Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MPS’ obscene gravy train races along as the rest of us suffer
OUR MPS come in for plenty of stick, especially in this column, but there are many decent, hardworking ones among them.
Despite the Westminster benches looking sparse during the current health crisis, those decent ones are working hard at home trying to help constitu ents get through th ese desperate times.
Which makes it all the more sad and baffling that hundreds of them aren’t calling for an urgent motion demanding the 4.1% inflation-busting p ay of fe r th ey have just been awarded is refused or diverted to hardship funds.
Because taking a £3,360-a-year pay rise right now, when inflation stands at 0.2%, and a devastating second wave of Covid threatens to destroy millions of jobs and businesses, looks obscene.
Let’s put this rise into perspective. Since 2010 our 650 MPS have seen their basic annual pay rise from £65,700 to the £79,500 they earn now, and the £82,828 they will be on from next April.
That’s a jump of more than £17,000 in a decade of austerity when the vast majority of public sector workers have had effective pay cuts imposed on them.
The starting salary for a newlyqualified teacher in 2010 was £21,600. It has risen £2,800 to £24,400. When you factor in inflation, ation, that equates
to a pay cut of 6%. It’s a similar story for other public sector employees such as NHS staff or police.
When lockdown started in March many firms forced workers into furlough on 80% pay or salary cuts of up to 20%. MPS, however, were told they could claim an extra £10,000 in expenses to help them work from home to cover additional bills such as heating or phones, on top of th e £26,000-a-year th ey already claim for office costs.
No wonder disgraced MPS like Margaret Ferrier, broke the rules she’s supposed to make by travelling on the London to Glasgow inter-city knowing she had Covid, cling on to their seats on the cushiest train of all. The Westminster gravy one.
And this public purse exploitation
is ra mp a n t right across
We st mi n st e r. In Fe b r u a r y the unelected cronies in the Lords handed themselves an inflation-busting 3.1% pay rise, thus taking their daily, tax-free allowance to £323. Despite virtually all of them having well-paid outside jobs or bumper pensions.
Meanwhile, a pub worker doing a 40-hour week on minimum wage, who has been forced by Westminster on to 66% pay in these local lockdowns, will have to survive on £46 a day.
Labour leader Keir Starmer believes the MPS’ pay rise should go to key workers and wants cro ss-par ty discussion on the matter, but he needs to go further. He should demand that every Labour MP follows the l ead of Ian Byrne, member for Liv er p o o l , West Derby, and publicly states they will be giving their rise to a needy cause such as local foodbanks. Then call on every Tory MP to do the same.
The deafening silence from most would be a ringing endorsement of t h e c u l tu re of entitlement that we thought had died out with the expenses scandal.
But which is very much alive and grasping.
MP salaries have jumped by £17,000 in a decade of austerity