Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Parliament shouldn’t pay

The professionalisation of politics has taken it away from the people

This year has seen a sombre centenary, which passed almost unnoticed. It was in August 1911 that Members of Parliament voted to pay themselves for the first time — an annual stipend of £400 a year. What was meant to open parliament to all ranks of society and allow men of low birth but high gifts to sit as MPs has proved a fine example of the law of unintended consequences. A seemingly modest innovation began the process which has culminated in what we now have: the professionalisation of politics and the creation of a new class of full-time but mediocre politicians. And instead of changing the House of Commons for the better, it has changed it in many ways very much for the worse.

By 1934, that £400 had become £600, £1,250 by 1954, £6,897 by 1978, and then a startling leap to £30,854 in 1993. It’s now £65,737, and plenty of MPs whine that they are underpaid. On top of that came the gradual, then explosive, increase of allowances and expenses, which was thrown into lurid spotlight by the scandal which erupted when details were published. Many of those MPs’ claims were outrageous, and some were actually criminal, as the courts have decided, but the worst thing was the whole system, even when used with comparative honesty, and what it implied.

Within my lifetime MPs had barely any expenses at all. From 1924 they were entitled to free rail travel to and from their constituencies, from 1953 a daily allowance of £2 in session, which became an annual £750 ‘parliamentary expenses’ in 1957. This gradually increased, until it reached the present ‘office costs’ allowance of £103,872. To this were added innumerable additional allowances for second homes, with the ‘John Lewis list’ to furnish them, which together notoriously and flagrantly became a means of supplementing an MP’s income. 

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