent expenses scandal.

British parliamentarians are paid far less than their counterparts in some countries like Singapore, with a Cabinet minister in the UK earning about a quarter of the salary of a Cabinet member in Singapore.

But the British public is unlikely to accept renewed calls for higher pay for parliamentarians.

It has been a tempestuous few months for Westminster, with some MPs exposed as having claimed what the public felt to be outrageous expenses to top up their pay.

And so a wind of change is blowing through Parliament, with radical new rules on the cards on what and how much MPs can claim on expenses. The question is, with expenses curtailed, should salaries therefore rise?

Alex Stevenson, deputy editor, politics.co.uk, said: "The way the expenses system developed was that MPs were told, 'we can't give you a pay rise now, but what you can start to do is claim on this, claim on that'. And a culture developed which led to MPs being paid perhaps much less than they should have been.

"What a lot of MPs are saying now is, 'now that our expenses way of doing things is being completely discredited, we feel that we should be paid more'."

The argument goes that talented people will be put off from public service if MPs' salaries remain far lower than what business leaders, for example, can expect to be paid.

And with the clampdown on expenses, MPs have, in effect, just taken a big pay cut. But none of the party leaders is currently suggesting a pay rise for MPs because they know the public – still angry over expenses – would not stand for it.

"I think the attitude of the British public is very straightforward. They are enraged by what they see as abuses on an enormous scale. And so what they really, really want to see is MPs suffer, not get more money," said Mr Stevenson.

And pollsters in Westminster, studying the mood of the public, said opinion on this matter is pretty clear.

Greig Baker, research director, Comres, said: "In the view of the public, a lot of parliamentarians have been found with their fingers in the till and they're not inclined to give them more money as a way of rewarding their action.

"So the idea of increasing their pay to make up for any cut in expenses is not one that gains any level of public support. Quite the opposite, about 70 per cent of the British public will oppose that very strongly."

British MPs are clearly not about to receive a big pay rise. But the argument for better salaries for parliamentarians is being made more and more loudly here.

So while it will be kicked into the long grass now, the debate is expected to resurface when, and only when, a sense of public trust has been restored in Westminster.


- CNA/so