MPs' Expenses
More generous staffing budgets played their part - but the cost of MPs' personal expenses also rose, as did the number of MPs who employ relatives and then claim their salaries on expenses - with this figure jumping from 144 to 155 MPs.
In the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal in 2009, there was a sharp drop in the level of claims - which stood at £95.4 million - before the spending habits of Westminster MPs came under the public spotlight.
In the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal in 2009, there was a sharp drop in the level of claims - which stood at £95.4 million - before the spending habits of Westminster MPs came under the public spotlight.
Yet the latest total has reached a new record of £98 million - much to the embarrassment of all Westminster political parties no doubt.
One area of controversy is the practice of MPs putting family members and relatives on the public payroll which is not allowed in other European countries - Germany, for example.
Among the most well-paid relatives last year was Nadine Dorries’s daughter Philippa, who earned between £40,000 and £45,000 - in her role as office manager.
Apparently Philippa no longer works in the House of Commons although another of the Conservative MP’s daughters is now working as a senior secretary - on a salary of £30,000 to £35,000.
So I agreed with this opinion piece by Zoe Williams in the Guardian - in this day and age allowing MPs to recruit their spouses as office workers is an expensive piece of nonsense - and indefensible in terms of equal opportunities at the workplace.
MPs would rather hike up expenses than accept a pay rise
Leaving aside whether MPs are worth £74,000, those who say they would refuse it are engaging in cheap political point scoring
By Zoe Williams
MPs' expenses have risen again, says the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which recommends that MPs' salaries should go up to £74,000. Photograph: PA
The management of the MPs' expenses row has been so catastrophic that if you look at it too closely, it will make you afraid of the way MPs manage everything else. After the initial scandal, they made a great show of surrendering their fate to Ipsa (the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority), who duly filed their recommendations, which were that salaries should go up to £74,000. Like so many things, it's an unpopular view until you actually think about it.
Leaving aside what they're worth and whether, simply by taking office, they are inherently valueless people who should actually be paid much less, they have been historically too cowardly to award themselves pay rises, preferring the backdoor pay rise of their bizarrely generous expenses system. Since their expenses would now be expected to become more conventional – Ipsa reasoned – then not to award them a raise would amount to a significant cut. Ipsa also reckoned that they were, generally, of a level of qualification and experience that £74,000 would be a fair, even modest, salary.
MPs then fell over themselves to be the first to say they couldn't possibly accept such a salary, that they would give it to charity, that it was inappropriate, absurd; and that's the kind of craven behaviour we've come to expect. Why listen to the independent panel you've commissioned yourself for this precise purpose, when you can score a cheap point or curry some favour instead? What's galling is how much this nonsense is costing – expenses have, predictably, gone up by £9m in a year, as they compensate themselves like mad for the pay rise they've valiantly promised not to take.
And contained within it is the much more significant corruption whereby they employ their own families; the rules have been tightened a bit so they can't employ all their children, but this is to miss the principle.
PAs to MPs are employed by the state – as such, that post must be offered on an equal opportunity basis. Not because the equality duty says so, but because that's the proper thing to do. MPs, too ashamed to argue for their own salary, will nevertheless happily put it to the country that their wife is the only viable person for the job of secretary, because they sometimes have to travel on a Sunday or entertain on a Tuesday evening.
There's a lack of courage here, certainly, a lack of transparency, and a lack of forethought; but most of all, there's no moral compass. You could sum up their position as "I want to. Why shouldn't I?"
