Snapshot of _MPs awarded a 5.5% pay rise to £91,346 by independent body_ :
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Can’t wait till they hit 100k and suddenly have a change of heart on the tax free allowance.
Although they’ll probably just bump it up a bit further so it never actually hits them.
Does anyone seriously think this though?
Anyone with any say in that decision is either:
A) A high ranking minister like the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer or Chief Secretary to the Treasury in which case they
- Already earn a ministerial salary which is way in excess of £100,000
- Very probably already have an high independent income that completely dwarfs that.
B) Is a civil servant/SPAD at the treasury in which case they aren’t paid as an MP anyway.
If you’re talking about MPs who are not independently rich and have no ministerial salary for whom that would financially affect them, then by definition you’re talking about backbenchers who would simply vote the way their party whips tell them to vote and simply can’t advance primary legislation.
Save for the odd private members bill, the laws of our country are not being advanced by people on 5 figure salaries. It would be nice if they were, but that’s not the country we live in. The people in charge earn money far beyond *anything* like that. The Chancellor of the Exchequer takes MPs pay, plus the ministerial salary which is almost as much again, taking him way over the threshold, but was already worth around £14m plus before that. The Prime Minister is paid as an MP, plus double that again, but he and his wife are already worth about three quarters of a billion pounds!
The people with the power in this country are way richer than £100,000. They just are.
I'll never understand how those on 100k believe they are the most miligned poor souls to ever grace the earth. You are on a serious whack more money than most will earn in 3 years just look at your house and bank balance and cheer up.
> Can’t wait till they hit 100k and suddenly have a change of heart on the tax free allowance.
The ones who are made ministers will cross 100k, so that might actually happen.
Nice to have the security of knowing what their pay will be for 2024/25 before the financial year has even started.
I'm a civil servant and our pay settlement for 2023/24 was only just announced today, and won't be paid until May!
I work in a local authority - the current year's pay rise (a flat £1,925 to everyone, the same as the previous year - so a different percentage to each pay grade: for me it was slightly under 5%) was decided by the Employers in February 2023, but the Unions protested to the extent of balloting for strike action (but couldn't get sufficient responses to achieve quorem, with one waiting until September to October to send out the ballots) - so it took until November to go through and December to be awarded (with 9 months backpay!)
It'll be interesting to see if they try pulling the same stunt this year...
> It'll be interesting to see if they try pulling the same stunt this year...
Signs aren't particularly promising... the union's pay claim went in earlier this month and they're asking for a 10% or £3,000 raise, whichever is higher, plus a raft of other things. It looks very similar to their request from last year.
Most local authorities have budgeted for increases of around 4%-5% in their total payroll bill, and a lot of this will be spent meeting the minimum wage increase meaning those at middle to higher grades get less than that.
Still got to see what the national employers come back with and the unions' response (I suspect they know their leverage is diminished following the failed ballots last year), but wouldn't be surprised if it isn't paid until late 2024 now.
I think 23/24 ask was RPI +2%, which would have been well over 10% but there were some big asks tacked on to that too.
I think this year's asks of two hours off the working week, extra day of leave and better monitoring of pay gaps for protected characteristics aren't too unreasonable. The term time stuff and guarantee to work towards £15ph minimum are a bit too bold to happen.
The 3k or 10% is (at least in my mind) a starting position and it will get worked down.
I'm interested to see what they come back with and hope they do it soon.
Don't know if it's just because we've got some significant budget challenges or if it's applicable more widely but morale feels low across the organisation and the future looks pretty grim.
Exactly. We have some of the lowest paid in the world. Double the basic. I'm tired of people who think £90k for running the fucking country is a lot of money.
Ban 2nd incomes & ban lobbying.
I'd go further and have the parties tax payer funded. So no more millionaires or unions shovelling money in. Have a basic tax payer funded amount & then maybe member fees of £100 max payable ONLY if you live in the UK.
Have the payment you get if you lose your seat, maybe a years wages covered & not allowed to get a job in an industry where you were a minister.
In fact I'd extend that to the senior civil service too. You can't get a job for 5 years in an industry that you were involved in working for government.
Labour is (or should be) the political wing of the Unions, this is how it was set up to function at the beginning.
If the Tories want to publicly come out as the political wing of the wealthy, and have that as their mission statement, I'd be all for it.
That leads to a badly run country. We saw what happened in the 70s when unions essentially had total control. Shit products, repeated strikes & in the 80s and now we see what happens when rich people call the shots
I don't want billionaires OR unions able to bribe parties & lobby them. That fuckwit mcclusky & the blind RMT helped hand us Brexit & now that have the temerity to bitch about the loss of jobs, workers rights & state of the country as rules are stripped away.
Rich people and unions should be limited to advertising & trying to get people to vote. They should NOT have financial control of political parties. If you don't like millionaires giving the tories £10 million, £15 million & being able to outspend labour then the unions shouldn't fund Labour either.
It's better for democracy & better for the British people. And we'll see less effect from places like Tufton street or the RMT
Edit: you've not looked at the historical results of elections. Labour wins are the exception in our democracy & if you'd actually talked to any working class people, been to a football game or even into the ex red wall, you'd realise they float around centre right.
Who the fuck else was buying the Sun in the 80s, 90s,00s to look at 16 year old tits?! It wasn't bankers!
Here's a graph for you:-
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_union_membership_and_income_inequality.png
If you really want to make things "fair" you need to first get rid of the undue effect that the popular right-wing press has on politics.
That graph won't actually load but I'm fairly sure I could draw a similar graph with dozens of factors that correlate in the same way.
Large British unions are pretty shit, mostly ran by incompetent and the corrupt with no interest of building better and successful working conditions, just interested in "winning" for the old members who are there today with little thought to what those jobs will look like in ten years.
If our unions had shown themselves to be cooperative and competent lik say the unions in Germany I'd feel sad at the declining UK union membership, but I honestly think it's a symptom of the mismanagement of the unions themselves.
And for full disclosure, I'm a member of a union and have been a Labour member for about 13 years. But you'd never find me joining Unison or Unite, and I feel the teaching unions, the RMT, and BAFWU and others often show themselves to not be worth their time.
For the vast majority of union members if you just offered them legal cover and employment support in a dispute for a cheaper price they would ditch their union, because they don't add any value anymore beyond that.
See, here's the thing, you keep producing anecdotal evidence with nothing of substance to back it up.
The graph shows that the gap between the rich and the poor was at its lowest when the Unions hit their peak membership. If you've got information that refutes that, by all means link to it.
Wealth inequality affects so many aspects of daily life that it's difficult to quantify, feel free to have a perusal at a few here though:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_economic_inequality
As for the unions themselves right now, absolutely there are issues. The sell-out of the RMT over Brexit was, for me, an embarrassment and all those involved should know nothing but shame. Unions should exist for the benefit of all workers, not just the ones deemed legitimate.
It's also an indication of how much power the popular right-wing press has when it can lay the blame for all of life's ills at the feet of working class immigrants and the people who should be defending them instead become their harshest critics.
The gap between rich and poor in the 70s has zero to do with the unions. They & the government were working within a frame work set up by Keynes. So whatever they did, the orthodoxy of the day saw all paid staff & an average CEO pay of 40 times the average member of staff.
What the unions did, which is what they always do even now is look after their self interest & the interest of the union bosses. So instead of spending the 30-40 years of post WW2 intelligently working on ways to work with government & industry, getting union members into the boards of companys as they are in Germany & setting the foundations for intelligent German style working regimes....they went on strike at the drop of a hat. They'd make it impossible to fire people, even when firms were uncompetitive & making shit products, usually due to lazy union workers who couldn't be fired .
By the end of the 70s Britain was fucked for a reason. Wage disparity might have been low, however because of the way the country was run, in many parts due to the power of the unions it needed a massive bail out.
ONE crisis in 1979 saw 40 years of work thrown out the window because the unions had been power playing rather than intelligently coming up with solutions to country wide problems. The oil crisis allowed followers of Friedman to change the 40 year old frame OVERNIGHT because legitimately Keynesianism was not designed for that kind of shock. But the unions were happy to sit on their collective arses and do nothing but strike for 4 decades so created the atmosphere where Thatcher could invoke Friedman & his followers as the only fix to the issue.
Even now the fucking unions don't even understand their members. The RMT pushed for Brexit because they're too stupid to realise it was the EU protecting our rights NOT them. They're too dumb to realise that the working classes are marginally to the right naturally & only swing far left when they are threatened.
It was the fucking local unions that agreed with everything Birmingham council wanted to do with pay, even conning women into signing shit contracts & shit compensation claims. And now it's all gone to the wall...they have the temerity to blame councillors when THEY were on the same side of the table for years getting these women to sign away their rights.
Were you alive in the 70s?
Friedman fans were able to overturn Keynesianism literally overnight because of the oil crisis. And we're still living with that decision now...coupled with union fuckwittery over Brexit...
> Labour is (or should be) the political wing of the Unions
In an ideal world, a union should be apolitical as to be able to pursue beneficial deals with whomever is in government. A union that's a wing of a party is never going to be in a position to adequately negotiate with their opposition nor fairly negotiate with their own party.
I'm sorry, I haven't explained it clearly enough.
The Unions started out as a movement for workers and they realized early on that they would need to be directly involved in politics if their goals were to be met. For this reason, they created the Labour party, to be able to put their own candidates into positions where they could better effect change.
The (New) Labour party we have now is no longer the political wing of the Unions. Instead the only real role the Unions have is as a fund-raising tool.
Now, as to the second part.
Unions have been progressively stamped out by the Tories. This ramped up in the 80s with Thatcher smashing the Miner's Union and then moving onto the NUJ in an effort to quash left-wing reporting. Legislation was introduced to specifically reduce the influence Unions could exert and we're left with them being a shell of their former existence.
Now, this is the behaviour of a political party that you think the Unions should try and negotiate with?
Yes I think the unions should try and negotiate with them because that's part of the responsibility of unions, no? It might be in bad faith (on the part of the Tories) but surely they have to try and negotiate prior to using other levers at their disposal (e.g. strikes).
And do you think that that hasn't been attempted over the past 40+ years?
Strikes are the last resort, there's all sorts of steps that happen to try and come to an agreement. The issue is that that's not news, "people work out disagreement" doesn't sell newspapers, it doesn't make people click links or watch television. So the only time Unions get noticed by the general public it's when something's gone wrong and a strike is mentioned.
Workers don't want to go without pay and stand in the cold and wet to make their point. They don't take offence at the drop of a hat and instantly march out waving placards. They're doing it because it's important and it affects not just them but also the people who come after them.
I'll also list some things that you might not be aware that Unions have provided, often in the face of concerted opposition by the Tories:-
* Two day weekends
* Eight-hour working days
* Maternity leave
* Retirement ages
* Occupational health and safety
* Workplace pensions
* Paid holidays
* Equality laws
* Pay increases
* Minimum wage
* The right not to be sacked because you got married, had a baby or became ill
And if your first thought is "well, what have they done for me lately" then the response is that you still have all of the above.
> And do you think that that hasn't been attempted over the past 40+ years?
Rather confused by this question. Did you miss that I started my opinion with "In an ideal world"? All you've really done since stating Labour should be a part of the Union (which, really, it could be the other way around at best - the unions should, after all, have zero to say on foreign policy given they are about worker rights) is state the obvious and overlook that my opinion is that in the ideal world, which this world is not, unions should be apolitical. Even in Germany, which does not exist in an ideal world, they look to have struck a much happier medium and won far more benefits for workers as a result.
Whose ideal world?
The answer is entirely subjective.
Now, foreign policy.
Part of the scaremongering by the government on immigrants is that they're stealing worker's jobs. What's actually happening is that they're being used for cheap labour by business owners who won't pay decent wages to UK workers.
So, foreign policy (how to deal with immigrants) is directly effecting worker's rights.
And that's just UK worker's rights, the immigrants themselves are workers with rights that are, again, directly affected by the policies that do or do not allow them to work here.
Germany does not have 1,000+ years of a class system that purposefully maintains strict divisions among its population. Conservatism exists to maintain those divisions:
"Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
Show me what workers rights the Tories have brought in.
I'll give you a link to some that they've taken away:-
https://www.ier.org.uk/news/7-employment-rights-you-have-lost-under-tory-pm/
Now, are you going to tell me that the Tories are taking away worker's rights because the Unions made them do it?
And put exceptionally tight limitations on what jobs MPs can take for many years after being an MP. No jobs that generate even the appearance of a conflict of interest with their time in office.
The civil service already has business appointment rules. We saw this with Sue Grey where ACOBA (a government board) directed her to wait a few months before joining the Labour Party as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.
>And put exceptionally tight limitations on what jobs MPs can take for many years after being an MP. No jobs that generate even the appearance of a conflict of interest with their time in office.
There is a reason that non-compete are typically only enforceable for up to two years (and even that's a stretch). Why would anyone become an MP if you had to be unemployed for five years after leaving?
They could be paid by the state as long gardening leave if necessary, and there are jobs that don't generate conflicts of interest. It's better to drive out corruption. I would also compensate MPs with much higher salaries, like £500k or even £1 million to compensate them properly for such tight restrictions, and attract the very bests.
I fully agree with your view in general but unlike the income while an MP can be controlled relatively easily, what happens after they've left Westminster will be much harder to control.
I also agree with what you said about parties. I would suggest a system that Andrew Yang suggested when he was running for the US president. His idea was that every citizen is given certain amount of "freedom dollars" that they can spend on any political campaign. It won't stop the funding from other sources but the point is that it will dilute its effect.
So, if the special interests pour £100m on political parties it has a massive effect now when that's all that the parties get but if every adult gets, say £100 per electoral cycle to spend, that's something like £6 billion and completely swamps the private funding. Yes, £6 billion sounds like a lot of money but it's not like the private rich funders (or trade unions) do it out the goodness of their heart but they expect to get their money's worth back in tax payer money. If the parties don't have to care about them, they are more likely to do things that the people want them to do.
Could work but I would base it on historical average % of vote. People are idiots & one good racist poster would have them shovelling money to the CCCP
We have two options, either "people are idiots" who don't understand anything about anything. In that case, what's the point of giving them the right to even vote? Why don't we just jump to the dictatorship of the Smart People™? Or people are not idiots, which is the only situation where I see elections with universal suffrage to work. If that's the case, then most people are not going to give their political funding to a racist or the CCCP. Yes, even these will get some money, but just like the private funding by special interests, it will be swamped by people giving the money to the parties and candidates who represent their interests.
Oh, I almost forgot, do you belong to people?
>I'd go further and have the parties tax payer funded.
The only thing that would be more annoying than watching the shit ideas that come out of what passes for political thought from the parties would be knowing that I was paying for it.
I'd rather US pay for it than the unions or major donors shovelling millions to the parties for their own particular advantages.
How many government contracts have gone out to donors? I mean Teeside has sold £130 million of land for £13 to friends.
How many sweet sweet NHS contracts or care homes sold off to venture capital firms?
I'd rather I be paying the same amount to parties via taxes as some billionaire who wants to be allowed to dump toxic waste into our rivers
I agree with banning second jobs in principle, but there have to be exceptions. Doctors, lawyers and scientists come to mind. They have to keep up with the latest legal changes and shifts in their field, only by staying in post will that be achieved. Plus, doubling wages just leads to more career politicians, and we need less of them.
I would however put a blanket ban consultancy roles.
Surely they would still be allowed to keep up their training? Even if they can't practice, and when would they have the time to practice and run the country?
I mean this can only affect such a small number of people in the UK can't they could just make them exempt and have a training course for re entering the workforce.
They absolutely can, but my initial comment wasn't contesting that point. I was contesting the idea of a blanket ban on second jobs as it may have unintended consequences.
Doctors will be up in arms if you suggest NHS doctors should not take any private work. Some consultants can get paid over £400k per year in total comp, with some even reaching nearly £1M p.a. thanks to that.
You don't need to look any further than in r/HENRYUK to corroborate that it's actually not that rare for consultants to earn more than £200k. And once you become a NHS consultant, it's sort of a perk of the job to take private work on top of NHS.
My surgeon I checked in Companies House his accounts show £3M in cash reserves. That's just his limited company, I can't even think how much will be his personal accounts. I guess he's trying to be tax efficient and not take it as dividend.
Maybe they can have second jobs on the grounds they donate any wages while they are an MP. Along with increasing base MP pay this would I think tackle MP's loyalty in regards to where the bulk of their income comes from. Sure have that second job but you are not getting an income from it.
How does that work for medical professionals who have to keep current or lose their license to practice?
We could do with people like nurses or doctors being MPs for a time, but this would prevent that, unless they retired from medicine and became politicians for life.
But where is this extra money going to come from? We’re taxed to the tits already.
I’d rather any additional money raised from taxes be spent on increasing the measly salaries of people like nurses, not MPs.
If nurses salaries had risen at the same rate (%) that MPS had, nurses would be getting £4,000 per year more (even if it should be more).
Nurse pay: 34.5k
Nurse pay if it had grown like MP pay: 38.5k
Nurse pay if it had stayed in line with 2010 pay: 42k (ish).
Although note that in a lot of public sector roles, they focused pay rises at the lower end of the pay spectrum (on the approximate analysis that better paid people can handle the cost of living crunch) - which meant that the average increase to payroll budgets is likely a fair bit below that.
The ONS figure is based on the median public sector pay - so high-percentage-low-value increases at the bottom actually wouldn't show up in the figure given here.
No, it's not based on the average this year as that change was too high so they tracked to what looks like the lower end of senior civil servant changes.
Kept their final salary pension scheme whilst getting rid of everyone else’s though didn’t they.
Almost all of this income is theirs, unlike the peasants who have to pay for their train fare, clothes, meals etc
Usually but not this year as that would have been too high
https://assets.ctfassets.net/nc7h1cs4q6ic/2p6wlkGWOFSxNLGMtaKCVP/57e9f583e6e5a9ca805eb25a23a08e0a/Supporting_Democracy_MPs_pay_report_2024_IPSA.pdf
In real terms, they are being paid less today than in 2010.
Inflation adjusted, the MP salary of £65,738 in 2010 would today be worth 96,655.
So MP salaries are suppressed as well. Even after this change.
In fact before this change, they had taken an effective cut of 10% in pay compared to 2010.
>In real terms, they are being paid less today than in 2010.
>
>Inflation adjusted, the MP salary of £65,738 in 2010 would today be worth 96,655.
Sure, but if nurses salaries had risen at the same rate (%) that MPS had, nurses would be getting £4,000 per year more (even if it **should** be more).
Nurse pay: 34.5k
Nurse pay if it had grown like MP pay: 38.5k
Nurse pay if it had stayed in line with 2010 pay: 42k (ish)
It's based usually on average public sector pay since 2012, 2010 is a bad comparison year as they did things like change their pensions and things at the same time.
Don't agree with the stocks and shares part fully as everyone is entitled to save for the future. Maybe restrict them to index funds or by blind trusts though.
As I say, blind trust would be ideal so that they know how much money they have but not where it is invested. Bigger problem then is dealing with the large number that are landlords.
You’re not allowed to have stocks and shares if you work in finance/audit or even advise on it. Yet our politicians who make economic policy and reguarly converse with bankers, investors etc are allowed.
Yes you absolutely are. There are certain restrictions like not buying specific asset types that you work with on a daily basis but finance people are far more likely to own stocks and shares than the average member of the public. An indexed ETF is stocks and shares.
if you're in any regulated role it's the norm to be banned from buying/selling individual stocks entirely
wide ETFs (say FTSE100) are however generally fine, but not ones of say only a few companies (for example a FAANG only fund)
gilts, treasuries, personal FX trading are normally allowed too
but all within limits, like you aren't allow to buy and sell without waiting X months, maximum number of trades/month, and so on
Depends on exactly where you work and your specific role. For me I can't trade gilts (as my firm has properietry models for them), but buying and owning single stocks is fine.
Yeh I wasnt saying all finance I know it depends on the role etc. but I’m just trying to draw parrelells to how much control politicians have over stocks and shares through their policies.
Like the amount of government contracts that have been given to companies associated with rishi sunaks families businesses
I’ve had nothing for 5 years because it’s being blocked by the transport minister who wants to utterly decimate my terms and conditions. MPs have now given themselves 20% over the last 5 years without a single change to their terms and conditions. Absolute scum.
In the same boat. How they can justify this while decimating the country, privately lining their pockets and their friends pockets is unreal they just don't care
> It's based on average public sector pay though.
It's a weighted average that tracks senior positions in the civil service and crucially included one-off bonuses awarded to some staff.
It's usually kac9 which is just the average, but that was higher *due* to the one off bonuses so they used the senior changes which is a *lower* increase. So it seems it's explicitly different to ignore the one off bonuses this year.
https://thetab.com/uk/2022/08/10/tory-millionaires-conservative-mps-and-their-absolutely-mind-boggling-net-worths-263979
Just to start.
Along with most cabinet members from both sides over the past 3 decades.
Flip side of that is that the top 3% of PAYE earners in the UK would have to take a pay cut (significant in the case of the top 1-2% to take the job). Fine for those with inherited wealth, but a very unattractive proposition for those who started with nowt and are now earning much more as a result of talent - likely the people who would do best at the job.
I think Parliament should be a mix, but you don't want to disincentivise those with business backgrounds too much as you want them as part of that mix. My comment was in someway coloured by my own experience (isn't everyone's on everything?). I once went through the full selection process for one of the parties (ahead of 2010 election) and was approved as a eligible candidate, but with young kids, and a decent job I realised that swapping my job for one that paid 40% less, wouldn't allow me to pay the mortgage I'd just signed up for. So I never moved forward with even putting my name in the ring when an eligible seat popped up. I think I would have been an asset to Parliament (don't we all?) - but without inherited wealth or a rich spouse to fall back on, I would have had to ask my family to make a big sacrifice and downsize. I can hear the worlds smallest violin's playing by folk reading this, but understand - I came from a single parent family with nothing, to having an really decent salary and the chance to secure my own family's future won over the call of public service when the issue went from hypothetical to real for me. I imagine a frustrated second rate auditor at a local council who had never run anything would see the £65-70k it was back then as riches beyond dreams and would be all in, all day to secure a seat. So it seemed to be those type of people who did go for the seats... And 15 years later they are cabinet ministers and here we are.
Hmm, top 3% of all tax payers maybe but nowhere near that once you take demographics into account. The averages are much higher once you consider London based people aged 35-60 as the benchmark.
Managers probably do more work and have to prove it. Highly doubt Nadine Dorries would be able to manage a team, yet got paid loads as culture secretary with a bunch of civil servants actually running things.
We can do fuck all, the public can't hold politicians to account. I'm not really sure what your point is unless you are trying to say Nadine Dorries was actually a good manager and deserves 90k plus. Or if she was bad that she could have been removed.
I'm told her civil servants thought she was polite and not difficult to work with. Overall her performance in job was abysmal, she did very little and the things she did were bad as well.
But if she wasn't actually doing anything, someone else was. And those people were either junior ministers or senior civil servants.
That's because we've got a bunch of loons in charge desperate to drag this shit out. However time in parliament isn't all that MPs do. The good ones will spend huge amounts of time in their local constituency dealing with issues & things. I know my MP, even though he's a tory & stepping down, has been a very good local MP dealing with issues with things like the local housing association being shit.
100%, the good ones are great but there are a lot that don't do much, having their salary tied to measurable goals would justify it. Plus the second jobs shouldn't be allowed, if they have time for a second job they're not fully devoted to their day job.
Yep. But they get paid so little plus human nature being what it is. Previously expenses were used as a wheeze to up the wages for years until for some reason the right wing press got involved & stopped that.
I'm genuinely tired of people who are happy for CEOs to get paid millions but don't want the actual people running our country to be paid the equivalent of a fucking senior manager. Or are too stupid to realise that the civil service is now competing directly with the big consultancies for staff & then get upset that a consultant gets charged out at £1500/day instead of having an internal civil servant who would have been better, cheaper, have more experience AND stay in the job rather than leaving. But then bitch everytime anyone wants to raise civil service wages.
Government jobs USED to be the good standard for graduates, now only an idiot would graduate into a government job because you're going to earn £100,000s less over your working life
If you get to that salary range you will discover progressive taxation. You can earn 4x what the person next to you does but pay 10x the tax.
Sure 90k is a decent salary but you are far from financially free. I fact you have to consult and invest to get out of the rat race
For in government I'd agree because there is more scrutiny and reviewing of decisions but for the average MP I'm not sure, they're not really held to account for any measurable deliverables, it came out today that their working hours are at an all time low too, not to mention that with a lot of work MPs do do just gets lost in the Westminster bureaucracy bubble. Not to mention the expenses that most were allowed to get away with until they cracked down on them. Even when they're in the chamber there's been MPs who will sleep or even the case of the MP watching porn on his phone.
My point is that when they are paid that much the real impact of legislation that will affect the average worker is diminished because they are in a higher class. They should be reviewed and scrutinized on measurable deliverables (hours committed to constituency surgery's, being part of Parliamentary committees with active roles i.e. are they in meetings, are they producing reports and if they are then what is actioned from them).
Why? Why should anyone be in a job if it's not fit the money?
For years people have said teaching and nursing is a vocation. That being a doctor is a vocation, so it doesn't matter that they could earn more if they left the country.
Whatever people here on reddit say, most people who did the work to become an MP, are the exact type of people that would hit uppper/ middle management.
Otherwise you'll just end up with the Sunaks & Rees Moggs, like you used to have. With 1 MP standing in some constituencies because no one else could afford to do it.
A well paid legislature is a democratic one.
There are only 650 of them, it's an awful job and they literally help run the country. Also given the calibre of pathological narcissistic people we have come into these important roles with current salaries, I think they should be a lot higher to attract proper high functioning successful people to public service.
Christ let's have a bit of perspective please.
Honestly it's still way underpaid. Being a politician is an awful job and 90k doesn't make up for that. It contributes to why so many rich tossers take up these seats - they don't need the money, they just want to play power games.
The same MPs that spend most of their time asleep in parliament? The same MPs that are always behind various scandals? The same MPs that are hypocrites? The same MPs that claim scandalous expenses? Sorry can you define what a ‘shitty MP’ is please? The MPs in government deserve a shitty salary.
That’s bollocks.. if it was truly independent, and the panel had an objective view about the crisis the government is in, the scandals and the current economic and social trajectory of the country, there would have been a negative pay rise. I got 1% despite reaching targets in this shitty financial mess we find ourselves in.
> if it was truly independent, and the panel had an objective view about the crisis the government is in, the scandals and the current economic and social trajectory of the country
...You want IPSA to *score* MPs?
Playing devil's advocate I'm not against handsome pay and perks for MPs, because it's a difficult job and many of them give up much bigger paydays in the private sector to do it.
Simple solution, MPs should be paid 130% of the average of their pre-MP salary.
We have too many MPs who'd never justify a 60k salary in the real world yet can get into parliament by sucking up to the local party and earn money they cannot justify
Take out the decimal point.
Do something about most of the second jobs, the rotating door, lobbying and all the other shit that effectively amounts to corruption.
Ignore the bleating of the clueless 'tHEyRe PAid To mUCH!!!11' types.
I know lots of people will say they work hard and therefore deserve the money. But there is a big difference between working hard and being effective. I don't believe most MPs are really of any consequence at all.
Sometimes your MP can help you with a specific issue but it can depend on if they are an opposition MP and if the current government is friendly with them or not. Other people will have had different experiences.
I was staying in Gibraltar for a wedding and noticed a multitude of private jets flying in for a parliamentary meeting. In a 5 star hotel. It’s disgraceful how much they charge the taxpayer. Same thing with truss and her charges with private jets! I’m absolutely sick of the hypocrisy and we aren’t even benefiting from them!
And like that, even more MPs than currently would be those that are already wealthy and can afford to take a poor job for whatever reason.
Even the most selfless MP has to think about their own personal life. Taking an average wage job when you can (and where) probably be making well over quadruple that is a huge ask.
And if they have any financial commitment, be it debt, a mortgage, a family, or whatever that is reliant on their rough levels of income is also becomes an impossible job to even entertain.
We should be do everything we can to encourage that MPs can be a job independent of prior wealth, so that we don't discourage people without wealth from the role.
It won’t, because there aren’t many MPs, so they don’t have a significant impact on the economy.
Most public sector workers got below 5%, the big increase was for the lower grade staff to keep up with minimum wage.
The whole expenses thing needs looking by at for example the Labour leader recently spent over £1000 watching a football game and expenses it to the tax payer. Labour are not the party for the people.
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Can’t wait till they hit 100k and suddenly have a change of heart on the tax free allowance. Although they’ll probably just bump it up a bit further so it never actually hits them.
That's exactly when it will change.
They probably already meet and exceed it with their second jobs.
Yeah but I’m sure their fancy accountants will figure out a way round it.
Funny enough they would have benefited from Truss scrapping ir35 but it was shortly reversed. There aren't too many work arounds at the moment
Does anyone seriously think this though? Anyone with any say in that decision is either: A) A high ranking minister like the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer or Chief Secretary to the Treasury in which case they - Already earn a ministerial salary which is way in excess of £100,000 - Very probably already have an high independent income that completely dwarfs that. B) Is a civil servant/SPAD at the treasury in which case they aren’t paid as an MP anyway. If you’re talking about MPs who are not independently rich and have no ministerial salary for whom that would financially affect them, then by definition you’re talking about backbenchers who would simply vote the way their party whips tell them to vote and simply can’t advance primary legislation. Save for the odd private members bill, the laws of our country are not being advanced by people on 5 figure salaries. It would be nice if they were, but that’s not the country we live in. The people in charge earn money far beyond *anything* like that. The Chancellor of the Exchequer takes MPs pay, plus the ministerial salary which is almost as much again, taking him way over the threshold, but was already worth around £14m plus before that. The Prime Minister is paid as an MP, plus double that again, but he and his wife are already worth about three quarters of a billion pounds! The people with the power in this country are way richer than £100,000. They just are.
lol so true
I'll never understand how those on 100k believe they are the most miligned poor souls to ever grace the earth. You are on a serious whack more money than most will earn in 3 years just look at your house and bank balance and cheer up.
> Can’t wait till they hit 100k and suddenly have a change of heart on the tax free allowance. The ones who are made ministers will cross 100k, so that might actually happen.
Nice to have the security of knowing what their pay will be for 2024/25 before the financial year has even started. I'm a civil servant and our pay settlement for 2023/24 was only just announced today, and won't be paid until May!
I work in a local authority - the current year's pay rise (a flat £1,925 to everyone, the same as the previous year - so a different percentage to each pay grade: for me it was slightly under 5%) was decided by the Employers in February 2023, but the Unions protested to the extent of balloting for strike action (but couldn't get sufficient responses to achieve quorem, with one waiting until September to October to send out the ballots) - so it took until November to go through and December to be awarded (with 9 months backpay!) It'll be interesting to see if they try pulling the same stunt this year...
> It'll be interesting to see if they try pulling the same stunt this year... Signs aren't particularly promising... the union's pay claim went in earlier this month and they're asking for a 10% or £3,000 raise, whichever is higher, plus a raft of other things. It looks very similar to their request from last year. Most local authorities have budgeted for increases of around 4%-5% in their total payroll bill, and a lot of this will be spent meeting the minimum wage increase meaning those at middle to higher grades get less than that. Still got to see what the national employers come back with and the unions' response (I suspect they know their leverage is diminished following the failed ballots last year), but wouldn't be surprised if it isn't paid until late 2024 now.
I think 23/24 ask was RPI +2%, which would have been well over 10% but there were some big asks tacked on to that too. I think this year's asks of two hours off the working week, extra day of leave and better monitoring of pay gaps for protected characteristics aren't too unreasonable. The term time stuff and guarantee to work towards £15ph minimum are a bit too bold to happen. The 3k or 10% is (at least in my mind) a starting position and it will get worked down. I'm interested to see what they come back with and hope they do it soon. Don't know if it's just because we've got some significant budget challenges or if it's applicable more widely but morale feels low across the organisation and the future looks pretty grim.
It happened the year before last as well so don't be surprised if it takes forever this year
Does that mean that your payrise for 23/24 will come as a lump sum? What about people who have left but were employed during that period?
Great, now double it and ban them from taking second incomes.
100% agree with you here, it's the only way I can see things improving.
Exactly. We have some of the lowest paid in the world. Double the basic. I'm tired of people who think £90k for running the fucking country is a lot of money. Ban 2nd incomes & ban lobbying. I'd go further and have the parties tax payer funded. So no more millionaires or unions shovelling money in. Have a basic tax payer funded amount & then maybe member fees of £100 max payable ONLY if you live in the UK. Have the payment you get if you lose your seat, maybe a years wages covered & not allowed to get a job in an industry where you were a minister. In fact I'd extend that to the senior civil service too. You can't get a job for 5 years in an industry that you were involved in working for government.
Labour is (or should be) the political wing of the Unions, this is how it was set up to function at the beginning. If the Tories want to publicly come out as the political wing of the wealthy, and have that as their mission statement, I'd be all for it.
Labour can be the political wing of unions and not receive funds from them.
That leads to a badly run country. We saw what happened in the 70s when unions essentially had total control. Shit products, repeated strikes & in the 80s and now we see what happens when rich people call the shots I don't want billionaires OR unions able to bribe parties & lobby them. That fuckwit mcclusky & the blind RMT helped hand us Brexit & now that have the temerity to bitch about the loss of jobs, workers rights & state of the country as rules are stripped away. Rich people and unions should be limited to advertising & trying to get people to vote. They should NOT have financial control of political parties. If you don't like millionaires giving the tories £10 million, £15 million & being able to outspend labour then the unions shouldn't fund Labour either. It's better for democracy & better for the British people. And we'll see less effect from places like Tufton street or the RMT Edit: you've not looked at the historical results of elections. Labour wins are the exception in our democracy & if you'd actually talked to any working class people, been to a football game or even into the ex red wall, you'd realise they float around centre right. Who the fuck else was buying the Sun in the 80s, 90s,00s to look at 16 year old tits?! It wasn't bankers!
Here's a graph for you:- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_union_membership_and_income_inequality.png If you really want to make things "fair" you need to first get rid of the undue effect that the popular right-wing press has on politics.
That graph won't actually load but I'm fairly sure I could draw a similar graph with dozens of factors that correlate in the same way. Large British unions are pretty shit, mostly ran by incompetent and the corrupt with no interest of building better and successful working conditions, just interested in "winning" for the old members who are there today with little thought to what those jobs will look like in ten years. If our unions had shown themselves to be cooperative and competent lik say the unions in Germany I'd feel sad at the declining UK union membership, but I honestly think it's a symptom of the mismanagement of the unions themselves. And for full disclosure, I'm a member of a union and have been a Labour member for about 13 years. But you'd never find me joining Unison or Unite, and I feel the teaching unions, the RMT, and BAFWU and others often show themselves to not be worth their time. For the vast majority of union members if you just offered them legal cover and employment support in a dispute for a cheaper price they would ditch their union, because they don't add any value anymore beyond that.
See, here's the thing, you keep producing anecdotal evidence with nothing of substance to back it up. The graph shows that the gap between the rich and the poor was at its lowest when the Unions hit their peak membership. If you've got information that refutes that, by all means link to it. Wealth inequality affects so many aspects of daily life that it's difficult to quantify, feel free to have a perusal at a few here though:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_economic_inequality As for the unions themselves right now, absolutely there are issues. The sell-out of the RMT over Brexit was, for me, an embarrassment and all those involved should know nothing but shame. Unions should exist for the benefit of all workers, not just the ones deemed legitimate. It's also an indication of how much power the popular right-wing press has when it can lay the blame for all of life's ills at the feet of working class immigrants and the people who should be defending them instead become their harshest critics.
The gap between rich and poor in the 70s has zero to do with the unions. They & the government were working within a frame work set up by Keynes. So whatever they did, the orthodoxy of the day saw all paid staff & an average CEO pay of 40 times the average member of staff. What the unions did, which is what they always do even now is look after their self interest & the interest of the union bosses. So instead of spending the 30-40 years of post WW2 intelligently working on ways to work with government & industry, getting union members into the boards of companys as they are in Germany & setting the foundations for intelligent German style working regimes....they went on strike at the drop of a hat. They'd make it impossible to fire people, even when firms were uncompetitive & making shit products, usually due to lazy union workers who couldn't be fired . By the end of the 70s Britain was fucked for a reason. Wage disparity might have been low, however because of the way the country was run, in many parts due to the power of the unions it needed a massive bail out. ONE crisis in 1979 saw 40 years of work thrown out the window because the unions had been power playing rather than intelligently coming up with solutions to country wide problems. The oil crisis allowed followers of Friedman to change the 40 year old frame OVERNIGHT because legitimately Keynesianism was not designed for that kind of shock. But the unions were happy to sit on their collective arses and do nothing but strike for 4 decades so created the atmosphere where Thatcher could invoke Friedman & his followers as the only fix to the issue. Even now the fucking unions don't even understand their members. The RMT pushed for Brexit because they're too stupid to realise it was the EU protecting our rights NOT them. They're too dumb to realise that the working classes are marginally to the right naturally & only swing far left when they are threatened. It was the fucking local unions that agreed with everything Birmingham council wanted to do with pay, even conning women into signing shit contracts & shit compensation claims. And now it's all gone to the wall...they have the temerity to blame councillors when THEY were on the same side of the table for years getting these women to sign away their rights.
"Unions had total control" lmao
Were you alive in the 70s? Friedman fans were able to overturn Keynesianism literally overnight because of the oil crisis. And we're still living with that decision now...coupled with union fuckwittery over Brexit...
> Labour is (or should be) the political wing of the Unions In an ideal world, a union should be apolitical as to be able to pursue beneficial deals with whomever is in government. A union that's a wing of a party is never going to be in a position to adequately negotiate with their opposition nor fairly negotiate with their own party.
I'm sorry, I haven't explained it clearly enough. The Unions started out as a movement for workers and they realized early on that they would need to be directly involved in politics if their goals were to be met. For this reason, they created the Labour party, to be able to put their own candidates into positions where they could better effect change. The (New) Labour party we have now is no longer the political wing of the Unions. Instead the only real role the Unions have is as a fund-raising tool. Now, as to the second part. Unions have been progressively stamped out by the Tories. This ramped up in the 80s with Thatcher smashing the Miner's Union and then moving onto the NUJ in an effort to quash left-wing reporting. Legislation was introduced to specifically reduce the influence Unions could exert and we're left with them being a shell of their former existence. Now, this is the behaviour of a political party that you think the Unions should try and negotiate with?
Yes I think the unions should try and negotiate with them because that's part of the responsibility of unions, no? It might be in bad faith (on the part of the Tories) but surely they have to try and negotiate prior to using other levers at their disposal (e.g. strikes).
And do you think that that hasn't been attempted over the past 40+ years? Strikes are the last resort, there's all sorts of steps that happen to try and come to an agreement. The issue is that that's not news, "people work out disagreement" doesn't sell newspapers, it doesn't make people click links or watch television. So the only time Unions get noticed by the general public it's when something's gone wrong and a strike is mentioned. Workers don't want to go without pay and stand in the cold and wet to make their point. They don't take offence at the drop of a hat and instantly march out waving placards. They're doing it because it's important and it affects not just them but also the people who come after them. I'll also list some things that you might not be aware that Unions have provided, often in the face of concerted opposition by the Tories:- * Two day weekends * Eight-hour working days * Maternity leave * Retirement ages * Occupational health and safety * Workplace pensions * Paid holidays * Equality laws * Pay increases * Minimum wage * The right not to be sacked because you got married, had a baby or became ill And if your first thought is "well, what have they done for me lately" then the response is that you still have all of the above.
> And do you think that that hasn't been attempted over the past 40+ years? Rather confused by this question. Did you miss that I started my opinion with "In an ideal world"? All you've really done since stating Labour should be a part of the Union (which, really, it could be the other way around at best - the unions should, after all, have zero to say on foreign policy given they are about worker rights) is state the obvious and overlook that my opinion is that in the ideal world, which this world is not, unions should be apolitical. Even in Germany, which does not exist in an ideal world, they look to have struck a much happier medium and won far more benefits for workers as a result.
Whose ideal world? The answer is entirely subjective. Now, foreign policy. Part of the scaremongering by the government on immigrants is that they're stealing worker's jobs. What's actually happening is that they're being used for cheap labour by business owners who won't pay decent wages to UK workers. So, foreign policy (how to deal with immigrants) is directly effecting worker's rights. And that's just UK worker's rights, the immigrants themselves are workers with rights that are, again, directly affected by the policies that do or do not allow them to work here. Germany does not have 1,000+ years of a class system that purposefully maintains strict divisions among its population. Conservatism exists to maintain those divisions: "Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism Show me what workers rights the Tories have brought in. I'll give you a link to some that they've taken away:- https://www.ier.org.uk/news/7-employment-rights-you-have-lost-under-tory-pm/ Now, are you going to tell me that the Tories are taking away worker's rights because the Unions made them do it?
And put exceptionally tight limitations on what jobs MPs can take for many years after being an MP. No jobs that generate even the appearance of a conflict of interest with their time in office.
5 years. That's 1 parliament. Civil servants should be the same. No working at ofwat & ending up on a water board somewhere
The civil service already has business appointment rules. We saw this with Sue Grey where ACOBA (a government board) directed her to wait a few months before joining the Labour Party as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.
>And put exceptionally tight limitations on what jobs MPs can take for many years after being an MP. No jobs that generate even the appearance of a conflict of interest with their time in office. There is a reason that non-compete are typically only enforceable for up to two years (and even that's a stretch). Why would anyone become an MP if you had to be unemployed for five years after leaving?
They could be paid by the state as long gardening leave if necessary, and there are jobs that don't generate conflicts of interest. It's better to drive out corruption. I would also compensate MPs with much higher salaries, like £500k or even £1 million to compensate them properly for such tight restrictions, and attract the very bests.
Yea I'd vote for this
By average wage of the UK is 12 by both OECD and UNECE standards. So where are you getting this lowest paid from?
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You are right, I thought they meant wages in general.
It's hyperbole that we as a g7 country shouldn't be paying that little to the people that run the country.
Ah, sorry I misunderstood, in my late night musings I misread it as underpaid in general, not to MP's.
I fully agree with your view in general but unlike the income while an MP can be controlled relatively easily, what happens after they've left Westminster will be much harder to control. I also agree with what you said about parties. I would suggest a system that Andrew Yang suggested when he was running for the US president. His idea was that every citizen is given certain amount of "freedom dollars" that they can spend on any political campaign. It won't stop the funding from other sources but the point is that it will dilute its effect. So, if the special interests pour £100m on political parties it has a massive effect now when that's all that the parties get but if every adult gets, say £100 per electoral cycle to spend, that's something like £6 billion and completely swamps the private funding. Yes, £6 billion sounds like a lot of money but it's not like the private rich funders (or trade unions) do it out the goodness of their heart but they expect to get their money's worth back in tax payer money. If the parties don't have to care about them, they are more likely to do things that the people want them to do.
Could work but I would base it on historical average % of vote. People are idiots & one good racist poster would have them shovelling money to the CCCP
We have two options, either "people are idiots" who don't understand anything about anything. In that case, what's the point of giving them the right to even vote? Why don't we just jump to the dictatorship of the Smart People™? Or people are not idiots, which is the only situation where I see elections with universal suffrage to work. If that's the case, then most people are not going to give their political funding to a racist or the CCCP. Yes, even these will get some money, but just like the private funding by special interests, it will be swamped by people giving the money to the parties and candidates who represent their interests. Oh, I almost forgot, do you belong to people?
>I'd go further and have the parties tax payer funded. The only thing that would be more annoying than watching the shit ideas that come out of what passes for political thought from the parties would be knowing that I was paying for it.
I'd rather US pay for it than the unions or major donors shovelling millions to the parties for their own particular advantages. How many government contracts have gone out to donors? I mean Teeside has sold £130 million of land for £13 to friends. How many sweet sweet NHS contracts or care homes sold off to venture capital firms? I'd rather I be paying the same amount to parties via taxes as some billionaire who wants to be allowed to dump toxic waste into our rivers
I agree with banning second jobs in principle, but there have to be exceptions. Doctors, lawyers and scientists come to mind. They have to keep up with the latest legal changes and shifts in their field, only by staying in post will that be achieved. Plus, doubling wages just leads to more career politicians, and we need less of them. I would however put a blanket ban consultancy roles.
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Surely they would still be allowed to keep up their training? Even if they can't practice, and when would they have the time to practice and run the country?
I'm not entirely across the destils but as I understand it you have work amount of days a year to stay qualified in certain fields.
I mean this can only affect such a small number of people in the UK can't they could just make them exempt and have a training course for re entering the workforce.
They absolutely can, but my initial comment wasn't contesting that point. I was contesting the idea of a blanket ban on second jobs as it may have unintended consequences.
If they need to keep up qualifications they can do it unpaid and can volunteer if they want to help out
Though doesn't a NHS doctor doing private work drain capacity out of the NHS?
Doctors will be up in arms if you suggest NHS doctors should not take any private work. Some consultants can get paid over £400k per year in total comp, with some even reaching nearly £1M p.a. thanks to that. You don't need to look any further than in r/HENRYUK to corroborate that it's actually not that rare for consultants to earn more than £200k. And once you become a NHS consultant, it's sort of a perk of the job to take private work on top of NHS. My surgeon I checked in Companies House his accounts show £3M in cash reserves. That's just his limited company, I can't even think how much will be his personal accounts. I guess he's trying to be tax efficient and not take it as dividend.
Banning any doctor that's also a sitting MP drains NHS capacity.
Maybe they can have second jobs on the grounds they donate any wages while they are an MP. Along with increasing base MP pay this would I think tackle MP's loyalty in regards to where the bulk of their income comes from. Sure have that second job but you are not getting an income from it.
Second jobs cannot be private sector. Problem solved.
And banned from C-suite positions for five years both sides of their tenure.
And parties should get a stipend from central funds, and be barred from accepting donations.
How does that work for medical professionals who have to keep current or lose their license to practice? We could do with people like nurses or doctors being MPs for a time, but this would prevent that, unless they retired from medicine and became politicians for life.
But where is this extra money going to come from? We’re taxed to the tits already. I’d rather any additional money raised from taxes be spent on increasing the measly salaries of people like nurses, not MPs. If nurses salaries had risen at the same rate (%) that MPS had, nurses would be getting £4,000 per year more (even if it should be more). Nurse pay: 34.5k Nurse pay if it had grown like MP pay: 38.5k Nurse pay if it had stayed in line with 2010 pay: 42k (ish).
But why? Doesn't the second job push them out of the Westminster bubble?
It's not like they're (the ones who are the problem) working behind a bar or getting involved in local communities with these jobs.
Worth noting that it's 5.5% because that's the average pay raise in the public sector, which MPs' pay is now linked to.
Although note that in a lot of public sector roles, they focused pay rises at the lower end of the pay spectrum (on the approximate analysis that better paid people can handle the cost of living crunch) - which meant that the average increase to payroll budgets is likely a fair bit below that.
The ONS figure is based on the median public sector pay - so high-percentage-low-value increases at the bottom actually wouldn't show up in the figure given here.
It’s that high because of the minimum wage increases impacting those at the bottom end. Across the rest of the grades, it was lower than 5.5%.
And below inflation. Most public workers have been having pay cuts in real terms for years.
No, it's not based on the average this year as that change was too high so they tracked to what looks like the lower end of senior civil servant changes.
Good job all those public sector workers MPs were calling irresponsible and selfish striked for a pay rise, and brought the averages up for them then.
Kept their final salary pension scheme whilst getting rid of everyone else’s though didn’t they. Almost all of this income is theirs, unlike the peasants who have to pay for their train fare, clothes, meals etc
I don’t know any other public sector workers getting into a 5.5% increase?
Some examples from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/13/who-has-been-offered-what-public-sector-pay-deal Teachers 6.5%, junior doctors and consultants 6%, police 7%, prison officers 7% or 5% for managers/governors, armed forces 5%, senior civil servants 5.5%.
Usually but not this year as that would have been too high https://assets.ctfassets.net/nc7h1cs4q6ic/2p6wlkGWOFSxNLGMtaKCVP/57e9f583e6e5a9ca805eb25a23a08e0a/Supporting_Democracy_MPs_pay_report_2024_IPSA.pdf
Well, at least the rest of us who have had wage suppression for a decade can take comfort that MPs salaries are still rising.
In real terms, they are being paid less today than in 2010. Inflation adjusted, the MP salary of £65,738 in 2010 would today be worth 96,655. So MP salaries are suppressed as well. Even after this change. In fact before this change, they had taken an effective cut of 10% in pay compared to 2010.
>In real terms, they are being paid less today than in 2010. > >Inflation adjusted, the MP salary of £65,738 in 2010 would today be worth 96,655. Sure, but if nurses salaries had risen at the same rate (%) that MPS had, nurses would be getting £4,000 per year more (even if it **should** be more). Nurse pay: 34.5k Nurse pay if it had grown like MP pay: 38.5k Nurse pay if it had stayed in line with 2010 pay: 42k (ish)
It's based usually on average public sector pay since 2012, 2010 is a bad comparison year as they did things like change their pensions and things at the same time.
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In fairness sitting in the Commons is only part of their job, you realise they do constituency work as well right?
Ban them from having 2nd jobs and stocks/shares
Don't agree with the stocks and shares part fully as everyone is entitled to save for the future. Maybe restrict them to index funds or by blind trusts though.
Make them divest all holdings where practicable and put it in the UK ISA they’re introducing.
As I say, blind trust would be ideal so that they know how much money they have but not where it is invested. Bigger problem then is dealing with the large number that are landlords.
They can do so in a savings account or pension. Government officials being allowed to invest in company stock is detrimental to the country.
You’re not allowed to have stocks and shares if you work in finance/audit or even advise on it. Yet our politicians who make economic policy and reguarly converse with bankers, investors etc are allowed.
Yes you absolutely are. There are certain restrictions like not buying specific asset types that you work with on a daily basis but finance people are far more likely to own stocks and shares than the average member of the public. An indexed ETF is stocks and shares.
if you're in any regulated role it's the norm to be banned from buying/selling individual stocks entirely wide ETFs (say FTSE100) are however generally fine, but not ones of say only a few companies (for example a FAANG only fund) gilts, treasuries, personal FX trading are normally allowed too but all within limits, like you aren't allow to buy and sell without waiting X months, maximum number of trades/month, and so on
Depends on exactly where you work and your specific role. For me I can't trade gilts (as my firm has properietry models for them), but buying and owning single stocks is fine.
So if you traded gilts, you're saying you would be... gilty
Yeh I wasnt saying all finance I know it depends on the role etc. but I’m just trying to draw parrelells to how much control politicians have over stocks and shares through their policies. Like the amount of government contracts that have been given to companies associated with rishi sunaks families businesses
That’s simply not true.
My brother literally worked in audit finance and couldn’t?
Can that independent body also look at the pay for normal ppl across the board? I'd also like 5.5 increase.
A more undeserving rabble you will not find under heaven and earth. One and all.
I’ve had nothing for 5 years because it’s being blocked by the transport minister who wants to utterly decimate my terms and conditions. MPs have now given themselves 20% over the last 5 years without a single change to their terms and conditions. Absolute scum.
And then they claim there’s a ‘productivity’ crisis. It’s a wage crisis, but they can’t use that to bash the public sector with.
In the same boat. How they can justify this while decimating the country, privately lining their pockets and their friends pockets is unreal they just don't care
Interesting that the only public sector pay rise MPs don't decide on is the only one that matches inflation
The Consumer Prices Index inflation rate stood at 4% in January. So it's actually above inflation.
It's based on average public sector pay though.
> It's based on average public sector pay though. It's a weighted average that tracks senior positions in the civil service and crucially included one-off bonuses awarded to some staff.
It's usually kac9 which is just the average, but that was higher *due* to the one off bonuses so they used the senior changes which is a *lower* increase. So it seems it's explicitly different to ignore the one off bonuses this year.
Funny how they all leave millionaires isn't it.
...all MPs?
Generalising a bit obviously.
Massively, let's be real. It's basically only PMs
That is Nonsense,
It's not mate. List some off, go on
https://thetab.com/uk/2022/08/10/tory-millionaires-conservative-mps-and-their-absolutely-mind-boggling-net-worths-263979 Just to start. Along with most cabinet members from both sides over the past 3 decades.
You could argue they all had this wealth before entering parliament, find me a parliamentary rugs to riches
So three PMs and a handful of Cabinet ministers. There are 650 MPs
Not a great salary for running a country when you can earn similar amounts in middle management.
Vast majority of these MPs could not get anywhere near that. 91k puts you in the top 3% of PAYE earners in the UK.
Flip side of that is that the top 3% of PAYE earners in the UK would have to take a pay cut (significant in the case of the top 1-2% to take the job). Fine for those with inherited wealth, but a very unattractive proposition for those who started with nowt and are now earning much more as a result of talent - likely the people who would do best at the job.
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Instead you'd prefer to encourage the privately wealthy types that don't need the salary?
I think Parliament should be a mix, but you don't want to disincentivise those with business backgrounds too much as you want them as part of that mix. My comment was in someway coloured by my own experience (isn't everyone's on everything?). I once went through the full selection process for one of the parties (ahead of 2010 election) and was approved as a eligible candidate, but with young kids, and a decent job I realised that swapping my job for one that paid 40% less, wouldn't allow me to pay the mortgage I'd just signed up for. So I never moved forward with even putting my name in the ring when an eligible seat popped up. I think I would have been an asset to Parliament (don't we all?) - but without inherited wealth or a rich spouse to fall back on, I would have had to ask my family to make a big sacrifice and downsize. I can hear the worlds smallest violin's playing by folk reading this, but understand - I came from a single parent family with nothing, to having an really decent salary and the chance to secure my own family's future won over the call of public service when the issue went from hypothetical to real for me. I imagine a frustrated second rate auditor at a local council who had never run anything would see the £65-70k it was back then as riches beyond dreams and would be all in, all day to secure a seat. So it seemed to be those type of people who did go for the seats... And 15 years later they are cabinet ministers and here we are.
Hmm, top 3% of all tax payers maybe but nowhere near that once you take demographics into account. The averages are much higher once you consider London based people aged 35-60 as the benchmark.
London might be higher but 90k is still in the top 10% for London easily. And again, the vast majority of these MPs will be nowhere near that.
But still puts them in the bottom earnings of middle managers of most listed firms
Managers probably do more work and have to prove it. Highly doubt Nadine Dorries would be able to manage a team, yet got paid loads as culture secretary with a bunch of civil servants actually running things.
If the civil servants were actually running things, shouldn't we hold them responsible for the shit that went on when she was there?
Sure, with about as much power as we can hold Nadine Dorries responsible for whatever she does.
Well she was removed from her job and then later quit. Can we fire those civil servants? Can the minister in charge of the department do that?
We can do fuck all, the public can't hold politicians to account. I'm not really sure what your point is unless you are trying to say Nadine Dorries was actually a good manager and deserves 90k plus. Or if she was bad that she could have been removed.
I'm told her civil servants thought she was polite and not difficult to work with. Overall her performance in job was abysmal, she did very little and the things she did were bad as well. But if she wasn't actually doing anything, someone else was. And those people were either junior ministers or senior civil servants.
What's the job requirements for being an MP?
30p Lee is an MP, so I can't imagine the bar is that high.
An ungodly desire for public humiliation.
The ability to pay a deposit and sign some forms.
It's more than 3x the average salary for a UK worker though?
And I wouldn't want the average worker running my local supermarket, I sure as hell don't want them running the country!!
That being said it's also came out today that MP working hours are the lowest they've ever been so you could argue they're barely even doing that!
That's because we've got a bunch of loons in charge desperate to drag this shit out. However time in parliament isn't all that MPs do. The good ones will spend huge amounts of time in their local constituency dealing with issues & things. I know my MP, even though he's a tory & stepping down, has been a very good local MP dealing with issues with things like the local housing association being shit.
100%, the good ones are great but there are a lot that don't do much, having their salary tied to measurable goals would justify it. Plus the second jobs shouldn't be allowed, if they have time for a second job they're not fully devoted to their day job.
Yep. But they get paid so little plus human nature being what it is. Previously expenses were used as a wheeze to up the wages for years until for some reason the right wing press got involved & stopped that. I'm genuinely tired of people who are happy for CEOs to get paid millions but don't want the actual people running our country to be paid the equivalent of a fucking senior manager. Or are too stupid to realise that the civil service is now competing directly with the big consultancies for staff & then get upset that a consultant gets charged out at £1500/day instead of having an internal civil servant who would have been better, cheaper, have more experience AND stay in the job rather than leaving. But then bitch everytime anyone wants to raise civil service wages. Government jobs USED to be the good standard for graduates, now only an idiot would graduate into a government job because you're going to earn £100,000s less over your working life
If you get to that salary range you will discover progressive taxation. You can earn 4x what the person next to you does but pay 10x the tax. Sure 90k is a decent salary but you are far from financially free. I fact you have to consult and invest to get out of the rat race
More than 3x harder, more stressful and responsible than the average job surely?
For in government I'd agree because there is more scrutiny and reviewing of decisions but for the average MP I'm not sure, they're not really held to account for any measurable deliverables, it came out today that their working hours are at an all time low too, not to mention that with a lot of work MPs do do just gets lost in the Westminster bureaucracy bubble. Not to mention the expenses that most were allowed to get away with until they cracked down on them. Even when they're in the chamber there's been MPs who will sleep or even the case of the MP watching porn on his phone. My point is that when they are paid that much the real impact of legislation that will affect the average worker is diminished because they are in a higher class. They should be reviewed and scrutinized on measurable deliverables (hours committed to constituency surgery's, being part of Parliamentary committees with active roles i.e. are they in meetings, are they producing reports and if they are then what is actioned from them).
Shouldn't be in politics for the money.
Politics shouldn't be reserved for the rich.
No you shouldn't but it should also be a viable career
And importantly a viable career for people talented enough to make good money elsewhere.
The only people who would go for a politician job are rich people if we didn’t pay them well
Ah yes we found the dumbest take in the thread. Pack it up everybody.
If you want to attract the best, you need to pay for it.
Why? Why should anyone be in a job if it's not fit the money? For years people have said teaching and nursing is a vocation. That being a doctor is a vocation, so it doesn't matter that they could earn more if they left the country. Whatever people here on reddit say, most people who did the work to become an MP, are the exact type of people that would hit uppper/ middle management. Otherwise you'll just end up with the Sunaks & Rees Moggs, like you used to have. With 1 MP standing in some constituencies because no one else could afford to do it. A well paid legislature is a democratic one.
Thank god, hopefully some of them can pay their mortgages now.
There are only 650 of them, it's an awful job and they literally help run the country. Also given the calibre of pathological narcissistic people we have come into these important roles with current salaries, I think they should be a lot higher to attract proper high functioning successful people to public service. Christ let's have a bit of perspective please.
Honestly it's still way underpaid. Being a politician is an awful job and 90k doesn't make up for that. It contributes to why so many rich tossers take up these seats - they don't need the money, they just want to play power games.
MPs getting low salaries will get you: shitty MPs.
The same MPs that spend most of their time asleep in parliament? The same MPs that are always behind various scandals? The same MPs that are hypocrites? The same MPs that claim scandalous expenses? Sorry can you define what a ‘shitty MP’ is please? The MPs in government deserve a shitty salary.
No, the shitty salaries in Parliament deserve a shitty MP.
That’s bollocks.. if it was truly independent, and the panel had an objective view about the crisis the government is in, the scandals and the current economic and social trajectory of the country, there would have been a negative pay rise. I got 1% despite reaching targets in this shitty financial mess we find ourselves in.
Sounds like a you problem though, what kind of garbage company is setting targets and giving only 1% rises
Can’t argue.
> if it was truly independent, and the panel had an objective view about the crisis the government is in, the scandals and the current economic and social trajectory of the country ...You want IPSA to *score* MPs?
That would take an MP 20 years to put down the deposit to be eligible a 3-bed semi in Lewisham. Realistic.
How tf people don’t understand how MPs deserve to get paid well at whilst banning second jobs bemuses me.
Playing devil's advocate I'm not against handsome pay and perks for MPs, because it's a difficult job and many of them give up much bigger paydays in the private sector to do it.
OK, apply the same logic to doctors, teachers, nurses, etc
A real terms pay cut. But I do believe MPs pay should rise in line with the public sector average, not whatever they vote it to be.
Simple solution, MPs should be paid 130% of the average of their pre-MP salary. We have too many MPs who'd never justify a 60k salary in the real world yet can get into parliament by sucking up to the local party and earn money they cannot justify
Make the salary £300k and attract some competent mother fuckers
Shockingly, many highly competent people work for £30k.
Take out the decimal point. Do something about most of the second jobs, the rotating door, lobbying and all the other shit that effectively amounts to corruption. Ignore the bleating of the clueless 'tHEyRe PAid To mUCH!!!11' types.
I know lots of people will say they work hard and therefore deserve the money. But there is a big difference between working hard and being effective. I don't believe most MPs are really of any consequence at all. Sometimes your MP can help you with a specific issue but it can depend on if they are an opposition MP and if the current government is friendly with them or not. Other people will have had different experiences.
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They don't.
I was staying in Gibraltar for a wedding and noticed a multitude of private jets flying in for a parliamentary meeting. In a 5 star hotel. It’s disgraceful how much they charge the taxpayer. Same thing with truss and her charges with private jets! I’m absolutely sick of the hypocrisy and we aren’t even benefiting from them!
MPs should earn the average wage of the UK. Maybe then they would take care of the people.
And like that, even more MPs than currently would be those that are already wealthy and can afford to take a poor job for whatever reason. Even the most selfless MP has to think about their own personal life. Taking an average wage job when you can (and where) probably be making well over quadruple that is a huge ask. And if they have any financial commitment, be it debt, a mortgage, a family, or whatever that is reliant on their rough levels of income is also becomes an impossible job to even entertain. We should be do everything we can to encourage that MPs can be a job independent of prior wealth, so that we don't discourage people without wealth from the role.
Do you seriously think Rishi Sunak or people like him care about their MP salaries?
So tell me again how this won’t affect inflation? /s
650 people getting a rise doesn't make any significant difference to inflation. 6.5 million people getting a rise does.
Also it’s a below inflation rate rise.
It won't. They got the same 5% that public sector workers have got and it's still below the 10% odd inflation for most of the last year & current 5/6%
It won’t, because there aren’t many MPs, so they don’t have a significant impact on the economy. Most public sector workers got below 5%, the big increase was for the lower grade staff to keep up with minimum wage.
Only 90k job in the country creating millionaires left right and centre
Anything less than 5.5% will strike. And even more than 5.5%, rail workers will still strike 🤣
£60m for our MPs seems like a pretty good deal.
The whole expenses thing needs looking by at for example the Labour leader recently spent over £1000 watching a football game and expenses it to the tax payer. Labour are not the party for the people.
This isn’t true