We need a return to 'public service ethic'
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Contributing editor
Emily Hohler Apr 03, 2009
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A "couple more logs were thrown onto the blazing bonfire of parliamentary reputation" this past weekend, says Dominic Lawson in The Independent. First came the revelation that Labour MP Harry Cohen had claimed more than £300,000 for a second-home allowance in London on the basis that his main home is a one-bed schoolhouse and caravan 70 miles from his constituency. Then Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, became a laughing stock after it was revealed that she had inadvertently billed the taxpayer for a couple of porn films watched by her husband.
Despite the storm, Smith's "filthy movies" are the least of it, says Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail. What about the antique fireplace, two flat-screen TVs and even an 88 pence bath plug that we have also reimbursed her for. "Sometimes it feels as if the entire political establishment has its snout so deeply jammed in the trough of taxpayers' money that you can barely see its little curly tail."
Certainly they seem well stuck in, says Macer Hall in the Daily Express. New figures showed that an MP's average pay and perks (which soared 6.8% last year) now stand at £208,942. Last year they claimed a total of £93m in allowances, amounting to more than £144,000 each. To top it off, details emerged of a 2.33% pay rise, which will take a backbencher's pay to £64,766. And that's not all, says James Chapman in the Daily Mail. On Tuesday, Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, announced that taxpayers will be required to contribute an extra £800,000 a year to fund MPs' pension schemes – schemes so generous that an MP can now retire with an annual pension of half their £65,000 salary after just 20 years. No wonder Gordon Brown was "shamed" into announcing a pay freeze on ministers, says Hall.
Let's keep this in perspective, says Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. The system should change, fast: there is no reason why the Committee on Standards in Public Life should only "lumber into action" in September. But "our politicians are among the cleanest in the world". MPs have been "caught napping" and others in the public sector, who are "less greedy, less rich, more motivated by civic sense", will now be victimised by this new "wave of Puritanism". Those who abuse our MPs should remember that putting our home secretary through the wringer is hardly likely to raise the standards of new entrants to Parliament. "Observing the excruciating public humiliation of the home secretary's husband... how many potentially good future politicians decided they would rather not invite the world to root through their private life after all?"
It's true that we need to encourage more people of "genuine talent and with an ethic of public service" to enter parliament, says Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph. But it is exactly this generous system of salaries and allowances that has ensured that people seeking a vocation tend to avoid politics, while those who want a lucrative career are attracted to it "like maggots to rotting flesh". There is a link between lack of experience in the outside world and the terrible state of our country's finances, poor schools and erratic health service. Of course, there of are plenty of good, hard-working MPs and disparaging those who govern us must stop. But for that to happen, the House of Commons must take the lead and abolish the system that "creates these parasites".
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