Steve Foster
Well-known member
£65000 pa I would agree is low, however with the final salary pension on a 30ths basis their remuneration is approx £100,000.
Not so bad
Not so bad
They're massively underpaid.
Uncle C,point taken.
In the frenzy of NSC debate,it all went slighty awry!
You can't stop private business paying the going rate plus a bit more to get the right people in. The pay a politician gets is poor and if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
But unlike the private sector MP's pay comes from general taxation, MP's are for the most part NOT running the country, only Ministers with cabinet positions have that responsibility.
Excactly and therein lies the problem. People of adequate calibre, experience, skill and integrity that actually might be good at running the country will not be interested in a job that pays way way below what they could earn elsewhere. On top of this they know that their personal lives will become public property, if they make the smallest error in judgement or make one verbal slip they will be ridiculed and that most of the population will hold them in contempt. As you imply, it's a free market but with the reality of the job description iti s no wonder we only get muppets applying.
It's a catch 22, but if we want to have politicians that we can respect and do a good job then we, the public, have to make the job attractive to those with the skills to do it. We, the taxpayer and voter, are the employer and every employer has to offer pay and conditions suitable to attract the type of candidate he or she needs.
A company has a board of directors, a management system and the underlings. Government, as has been mentioned is UK PLC and is run in a similar manner. Each MP has a part in the decision making of the country, from listening to their constituents concerns and feeding back the information, to being junior ministers, Government whips, etc. They are part of the machine and are part of the voting system that has the responsibility to make the decisions to run the country. The civil service runs the country on the back of MPs decisions. Each and every MP has the responsibility and not just cabinet ministers.
I've always fancied being an MP but the things that put me off ( in order ) are :
> I wouldn't want to be aligned to any party so it's close to impossible to get elected
> I wouldn't want the intrusion into my private life
> The hours are very long and you don't necessarily get weekends off
> I can currently earn more, doing less and having a life outside work
£65k really is a pittance for what a good MP does.
to being junior ministers, Government whips, etc.
Where they do vital work is when they are sitting on Select Committees, and for that they deserve additional renumeration, not simply because they have been elected.
Also, do you know that most Permanent Secretaries of the Ministries, civil servants paid from the tax payers coffers, earn more than the Prime Minister?
Edit: Grab a load of this lot... In full: the highest paid civil servants | Politics | guardian.co.uk
That's because they have the kind of relevant expertise in their field that the general Member of Parliament won't have.
How many Naval Vessels has David Cameron taken charge of, I'll wager it's exactly nil. he might have been in the Cadets at Eton, but then so was I (at Brighton College) and that doesn't qualify me to be C in C of the Royal Navy.
What a strange comparison to make. I was never aware that the ability to command a naval vessel was a requirement to become an MP and a minister. I thought it was more to do with policy ideas, articulate speech making and answering questions etc.
The average level suggested for the salary was £86,250
And more than a third of MPS believe they should keep generous final salary pensions.
we're all in it together
Seven in ten MPs on £65k believe they are underpaid - Telegraph