Death Wish 2014



As Scotland counts down the days to next Thursday's independence referendum, the Westminster Parliament has shown just how out of touch it is with the news that IPSA (Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority) is going to award MPs a 10% pay rise - whether they like it or not.

Now I quite agree that an independent body should deal with MPs pay - because we can't go back to the bad old days when Westminster MPs decided their own pay and rations, and controlled their own expenses regime.

And I know what I'm talking about because for years I was a member of an independent body in Scotland (SLARC - Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee) which advised the Scottish Government on the salaries and expenses paid to local councillors.

A few years ago SLARC carried out a review of councillors' pay and while it concluded that councillors were due a pay rise, the Committee also recognised that this could not proceed against the background of pay restraint in the public sector.

How could elected councillors get a big pay increase if the pay of council workers was being held down? - and so the proposal was effectively put on the back burner until things returned to some kind of normality.

Although it has to be said that COSLA (the self-styled voice of Scottish local government) submit evidence to SLARC arguing for all councillors to receive a minimum salary of £25,000 and for senior councillors to receive the same salaries as MPs - £56,671. 

So if you ask me Westminster MPs must have some kind of 'death wish' if they allow this 10% play increase to go through and I imagine that voters in the Scottish independence referendum are likely to be deeply unimpressed. 


Watchdog vows to award MPs 10% pay rise

Tony Grew - The Sunday Times
Marcial Boo says parliament is right not to set MPs’ pay rates (Jeff Moore)

A PAY rise of 10% will be awarded to MPs next year, the Commons expenses watchdog has said, despite objections from party leaders, including David Cameron.

Marcial Boo, the new chief executive of Ipsa, said he intended to raise MPs’ pay from £67,060 to £74,000.

In his first interview since taking charge of Ipsa in June, Boo said: “We want to have good people doing the job and they need to be paid fairly. Not paid in excess, but not being paid a miserly amount either.”

Ipsa was created in 2009 in the wake of the expenses scandal. Its first chief executive, Sir Ian Kennedy, was often at loggerheads with MPs, whom he accused of finding it “difficult to come to terms with the notion of independent regulation”.

Boo has refused to change the watchdog’s stance on a pay rise for MPs after the next election, despite comments from Cameron and other party leaders that such an increase would be “unacceptable” and “wholly inappropriate” while other public sector workers faced a pay freeze.

Boo, who previously worked in counterterrorism planning in the Home Office, says MPs’ pay has fallen behind comparable public salaries.

The row over MPs’ expenses was reignited last month when the Tory Mark Simmonds announced he was standing down next year, blaming “intolerable” expenses rules. He said the “second home” allowance of £27,875 “doesn’t stretch anywhere near the cost of renting a flat in Westminster”.

Ipsa was set up to end the problem of MPs setting their own salaries, so parliament would have to abolish the watchdog in order to stop the pay rise.

Boo told The Sunday Telegraph: “We have gone through the process in a really rigorous way. It is not an arbitrary figure.

“Obviously, it is for parliament to decide whether they want to take back responsibility for setting their own pay. I don’t believe that’s right. I think we are in a better position as a country now.”

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