Eric Pickles gave an excellent performance on the BBC's Question Time yesterday, but I disagree with him on one point. He said he found it degrading as an MP to vote on his own salary, that such a decision must be taken by someone other than MPs in future.
Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes made a similar point in last week's programme in relation to police pay. As an essential emergency service, police cannot strike for higher wages, so why not have an independent arbitrator decide what their salary should be, with the government obliged to follow its recommendations?
The appeal of this thinking is obvious in both cases: how can the government, as the party that must fund police salaries from its budget, be expected to make the correct decision, impartially? How can MPs be trusted to set their own salaries in the national interest?
But the benefit of having elected politicians make these decisions is even more compelling: if we don't like what they decide, we can vote them out. If Hughes and Pickles have their way, who can someone vote for, if he believes MPs are paid too much, or the police paid too little?
Taking decisions out of politicians' hands and making independent bodies responsible for them is no guarantee of good decision-making, but it does guarantee that bad decisions cannot be punished by the electorate. Appointing commissions and committees to take difficult decisions does not remove people's anger at the content of the decisions taken - it merely removes their ability to bring a change of direction.
Where decisions genuinely cannot be left to individuals and must be taken by officials, I'd much prefer they be left in the hands of people who can be removed by voters, with all the political judgements and prejudices they bring to the table, than by 'impartial' and 'independent' experts whose decisions and directions I can do nothing about.
