‘This has done for our pay rise, hasn’t it?’ one MP muttered earlier this week after the lobbying scandal broke. I suggested on Monday that yet another row over politicians behaving badly will make it even more difficult for David Cameron to endorse a pay rise for MPs. This is a row that is just waiting in the wings to join the Central School of Conservative Drama, so here’s how things are likely to play out.
Ipsa is currently compiling its recommendations on MPs’ pay. It was expected to report this month, but I hear there is a delay, and publication could be much closer to the start of Parliamentary recess, which begins 19 July. The authority has the sole statutory power over MPs’ pay, and is expected to recommend a raise of at least £10,000, which would mean MPs take home roughly £75,000 a year. That’s the amount parliamentarians are banking on, at least.
The report on pay will launch a consultation, which will run over the summer and is open to the public. At that stage, the party leaders will be expected to react, either to the press, or in a formal consultation response. Those responses will then be published and a final decision made.
This means that even though David Cameron can’t veto a pay rise, he will need to react to Ipsa’s decision to raise MPs’ pay, and therein lies the danger. If he says he is very happy for MPs to be paid more, hot on the heels of yet another lobbying scandal, then he will suffer in the polls for protecting the political elite. But if he says he doesn’t think that in the current climate of chronic pay restraint, underemployment, and a punishing cost of living, MPs really should take such a big pay hike, he will face the wrath of his backbenchers. Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg will have to respond too, but they do not have so much poison swilling about in their own parties. Cameron’s backbenchers are always looking for signs he doesn’t love them, and hearing a party leader with his own personal wealth blocking more pay for backbenchers won’t help that. There are other gripes about the Ipsa expenses regime which make this more toxic: remember Adam Afriyie has managed to garner a great deal of backbench support partly through helping colleagues in their battles with the regulator.
So the Prime Minister has a choice: who does he want to annoy more? He could, of course, just say pay is a matter for Ipsa and try to detach himself from the whole thing. He may, based on previous form, take several different positions depending on who appears the most annoyed with his first reaction. But in any case, he is an unenviable position.
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