An email from Professor Sir Ian Kennedy of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority says he needs help with a tricky task: "Answering the question of what pay and pension an MP should receive." He is collecting public views. It's been a political football for too long, he says. "We have a once in a generation opportunity to get a solution which is fair to MPs and to taxpayers." How optimistic, for no answer will be both "fair to MPs" and popular too. The reasons why take us to the heart of how we do pay, class and power in Britain.
Voters express alarming disdain for those they elect – if they bother to turn out. MPs fall ever lower in the Hansard Society's poll of professions people would be proud for their children to enter. That's not new. MPs were a well-observed object of derision in Trollope. But recently contempt has worsened, even before the expenses scandal, while a Tory treasurer offering cash for access to Cameron is too wearily familiar. Voters so detest politics that they won't even pay a paltry 50p tax a year to end big donations.
Part of the reason is the sheer visibility of MPs. In your face daily, the public sees the denizens of the Palace of Westminster; how rarely, by comparison, do they ever see life in extravagant corporate boardrooms or unknown hedge fund offices in Zug.
So they have a view when asked about MPs. When asked what motivates MPs, as many think it's "their own personal gain" as "to help people in their local area". But social class DE is twice as likely as ABs to think MPs self-serving. To a DE, an MP's salary of £65,738 is a fortune, two and a half times more than the median. Half the population earns under that £26,000, DEs a lot less – and they vote less. High earners may sympathise more with Hansard's finding that a third of new-intake MPs took a salary cut of £30,000 or more. Earners in the top tenth, on more than £52,400, mistakenly think their pay more ordinary than it is.
Who would you compare an MP with? An average primary head gets less, £52,000, but a secondary head gets more – £73,000. Financial managers average £59,000, personnel managers get £43,000. Some say an MP should earn the same as the average voter. Yet set pay too low and good professionals will be deterred, leaving only the wealthy, such as the Tory front bench, to stand. It was Chartists, not toffs, who demanded MPs be fairly paid. We need MPs from more varied social backgrounds: few now start out from manual jobs, with too many thinktankers and researchers. But would lower pay diversify the intake?
MPs' pay was linked to grade six in the civil service (grade one is top). But then grade sixes were held back to stop the embarrassment of MPs' pay rising. Jonathan Baume of the FDA civil servants union would raise MPs to the old grade five, up to £85,000 and then abolish all personal expenses except travel. Professor Vernon Bogdanor blames Margaret Thatcher for giving the nod to using allowances as pay instead of a rise – leading to duck islands and moats. He would abolish second London homes and put MPs into a decent state-owned block of flats to stop property speculation on expenses.
But the big question is, what are we paying MPs for? Hugh Gaitskell received just 20 letters a week as shadow chancellor. Anthony Eden visited his constituency once a year. Clement Attlee left constituency matters to local councillors. Of course, the job has changed beyond recognition: no MP would survive neglecting their patch. The Hansard Society finds MPs' hours lengthening to an average 69 a week, without travel. Westminster takes 63% of their week but most time is spent on constituency casework. That's getting far worse as other advice services close while the blow-back from benefit and housing cuts swells MPs surgeries.
As Cameron cuts MP numbers by 50, bigger constituencies mean heavier caseloads – more for Labour than leafy shires. In theory MPs shouldn't be super-advice workers. New conventions could copy Attlee and send most cases to local councillors, so parliament focuses on its primary job. But MPs worry councillors can't or won't. Fewer MPs also means a higher proportion of them on the ministerial payroll and thus fewer to scrutinise legislation. More do rebel against party whips than decades ago, an independence of mind the public likes but few believe. These fewer MPs do need better staff allowances to give them the research power to hold government to account.
Journalists would do well to note with some humility how hard MPs work: it's easy for us to sit in our comfortable crow's nests sniping, while they tussle with contrary demands from a fickle public wanting everything now but not wanting to pay for it. Nobody's motives are unmixed, but most politicians strive to get things done.
How much are they worth? These MPs are caught in an angry vortex of their own devising, bearing the public's resentment for letting pay inequality rip. In a less divided country, the question would be easier. Sorry Sir Ian, but there is no compromise: whatever you do will be too little for MPs, but too much to stomach for the 90% of voters who are paid less.