MPs, careers and salary controversies
published: Sunday | February 16, 2003

Robert Buddan, Contributor

MEMBERS OF parliaments (MPs) around the world do not have their own trade unions and are in a career with no security of tenure. Most get voted out at some time or another.

While many have alternative careers (law firms, medical practice), others depend fulltime on their salaries as parliamentarians. A university full-time lecturer is not allowed to be an MP at the same time.

People like Peter Phillips, Maxine Henry-Wilson, and Omar Davies had to leave their university jobs and incomes when they entered the Government.

Should Professor Munroe enter the Lower House, he would have to give up a professorial salary and security of job tenure.

Up to 2000, federal parliamentarians in Australia had not received a pay increase since October 1996. Past increases in parliamentary remuneration and allowances had been greeted with harsh criticism.

A tribunal asked to look into the matter of parliamentary salaries said, "The persistence of such attitudes seems to be a curious feature of Australian political life. We expect our politicians to work hard and over long hours for the public good, to be astute leaders and legislators, and to manage the affairs of our nation with vision and the highest degree of integrity. Yet there is often adverse reaction when asked to remunerate them at an appropriate level. There is no reason to deny parliamentarians access to pay increases that are available to other sections of the community. Indeed, it is the Tribunal's job to ensure that parliamentarians are properly paid for the work that they do and properly resourced to perform their public functions."

POLITICAL SUFFERANCE

In Britain, parliamentarians received their latest salary increases in January (2003) amidst wide criticism as usual.

Jamaican MPs do not even have the facilities available in the House of Commons - a gym, a shooting gallery, bars, restaurants, and a large car park. The 651 MPs and their staff share a total of 394 offices at Westminster.

British MPs earn 55,000 pounds sterling a year and receive an annual secretarial allowance of 41,308 pounds sterling to run a constituency office and one at Westminster.

MPs employ staff. The other source of assistance is the Research Division of the Commons library, which employs 29 researchers.

MPs can claim expenses for staying in London for parliamentary duties if they live outside of London. Jamaican parliamentarians labour without such facilities.

American members of Congress get US$155,000 a year and a staff budget of about US$220,000. The Congressional Research Service has about 1,000 professional staff.

MPs have unusual working hours and have to juggle different roles as parliamentarians, constituency representatives, party functionaries, and if they are in Government, as ministers as well.

They, too, have families to support, mortgages to pay and the everyday personal and private expenses on home and life.

The career of an MP can also be a dangerous one. In some countries, they face violence and kidnapping. These conditions contribute to the low percentage of women candidates.

The worst case of political sufferance comes from India. The salary of an MP has not increased since 1954.

It stands at 5,000 Rupees a month, compared to the 25,000 rupees a month that secretaries get. The MP needs at least 50,000 rupees to carry out his basic duties and meet modest living expenses.

A MATTER OF TRUST

Clearly the politician is a beleaguered breed around the world. The mechanism for salary increases varies among different countries.

In Britain it is tied to that of civil servants and salaries increase automatically each April.

In the United States, it is voted on by Congress, but Congress can only vote increases for members of the next Congress (although over 90 per cent of the members of one Congress are re-elected to the next Congress).

In Australia, a tribunal makes recommendations.

The controversy has little to do with the country, the method of getting increases or the size of the salary itself.

United States Congressmen are mostly rich enough to do without a salary and Indian MPs are so poorly paid (the poorest in the world) that no one could really grudge them an increase.

A 2000 Harvard University study on attitudes towards Government found that Americans thought the thing most wrong about their society was "corrupt/greedy/crooked politicians".

When asked how much they trusted politicians to do the right thing, 70 per cent said none or almost none of the time.

Americans showed some or very little confidence in Congress (78 per cent). But they also had little confidence in large business corporations (72 per cent), the courts (77 per cent), and the media (68 per cent).

Yet, those leaders earn large salaries. Those who said that Government corruption was a very important problem were 89 per cent.

In Britain, too, discussions about political office holders invariably unleashed a torrent of views about political trust.

In a January 2003 report, the National Centre for Social Research said, "This distrust was evident in all groups, regardless of age, gender, educational attainment, or party affiliation. It was argued that politicians would promise anything in order to gain public office but that very few promises were ever honoured."

Some held the opinion, though, that this was true of only some politicians who brought the whole into disrepute and that politicians should be judged individually. The media was believed to encourage this pervasive culture of distrust by blowing scandals out of proportion.

EXPLAINING ATTITUDES

The explanation does not seem to lie in the state of the economy or inflation either.

In Britain, Australia and many developed countries, the economies are growing and inflation is low. In fact, in the same Harvard survey, a majority of Americans viewed the performance of the economy as the strongest thing about their society. But, at the same time, they viewed politicians as the worst thing.

These attitudes towards politicians seem to be worldwide. There is no shortage of explanations for the public's decline in political trust.

One suggestion is that parties are no longer committed to definite and distinct principles as their ideological differences lessen.

"Parties and politicians are all the same" is a common refrain revealed by opinion polls. Furthermore, as the costs of fighting elections escalate, parties and politicians need to solicit large sums of money from sources that may expect political favours in return. Today's politicians therefore appear to be more corrupt than their predecessors.

Another suggestion is the increasing powerlessness of governments. Globalisation means that governments have ceded much power to multinational bodies, such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and to multinational companies.

A third suggestion is the breakdown of traditional community bonds. Individuals now lead more atomised and anonymous lives in which they are more likely to be watching television and "bowling alone" than participating in collective activities alongside politicians.

A final suggestion is that a new, well-educated and non-deferential generation has emerged whose levels of trust, participation and political attachments are significantly lower than previous generations.

British politicians (among others), searching for the causes of young people's alienation and more widespread public cynicism identified a range of factors.

"Today, people are very aware of global forces which are beyond the control of national governments," says a leading British MP. "so there's disenchantment with national governments: too puny to deal with global forces, and too remote to deal with local issues that really affect people."

APATHY IN THE SYSTEM

In the absence of ideological issues, the media have concentrated less on the beliefs and more on the behaviour of politicians.

"The newspapers do find that their readers are more interested in the sex lives of the politicians than what they do," says another politician. 'They do like to present everything as shock, horror, crisis, and blunder. And, of course, they do feed a sense of sleaze and cynicism about the real motives of those taking part which switches people off."

For increasing numbers of the public, the last profession they would now ever want to go into is politics.

In Britain's 2001 election, the big winner was apathy. The Labour vote fell by two million and three out of five young people did not vote.

This cynicism seems to actually make things worse.

A number of politicians in Britain say their salaries are not enough. When in opposition, they take company directorships, consultancies and lobbying that supplement their salaries.

This caused a 'cash for questions' scandal in the 1990s because MPs were taking money from companies to ask questions in parliament on behalf of these business interests.

MPs are also able to position themselves with these companies so that they can get employment with them when their political careers end.

Politicians believe that the public doesn't understand them - what they do, how they work and how they live. There is truth in this.

There is a vicious cycle. Underpaid MPs will spend more time hustling and exposing themselves to corruption. But if they do, they are seen as undeserving of salary increases and they remain underpaid. We need to address this issue sensibly once and for all.

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