Bruised by scandals, British MPs want to reject pay hike, but can't

Not many people turn down a raise; even fewer denounce the very idea. But leading British lawmakers, burdened by their reputation for money-grabbing, are fighting this week for the right to reject higher pay.

A plan announced by an independent body last week to increase the salaries of members of Parliament by about 11 per cent provoked bitter complaints here, most notably in Parliament itself, where the leaders of the two largest political parties competed to register their outrage.

Lawmakers took a public battering in 2009 over a padded-expenses scandal, when a variety of dubious claims on the public purse were exposed, including one for a floating duck house at a politician’s home. Four former members of the House of Commons were jailed, a fifth was spared prison for reasons of mental health and a sixth is due to be sentenced soon. Two members of the House of Lords have also been jailed.

In the aftermath of the 2009 scandal, Parliament created the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and gave it the job of setting the rules for lawmakers’ pay and expenses, insulated from political influence. On Thursday last, the panel said that the base salary for a member of the Commons, now 66,396 pounds ($108,400), should rise to £67,060 next year and then £74,000 ($120,800) after the next general election in 2015.

Coming at a time when many Britons are still struggling to make ends meet after a long recession, the planned pay raise is an embarrassment both to the Conservative-led coalition government, which features a number of millionaires among its senior leaders, and to the Labour opposition, which wants to highlight the cost-of-living pressures facing ordinary Britons.

The trouble is that they have no say about it, at least under current law. When they created the independent authority, lawmakers surrendered the power to vote on the issue, leaving them facing the awkward prospect of being forced to accept a raise.

Prime Minister David Cameron attacked the plan even before it was announced. Cameron said it would be “wrong” for lawmakers to get a big raise at a time when the government is trying to restrain pay for other public servants, and he called for an “outcome that can build public confidence,” a comment that was taken as a veiled threat to the future of the independent authority.

Higher salaries

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, also opposed the raise, and said that the three main parties must “get together to deal with this.” The chairman of the authority, Ian Kennedy, a prominent lawyer, defended the raises as appropriate and necessary. He laid out his case in an article in the Times of London. “Whatever measure you choose -- including international comparisons and historic trends --they all lead to the same conclusion,” he wrote, “MPs’ pay has fallen behind. It needs to catch up.” He said that changes to the lawmakers’ allowances and pensions would offset the cost of higher salaries.

“I know that there is a tension between the reasoning and the politics,” he added. “But we were asked to fix the problem for a generation, not for a news cycle.” In a report earlier this year, the authority said that British legislators earn less than their counterparts in countries like the US, Germany, Ireland and Italy, though they do out-earn French and Spanish lawmakers.

The politics of pay raises appeared to contribute to the 2009 scandal to begin with. Lawmakers complained privately that their salaries had not kept up with those of lawyers and other professionals in the private sector, but rather than risk public opprobrium by voting for an increase, some politicians tried to make up the difference by gaming the expense system.

One lawmaker who supports the independent authority’s plan to raise salaries now is Jack Straw, a Labour politician and former foreign secretary. “What I’m concerned about is to ensure that the pay is sufficient to attract people from modest backgrounds who have not inherited a house, who don’t have family or personal income, but who are going to make a career out of politics,” he told the BBC.

Some academics are sceptical, though. Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said that when Britain first introduced salaries for lawmakers in 1911, the idea was to make it possible for working people of modest means to sit in Parliament, and not just the wealthy. He said the current salary was easily enough to achieve that, in a country where the median income for full-time employees is about £27,000 ($44,100).

“There does not seem to be a shortage of candidates coming forward for winnable seats,” he said. “We have no proof that people go into politics because of money. If anything, the proof is on the other side: they go because they think — rightly or wrongly — that their ideas can change the country.”