As the standing of Parliament last week fell to the lowest level in its 800-year history, two rather important points should be added to our understanding of this unholy shambles. The first is why MPs got into such a degrading mess over their “allowances” in the first place. The story goes back to 1971 when, with inflation rising, to give them a pay increase might have been politically embarrassing. A new system was therefore devised (under Willie Whitelaw) to give them “additional cost allowances”, as an annual sum they could claim as a hidden pay rise. As can be seen by Googling “additional cost allowances” and “Commons Library”, the initial allowance was a mere £187.50. But this rose rapidly, and at an ever-increasing rate, with a jump of £6,000 in 2001, until it now stands at £24,000. The point is that the system was founded on deception, and this has only been compounded, as MPs are told they can claim their “allowances” as an automatic right, so long as they go through the charade of handing in largely meaningless invoices. Hence their pathetic bleats, when caught out, that they are only charging “within the rules”. This double deceit is tawdry enough, but far more weighty is the question of whether our modern MPs earn their salaries, let alone their bogus “allowances”. It would be easy to point to scores of examples of how MPs no longer justify the money we pay them, because they have so lost touch with the basic realities of the job we elect them to do. During the 19 years I have been writing this column, I have in effect been reporting on an extraordinary revolution in the nature of our governance. As became apparent in the early Nineties, Parliament has become ever more excluded from its traditional role of making our laws and shaping the way we are governed. By far the greater part of our legislation no longer has anything to do with Parliament. Much of it is decided in Brussels, most of it is imposed on us by way of statutory instruments, diktats drafted by anonymous officials and signed off by ministers who are no more than puppets. Our MPs, having progressively given away their powers, have become increasingly irrelevant, except to play walk-on parts in the soap opera to which our politics has been reduced. Infantilised by their lack of a proper grown-up job to do, it is hardly surprising that, with honourable exceptions, the army of ciphers making up our political class speak almost entirely in clichés, bristle with moralistic self-righteousness, have little idea of how we are actually governed and resort to fiddling their expenses. (I was, incidentally, interested to see Mr Elliot Morley fingered for claiming his non-existent mortgage, since more than once he has gone out of his way to speak abusively about this column in Parliament.) Having given away their powers and lost their self-respect, they have now lost ours. This is the real message of the squalid spectacle to which we have all been treated in recent days. Just one of countless examples of how our MPs now fail in their true responsibilities was glaringly on view on April 23. Our Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, announced to MPs that, to keep Britain’s lights on, he will graciously permit us to have a new generation of coal-fired power stations. But this is only on the condition that they can in future be fitted with “carbon capture”, extracting the CO2 to bury it in holes in the ground. To pave the way for this, Mr Miliband is insisting on four pilot schemes in different parts of the country, each of which, although he didn’t admit it, is to cost £1 billion, paid for by all of us through our electricity bills. So far, there is not a single commercial carbon-capture scheme anywhere in the world. The technological problems in creating one may well be insuperable. Even if they could be made to work, they would, in effect, double the price of electricity and require us to double our already huge imports of coal, mainly from Russia. In other words, Mr Miliband was announcing to the Commons a completely mad, quixotic proposition. But instead of pointing this out, the handful of MPs present, led by the Tories’ energy spokesman, Greg Clark, and John Gummer, fell over themselves to welcome it. If we had grown-up MPs with the remotest understanding of the real world, they could simply have laughed this totally absurd measure out of court, and saved us all £4 billion – 40 times as much as they cost us each year, including their allowances. Caitlin expedition finds Arctic distinctly nippy So the farce of the Catlin Arctic expedition last week finally ended, when the hapless trio led by Pen Hadow was airlifted to safety, less than half way to the North Pole. Everything about this absurd publicity stunt, named after a Lloyd’s insurance syndicate heavily into “climate change”, was a parable of our times. Even the adoring BBC was hard put to claim that the ice measurements they took with an old tape measure served any scientific purpose. All proper evidence shows that the ice has significantly recovered from its September 2007 low and is fast converging with its 30-year average. But at least Mr Hadow and his colleagues, having discovered that the Arctic is a very cold place, got home safely. The British economy: Now for the slightly worse news In the nicest possible way, Professor David Henderson, former chief economist to the OECD, sought to correct a “mistake” in last week’s column when I referred to Britain’s economy having slipped from fourth to sixth in the world league table, behind China and France. The more realistic way to compare the sizes of national economies, Prof Henderson insists, is in terms not of exchange rates but of “purchasing-power parity”, the actual volume of goods and services they produce. In PPP terms, the current World Bank rankings show the US first, followed by China, with Japan some way behind. Fourth is India, having overtaken Germany; Russia is sixth, ahead of France. Britain has fallen to eighth.MPs' expenses: Allowance system was founded on deception
MPs are told they can claim their "allowances" as an automatic right, so long as they go through the charade of handing in largely meaningless invoices, says Christopher Booker.
Sunday, 17 May 2009
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Given that this allowance was intended as a "hidden" salary it represents earned income subject to income tax and NHI. At the very least it represents a benefit in kind - similarly taxable - and should have been declared on the recipient MPs P11Ds for the relevant tax years.
The question is - how many other politicians, no longer in the house, have taken advantage of us and are keeping low profiles lest they rake up an even wider scandal?
I suspect, had we simply paid (at current rates) back-bench MPs c. �85K p.a. � and had done with � eliminating completely the Allowances scheme � we would not be where we are today. That would though be too simplistic.
It is the ultra-casual nature of the abuse of the Allowances, which are little more than a sausage machine through which to pay additional salary, that leaves mere voters (and taxpayers) somewhat perturbed at the *moral compass* lacking in those who seek to represent us in a democracy.
Mr Booker takes this further to point out how little that actually means, thanks to the EU and the use of diktats, begging the question, surely, as to why we need nigh-on 650 MPs doing very little in setting the agenda of National Government or indeed signing it off without questioning very much at all. Trained monkeys with rubber stamps would be much cheaper.
170509-08:14
"In response to Geoffrey Woolard's comment above may I ask whether increasing MP's pay to cover these expenses would also automatically increase their pensions? If so then the 'expenses' element should be set as non-pensionable. If it isn't then an MP from outside London would get a bigger pension than a London MP. Isn't it better to keep expenses sepatare from pay? All other inductries seem to manage it."
I see your point, Tim, but, at the risk of annoying even more people, I still think that the allowances should be done away with altogether, the pay increased, and the eventual pensions likewise.
PPP is bulls**t; it is an attempt for China to have its cake a eat it: they manipulate their currency to have a better trade balance, but also want the kudos of size.
Contrary to your views I am amazed that the Sunday Telegraph opines today that radical action now will restore faith in our democracy.
No matter how radical it will take years and any change wholly dependant on the intergity and transparency of those MP's mandated by the electorate.
The Telegraph View is not shared by me and probably the rest of the electorate will be just as dubious as to the possibility of good governaance.
What a Darling our Chancellor is.
A new tax at 50% on those earning �150k or more. How lucky that Cabinet Minsters earn �141k.
Even luckier, their substantial tax-free reimbursed expenses will save even more tax and help them avoid the 50% rate completely.
Even luckier still, the new Budget restrictions announced on pension funding will not affect them nor indeed has Gordon's Pension Tax affected them by one penny since 1997.
Thus, the delightful Balls/Cooper partnership can earn a combined �282k salary, avoid 50% tax altogether via a generous tax-free expenses system and see their pensions remain wholly unaffected by their own Govt's restrictions and taxes imposed on the pensions of lesser mortals....
...and what about Brussels MEPs???
Agree with David Miller 06.29.
please stand for Parliament Chris.The House must have people like you in it. The next GE may be coming sooner than we think !
The LibLabCon alliance are finished. I wish them all the worst.
Tim Jones: why are we paying for their pensions at all? Give them the same pay-your-own pensions that Gordon Brown's tax changes have now given most British employees. This solves your (entirely vaild) point at one stroke.
In response to Geoffrey Woolard's comment above may I ask whether increasing MP's pay to cover these expenses would also automatically increase their pensions? If so then the 'expenses' element should be set as non-pensionable. If it isn't then an MP from outside London would get a bigger pension than a London MP.
Isn't it better to keep expenses sepatare from pay? All other inductries seem to manage it.
The apparently shredded papers containing the Blair expenses must have been quite a read, otherwise why shred them? Taxable items have to be accounted for until they can lawfully be disposed of. Country house, anyone?
This 'scandal' is becoming something of a non-event got up by people working to a hidden agenda. Christopher Booker has explained the history of the additional costs allowances and it is evident that all past and present MPs - right back to dear old Willie Whitelaw - have some responsibility for what has caused such a ruckus recently. The answer now seems to me to raise the MPs' pay by the amount of the maximum available allowance and then to withdraw the allowance. I have never opposed paying our MPs properly.
Would Mr Booker please consider standing for parliament? He'd be a shoe in.
I am disgusted at the response to this expenses mess by the mps involved.The police should prosecute anyone of them who are found to have made fraudulant claims.