TB has another exam tomorrow so he thought he would throw open the floor for a guest post. Stuart MacLennan is Labour's Parliamentary Candidate for
Moray
and here he offers some thoughts on the expenses farce:There can be little doubting the public outrage over the issue of
MPs expenses. Recently I’
ve been campaigning extensively for the forthcoming Euro elections it’s quite clear that it’s the only issue anyone wants to talk about.
MPs now find themselves in a quandary as to how to go about reforming expenses and have so far struggled to reach a consensus. But this surely cannot be a purely British dilemma? The following table contains a brief breakdown of how other comparable national legislatures deal with the issue of expenses:
US CONGRESS:Representatives and Senators receive an annual salary of $174,000 (approx. £140,000).
Travel expenses calculated by a set formula.
Federal Income Tax allowance of up to $3000 for living expenses.
FRENCH NATIONAL ASSEMBLY:Annual salary of €62,160 (approx. £55,000).
FREE first class rail travel anywhere in the country.
40 return flights per year between Paris and their Constituencies.
€69,480 (approx. £62,000) for living expenses, additional travel and entertainment.
Low-interest housing loans.
GERMAN BUNDESTAG:Annual salary of €88068 (approx. £80,000)
€45,384 (approx.£40,000) for travel and living expenses.
By now I should imagine that anyone reading this blog is more than familiar with how things work in Westminster so I have omitted them from the table
brevitatis causa. While I have included travel expenses they
aren’t the central focus of the debate at hand and are worthy of a mere passing mention. Office and staffing allowances are largely irrelevant to this debate and I have therefore omitted them entirely.
The Americans, never ones for complexity, have gone for the very simple strategy of paying their Congressmen more. The income tax allowance
doesn’t come remotely close to covering the cost of a second home in or around D.C., and certainly not hotel accommodation (The Senate typically sits between 100 and 150 days per year which is just slightly below the 165 days the Commons sat last year). With no expenses for second homes it’s little wonder that Joe
Biden spent 36 years commuting over two hours back to Delaware and pocketing the cash.
On the face of it the French seem somewhat more frugal with their Deputies receiving a salary in the region of £10k less that our
MPs. However when you consider that all the travel they could ever possibly manage is provided gratis the £62,000 living allowance makes for one heck of a lavish lifestyle (perhaps most of it disappears under the heading ‘entertainment’?) This allowance seems all the more generous when coupled with the extremely low-interest loans that are on offer for Deputies to buy second homes.
German
MPs, being every bit as
un-nuanced as the Americans, have a fairly simple system of allowances, with travel and living expenses being lumped together in a package more modest than their French counterparts but they make up for it with their more generous salaries.
When compared with the United Kingdom it could in fact be argued that our
MPs are comparatively hard done by. The Additional Costs Allowance of £24,000 seems a mere pittance when compared with the French allowance of £62,000.
So why is it that we in Britain are so outraged when by international standards our
MPs aren’t anything like as well compensated by their foreign counterparts? Why is it that we seem more outraged by Jacqui Smith’s claim for a bath-plug than Oliver
Letwin’s tennis court? I would suggest that the answer to this is in the way that this whole row has been handled rather than the claims themselves.
MPs went to the highest court in the land to prevent these claims from being published, which undoubtedly led us all to believe that what lies beneath mush be truly scandalous. Perhaps if
MPs had more readily complied with the Freedom of Information laws they themselves passed then the public may have proved somewhat more forgiving.
It is also unfortunate too that the information was leaked to the Telegraph for a reportedly exorbitant sum ahead of the official release, allowing the Telegraph to cherry pick the most scandalous elements without allowing the rest of us to consider these claims in their proper context. Were we, the public, permitted access to this information then we may well have concluded that the vast majority of
MPs are, in fact, not ‘on the take’ – with Alan Johnson’s exceptionally modest claims being one of the few good examples we have seen so far.
I’m not going to defend
MPs like David
Miliband and Alan Duncan who attempted to put a somewhat liberal interpretation on the rules. However sunshine is said to be the best disinfectant, and if party leaders
aren’t shamed into removing the very worst offenders from their jobs then the electorate may soon do it for them.
Stuart blogs at Hackwatch
. If you would like to write a guest post for torybear.com please do get in touch with TB.
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