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The problem with Gordon Brown is simply that he just doesn’t grasp the significance of events as they develop and consequently, he is far too slow to take positive action. I suppose if I was being unkind, because Labour is so used to making “policy announcements” over the years and likely only 25% of which turned into some kind of action, talk rather than action is all to him.

The fuss about MP’s expenses and allowances in one sense, is not that important of itself. At times such as these, people will pick on most things where “people in power” seem rather cavalier with public money however, not dealing with the situation decisively, can only make matters worse. David Cameron’s words today were right, “Let us meet and sort it out, we don’t need to wait on this one…” Well something along those lines, let’s face it, it isn’t rocket science…

The Basic Problem

At the heart of this lies a signal failure by both Conservative and Labour Governments over the years to properly define the duties of an MP and therefore pay them appropriately. There have always been “some difficulties and never the right time” in being seen to pay MPs appropriately.

What has happened from this is “back door” ways of improving the financial circumstances of MPs through paying for secretarial help, constituency offices, housing allowances plus a range of other expenses like the infamous John Lewis List. By having various allowances which all are urged to claim as of right rather than need the consequence is that many MPs do indeed see these things as part and parcel of their earnings.

Gordon Brown today talking about ending the “Additional Allowance” and replacing it with a flat fixed fee clearly doesn’t see that this is a time for boldness, not tinkering.

Turning it Around

There is a very simple way of paying MPs properly and at the same time keeping the majority of the public “on-side” – it is called honesty.

• The first element is to ignore what MPs currently get paid and for what, it is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is WHAT THEY COST US pure and simple.
• The next thing is WHAT DO THEY DO, and WHAT DO WE EXPECT THEM TO DO ? In simple terms and as 80% of Laws come from Brussels, are signed off and never reach the floor of the House, what do these people actually do ? They are only in the chamber for PMQs, apart from that all that can be seen is acres of green leather.
• We are massively over governed and there should be a commitment right across the House to streamline representation and especially the duplication in the various Celtic assemblies, if it means moving to a Federal System for governance in the UK, let us look at it.
• But even regardless of that, 646 Members of the House of Commons is far too much, there is absolutely no reason why we cannot have a binding commitment by all parties NOW, to reduce the numbers to 500 or less by the end of the next Parliament.

We Need to Establish Cost Reductions

Before we can consider paying them anything more, we need to see some “productivity gains” which in terms of reducing them to 500, there will be the costs of some 150 MPs which could be redistributed to the survivors which would be a substantial uplift for each without further cost to the taxpayer. Of course their current pension scheme needs to be wound up immediately, it goes without saying.

If we looked at our membership of the EU and renegotiated that to trade only, we can save ourselves lots of dosh plus, give the Dears something to occupy their time by drafting laws and stop just being lobby cannon fodder.

So the Good News is…

With just a little effort, MPs could likely be paid £200,000 pa as salary but at no additional costs to the taxpayer, they just have to “eat” some of their colleagues to make the cost savings.

Alternatively as they have made Westminster a EU Town Hall then the extreme option is to make 80% totally redundant and reduce the House to say 130 MPs and pay them a gross fee of £1,000,000 each pa. On the basis of them being self employed, no other allowances would be given plus, they would have to provide their own money purchase pension scheme and argue with the Revenue on who they employed.

Now this might seem generous and it is but today a conservative estimate of what an MP costs us is £300,000pa + their pensions so that means x640 = £192,000,000 so as x130 = £130,000,000, we are already making a saving of £62,000,000 a year by going down that route which would be very short term as Brussels will likely take over completely in a decade and the other 130 can bugger off too.

Given the natural nasty nature of the majority of politicians, if we can get some traction on this concept, we would see savings coming in pretty quickly and the Palace of Westminster will look like the Forum in Rome on the Ides of March !