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Pay us more, says David Maclean MP, because we take life and death decisions

"I refer to page 17 of volume 2 of the original Senior Salaries Review Body report, which Sir John Baker chaired.  He compared our salary to that of a head teacher. Our salary was £60,000 and the head teacher was on £71,000. The police superintendent was on £68,000. The senior civil servant, grade 1, was on £69,000. The county council second tier person was on £72,000. The colonel was on £69,000, as was the health human resources director and similar. The comparators in the SSRB report put those people way ahead of us.  There is therefore no doubt that we have fallen considerably behind those whom the SSRB considered our comparators. And, of course, none of those people—except a colonel in Afghanistan—is working long hours. Most of them are not doing 70 or 80 hours a week. Apart from those on the very front-line who are making tactical decisions involving life or death, most of them do not have the responsibility that we have of voting on issues that do include life or death, whether it be embryos, abortion, 42 days or whatever. We have a responsibility to make mega-decisions. For that, we get the pay of a second tier officer in a district council. I look forward to replacing my district planning officer, if the motion is not passed today."

MORE IN HANSARD.

Contributions from Conservative MPs to the debate on their pay

THERESA MAY MP, Shadow Leader of the House: "I want to comment on why the issue of whether MPs vote on their pay has resonated so much with the public, and sadly, it is because many voters no longer trust politicians. They have a jaundiced view of politicians and are consistently given the view by the media that all MPs have their snouts in the trough. That is a disappointing representation on the part of the media because it damages this House, politics and our parliamentary democracy if people feel that they are not able to trust politicians. There are, of course, other ways in which trust in politicians is damaged, such as Governments not delivering on their promises, and other factors, but we should be concerned about the image of MPs portrayed by the media... The way in which MPs pay is reported in the press is an important issue. We consistently see the misreporting of the amounts of money that MPs “earn” in this House by the addition to our basic salaries of the budgets that we have to pay for our staff and in order to run our offices. Indeed, only last week The Daily Telegraph set out a table that included average staff salaries and average expenditure on offices alongside average travel expenses and the average additional costs allowance, under the heading “MPs’ Gravy Train”."

NICHOLAS WINTERTON MP: "Including time spent travelling to and from my constituency, I estimate that I spend an average of 85 hours per week on parliamentary and constituency work when the House is sitting. That is more than twice the normal working week in this country."

MARK FIELD MP: "Even if one of those independent mechanisms were properly implemented and all the concerns raised in this debate were addressed, the issue would still become a media hue and cry. Therefore, it is for us, as Members of Parliament, simply to bite the bullet and to drive forward the right sort of pay package, given that we believe in the idea of a sovereign Parliament."

DAVID MACLEAN MP: "Our work load is increasing all the time, but our hours have stayed fairly static, at 60, 70 or 80 a week. I could reduce my work load. I could, on Armistice Sunday, refuse to go to the service in Carlisle in the morning and the one in Penrith in the afternoon. I could refuse to do Saturday surgeries, and could refuse to go to council meetings on a Friday night. We could reduce our time commitment to 40 hours a week, but would that be the responsible, sensible thing to do? Would it be serving our constituents if we refused to do all the things that we have to do that take us 80 hours a week when the House is sitting and 60 hours a week when it is not?"

JOHN MAPLES MP: "A fair amount of remarks have been made about the erosion in our pay, and I do not need to reiterate those. Had the mechanism that we had agreed been followed, however, we would now be paid between £65,000 and £66,000 a year. Were we to continue to allow the erosion of our pay relative to other people, or to the public sector, that problem would sooner or later get so bad that it would have an effect on the sort of people who get into this place. If we want to fill it with people who are either fanatics or rich, that is the way to go, but it is not sensible. There are people who would do the job for nothing—I would be happy to present “Newsnight” for nothing—but whether they are the right people is a different question. It is not the right way of qualifying for a job. We certainly do not want to fill the place up, as we did until about 100 years ago, with people who have significant other sources of income."

and... "If we let the editorial writers of the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph set our pay, we are done for."

The decision over pay did not even go to a formal vote in the end with MPs agreeing to a sub-inflation pay rise (BBC).