Well, hats off to Gordon Brown and the cabinet. I have rarely, if ever, had the opportunity to praise Gordon Brown or this government, but credit where credit is due, they have dealt with the appalling abuse of MP’s allowances with sang-froid. Of course this proposal must be voted on my members of parliament and you can rest assured that there will be pressure on MP’s of all sides to vote this through, perhaps as early as next week.
Second home allowances will be abolished and replaced with an ‘attendance allowance’, this will do away with claims for anything from mortgage interest through to new kitchens and bathroom plugs! No announcement has been made in relation to the amount of the attendance allowance, but the public will very quickly react negatively if this proves too generous, or the conditions too loose.
Whoever sets the allowance must be cognisant of the fact that MP’s are already paid to attend parliament, therefore the allowance must not be based on, for example, the remuneration paid to a non-executive director attending board meetings. The attendance allowance will only be payable to those with constituencies outside London, although it is not known what the boundaries will be and shall only be claimable during the parliamentary session. Those with ‘grace and favour’ homes will not be entitled to claim for the attendance allowance, this however, should never have been the case anyway.
It is proposed that MP’s will have to provide receipts for all expenditure, including expenses below the current threshold of £25. This will, of course, bring MP’s in line with common business practice. No longer will the public accept that MP’s can be considered ‘honourable’ in such matters, MP’s must be dealt with in exactly the same manner as everyone else, they are not a special case. There is also a suggestion that MP’s should contribute more for their pensions, I, however, believe that an additional contribution of £60 per month is small beer, when you consider that their two-thirds final salary scheme is one of the most generous in the country and not available to the masses as a direct result of Gordon Browns raid on private sector pension schemes 11 years ago and in each successive year.
MP’s will also have to declare all of their income earned outside parliament as well as providing a record of how many hours they spend working for these businesses. This is quite sensible, but I hope they will also include strict rules. After all, MP’s are already paid to complete a full-time job, therefore I would expect a big question mark over where they would find the spare time to fit in these extra jobs.
All in all, if this gets accepted and quickly, then I would be the first to congratulate Gordon Brown and the cabinet. However, Mr Brown must be very careful not to use his usual ’smoke and mirrors’ trick to dupe the public, nor must the replacement allowances be too generous, because the intention is to remove unjustifiable allowances, not simply replace them with something else. We shall be watching!
April 28th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Looks like some of it has fallen flat on its face; but to be honest, I still wouldnt trust Brown NOT to use smoke and mirrors. They’ve all been used to the extra perks for too long.
April 28th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
@ CD: I suspect you are right regarding the smoke and mirrors. I cautioned in my posting about the allowances being too generous and I suspect this would have been the case. The issue of being paid to turn up to work, when they already receive a salary is a fair point and it was, originally, lost on me.
May 3rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
This only scratches the surface, they need to do more, but they will not. This is designed to diffuse the coming scandal when MP’s receipts are published. There will be a massive fall out, you mark my words.
May 11th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Hold on! Surely the the MP’s who have used there allowances for purposes other than that needed to do their job, is fraud and should be dealt with accordingly! I am absolutely fed up of this softly softly approach were they can riddle out with just an apology and a “we shall try to do better” We a dealing with MPs who have been caught with their hand in the till!
May 11th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
@ Jeremy Weston: You certainly will not find me defending ANY MP that is guilty of any form of fraud or deception against the taxpayers of this country. As you will note, Gordon Brown’s attempt to get anything useful through parliament was a failure anyway, so what’s new there then?
Anyway, given the recent revelations about what I consider to be an abuse of the expense and allowance scheme operated by our MP’s, I have posted on this very subject, calling for an investigation and where necessary, prosecution. They are supposed to have our trust, if they have abused it, they deserve to spend some real time behind bars. See: http://www.power-to-the-people.co.uk/2009/05/mps-expenses-no-amnesty/
May 11th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Gene Hunt for P.M.
I quote from tonight’s episode of Ashes to Ashes “If I find one man feathering his own nest by so much as one bent penny, I will destroy him”
May 12th, 2009 at 6:47 am
@ Peter Darvas: If only we had a few more people that thought the same way, our parliamentary system would not be in this mess.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:40 am
I would expect pensions for MP’s to be reduced to that of the private sector. I would also like their wages to be reduced and permanently linked to the National Average Wage, this way, MP’s can only expect to be paid more if the Nation as a whole gets paid more.
As for a second home allowance; build them a block of council flats about a mile away from the house of commons.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:56 am
@ LabourHater: I certainly agree with regard to pension arrangements. Though I am angry with MPs’, I would not want to look to reduce their salaries on the basis that we need to recruit and retain good people. However, that does mean that the current selection procedure that positively discriminates against ‘ordinary’ people makes a nonsense of this so called democracy. There is definitely some merit in having housing for MPs’ in the capital, it works for the Australians.