So the Senior Salary Review Board (SSRB) in its independent-minded wisdom has declared that MPs’ salaries should rise by 2.33% for the year commencing tomorrow.
Predictably the Prime Minister in typical grandstanding form announces that he and his ministers will not take the increase. Politically – not least in these recessionary times – David Cameron has no choice but to follow suit.
But I must confess I am left a little uneasy by all this.
For at the very heart of the problem over allowances and expenses is the fact that repeatedly parliament has failed to bite the bullet and increase MPs’ salaries. Thereby a green light has been given to the culture of racking up the expenses and allowances system as a way of playing catch up, for salary foregone.
I would rather that the Prime Minister had expended less energy in trying to make populist gestures at this time and more in dealing urgently with a pathetically inadequate allowances regime which threatens to engulf the public reputation of parliament.
After all the whole idea of the SSRB is for parliament to receive – and act upon – a genuinely independent view on parliamentary pay and conditions. There is little point in MPs and the general public paying lip-service to the notion that parliament should have no say in setting its own remuneration when we promptly ignore the recommendations of the body set up to do precisely that.
If it had recommended that MPs take a one per cent pay cut, I should have been a little disappointed, but would have accepted the decision. Similarly an independent recommendation to pay an additional 2.33% especially at such time when we desperately need to wean MPs off their allowances addiction, should be accepted without question.
In short parliament – and the general public - should accept the recommendation of the SSRB in rain or shine.
