Pay Rise for MP's (£65,000)

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

worldtraveller wrote: »

Do they? If they do, part of it will be taxable as a benefit. At 57p it's 17p per mile more than Joe Public can claim per mile from HMRC before being taxed as a benefit. Also, for Joe Public the 40p allowance only covers the first 10,000 miles, whereas the MPs get their 57p on the first 20,000 miles.

And at the second tier, they are losing money every mile they drive.....

Our company used to be 40p, and are now 45p, but then fuel used to be £1.00 a litre, and it's now costing me £1.15 in some places. I don't claim the allowance, I take the company car and fuel card instead. My wife takes the allowance and a personal car. We lose money doing it that way though.

Other items you personally class as insignificant, all add up of course.

Again, the vast majority of those "allowances" are actually just a cap on what they can spend on behalf of the employer. It's not personal income for them. And to try and portray it as such is misleading.

Far better to just pay them 100K or so a year, GP or Solicitor wages, and let the commons provide everything they need to do the job and pay for it directly. Offices, secretaries, cars, fuel cards, travel tickets, rented and furnished second house, etc.

End the allowances, end the abuse, pay them fairly.

Problem solved.

chucky

i have no problem with MP's getting a pay rise - they do a great job.

i don't think that a 1.5% increase is enough

markharding557

mp's should be paid a lot more but given much less in expenses and they should be made to sit in parliament for a minimum set number of hours like anyone else who works.
Seems absurd that there are council managers on double the pm's salary.

tomterm8

CLAPTON wrote: »

truely so

but check up on whether they have any substantial experience of running any real business .

Why would anyone with experience of running any successful business even consider being an MP? You can make a lot more money running a real business, with a lot less daily mail craptitude to go through.

CLAPTON

tomterm8 wrote: »

Why would anyone with experience of running any successful business even consider being an MP? You can make a lot more money running a real business, with a lot less daily mail craptitude to go through.

quite, my point really

JasonLVC

worldtraveller wrote: »

It's not just the salary though! It's the allowances and gold plated pension that they they receive for miniscule contributions. They have to pay a miserly 10% of their salary into their pension fund, which subsequently pays out a guaranteed 2/3rds of final salary at retirement, index linked for the rest of their lives.

To purchase a MP's pension in the current annuity market would cost over £1 million each.

What's more last year alone the taxpayer had to stump up another extra £800,000 to subsidise part of the £50 million+ deficit in their pension fund. Contributions to MPs' pensions from the public purse went up from 26.8% to 28.7% last year to cover an increase in the fund's deficit. The defecit has nearly doubled in just 3 years from around £25 million to the current £50 million+.

MPs are also entitled to a number of individual allowances. These include:

A Communications Allowance of £10,000 per annum.

An Additional Cost Allowance of up to £20,902 per annum for those with constituencies outside London, for the cost of maintaining a second home.

A London Supplement Allowance of £1,618 for those with constituencies in London.

Free travel to and from the Houses of Parliament and on Parliamentary business, as well as a Motor Mileage Allowance of up to 20,000 miles per annum at 57.7p per mile, and for mileage above 20,000 miles at 26.6p per mile. Ministers may claim on the same terms if they use their private cars for Ministerial business, but are usually provided with an official car.

A Bicycle Allowance of 20p per mile and a Motorcycle Allowance of 24p per mile in respect of journeys undertaken by bicycle while on Parliamentary duties in the UK.

Free travel for spouses and children aged under 18 for up to 15 journeys per calendar year between Westminster and the MP's registered home or constituency.

Office and Secretarial Allowances of up to £77,534 per annum for London MPs, and £66,458 per annum for non-London MPs (although this can be up to £77,534 in respect of full-time London-based staff), exclusive of pension contributions.

An Incidental Expenses Provision of £19,325 per annum to meet other expenditure which Members may incur wholly necessarily and exclusively in performing their Parliamentary duties.

Yeah, but apart from that, £65k isn't nearly enough is it .

JasonLVC

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Again, the vast majority of those "allowances" are actually just a cap on what they can spend on behalf of the employer. It's not personal income for them. And to try and portray it as such is misleading.

In fairness Hamish, there aren't many MP's that don't spend that capped allowance in full by employing their wives/off-spring....and so whilst Mr MP doesn't get to earn that £70k office allowance, he is in effect diverting it to his wife (with her own tax free allowance) for which she gets paid £25k or so for licking some envelopes and so in effect is additional money into the household (and we'll have to take a big leap of faith to assume wifey would have got a better paying job for 2 days a week in the real world;)) - there were many MP's who even employed their teenage kids on £20k 'research grants'.

Spartacus_Mills

chucky wrote: »

i have no problem with MP's getting a pay rise - they do a great job.

i don't think that a 1.5% increase is enough

There's two issues here.

The pay rise issue is one I agree with the Unions and others on who say in the current climate they should not get a pay rise. If they are preaching austerity then they need to practise it.

OTOH are MP's salaries enough. Personally I think given what they do the salary should be nearer to £100,000 a year.

chucky

Spartacus_Mills wrote: »

There's two issues here.

The pay rise issue is one I agree with the Unions and others on who say in the current climate they should not get a pay rise. If they are preaching austerity then they need to practise it.

OTOH are MP's salaries enough. Personally I think given what they do the salary should be nearer to £100,000 a year.

i agree with you on both points - the question that comes from this is who do you judge an MP's performance over a calender year?

sitting in parliament is fine but i could turn up to work each day and just sit here. does that mean i should be entitled to my full salary when the guy next to me (which he probably does) is contributing more to the business?

kabayiri

CLAPTON wrote: »

quite, my point really

You know, I've changed my mind. I agree.

I don't think the level of salary is such an issue.

But I do think they have managed the perception pretty badly, which is the point I was alluding to.

I wouldn't complain if every MP got a great bonus at the end of the next term of office if they manage to get a handle on the debt problem, and work together to come up with constructive changes.

Bickering between the parties won't get us anywhere.