MP's Pay

There is a lot of flapping around going on in the media on the subject of MP’s pay, they do not seem to think that £65,738 is enough, but let’s face it, who does think their own salary is enough so I don’t blame them for that. The question to my mind is how much should they be paid and I do not think a one size fits all is the way to go; we need an element of performance related pay to reflect how hard they work and if they are doing a good job. So how about a basic salary and bonus system which is what many in the private sector are used to. This leads to two questions firstly what should be the basic and secondly how should the bonus be calculated. The first part is the easiest to deal with, set the basic pay in line with the average pay in the constituency. There is so much statistical data held these days that this should not be beyond the powers that be to work out. I know that means an MP in leafy Surrey would drag in more than an MP for a collection of slums in the North, but nobody would argue that they don’t face widely different living costs. At a guess this would probably put most of the Honourable Members on a basic wage of between £20,000 and £30,000 per annum. Not a huge amount but a lot more than many and roughly in line with what most of us have to get by on and perfectly capable of sustaining life. The second part of their remuneration would be by way of an annual bonus and this should reflect the performance over the previous year. The tricky part is how should this be assessed. Firstly I don’t think this should be capped, if an MP is worth a million pound bonus then let them be paid that. Conversely if an MP is not deemed to be worth the basic then I have no problem with a negative bonus being awarded to be clawed back from next year’s wages. So how do we go about setting this bonus, this is the tricky bit. I would start by the MP making a public submission to their constituents detailing what they think their individual bonus should be and why. They may wish to highlight how busy they are on behalf of constituents, how often they attend the House, how many divisions they take part in, their contributions to debates and so on, in fact they should have a pretty open book to convince us they are worth the total package they ask for. Again given the wealth of information held they can easily be benchmarked against their fellow Members. In response constituents can give their feedback and recommend a larger or smaller bonus and the reasons why. I would suggest they are marked against the following, or at least they are factored in. 1. Attendance 2. Voting 3. Speaking in debates 4. Committee time 5. Campaigning (non-party related) 6. Surgery hours 7. Success rate on dealing with constituents issues 8. Response rates to constituency enquiries 9. Staff costs The most effective and hardest working MPs would be rewarded accordingly, whilst those who cannot be bothered to attend or speak may similarly see their pay cut.