Giving Back

The Labour peer and former government minister - Jack Cunningham - has been suspended from the party, quite rightly, following the sting operation by The Sunday Times.

In which Jack and two other 'noble' lords were caught on camera while trying to negotiate lucrative deals - for carrying out lobbying work in the House of Lords.

Jack has since denied doing anything wrong - as have his two colleagues - but any sensible person who has watched the interviews would conclude that the peers were out to shove their noses into the trough - which is sad.

Because Jack is retired on a very generous, public funded pension - which is probably based on his final salary as a former government minister.

So he will have walked away from the House of Commons with a huge tax free lump sum - worth three times his final salary plus an annual pension worth many tens of of thousands of pounds a year.

I imagine Jack's pension is probably two thirds of his final salary which would have been over £100,000 a year - in which case a reasonable guess would be a £60,000 a year pension plus a tax free lump sum of £300,000.

And that comes after many years of working as a MP earning a decent salary - as well as generous expenses of course.

On top of all that Jack is able to claim his daily House of Lords attendance allowance - which is worth £300 a day (again tax free) plus expenses, of course.

Yet Jack is still not satisfied - if his Sunday Times interview is anything to go by - as he rejects an offer to work two days a month  (for the bogus company) at £10,000 per month - and instead asks for £12,000 a month or £144,000 a year.

What's wrong with these people, you have to ask? - apart from being greedy pigs, obviously.

£144,000 is almost as much as the Prime Minister's salary for running the government - and yet Jack thinks he's worth that for only two days a week - when he's already on the public payroll.

So what I would do is to bring in a new rule to say that until the House of Lords is abolished - that 'noble' peers who are already in receipt of public money of some kind, e.g. a generous pension, should not be eligible to claim anything other than their expenses.

It's called giving something back to society and if the House of Lords were run along those lines - I think we'd see people like Jack Cunningham leading a stamped out the doors.