Being an MP should be a full-time job

WITH all the hoo-ha about MPs’ second jobs, perhaps I could make a suggestion.

Town and county councillors are elected to office but they do not receive a salary for this as they are ‘part-timers’ with jobs or businesses of their own. But they do receive out of pocket expenses in order to help them fulfil their duties, and for the most part live in the area they represent.

I know that many MPs live in their own constituencies in order to serve their constituents and commute to their place of work, which is Parliament in this case, and I can understand why they need a ‘second home’ in London if they are ‘fulltime’ MPs and attend and partake in Parliamentary discussions, and look after their constituents’ concerns from an office within the Palace of Westminster.

But second homes should not be paid for by the taxpayer for those MPs who live within reasonable commuting distance of Westminster.

So being an MP should be a fulltime job if he or she is carrying out the work properly.

However there are many MPs who regard the job as ‘part-time’ but revel in the kudos of having MP after their name as it ‘opens certain doors’.

An MP’s present pay, pension and expenses package is to be envied by whole swathes of the population IF they are doing their job properly.

A condition of being an MP should be that it is a full-time job if it is conducted properly and their salary should reflect this.

Any increase in pay for MPs to make the job even more attractive should be tempered with the proviso that any paid jobs or positions outside Parliament should be banned in return for their full-time attention to the matters of state, unless on a voluntary basis.

An MP’s services should not be bought by any organisation, as seems to be happening at present.

Some of this extra cash could be financed by a reform of the House of Lords. There are 779 peers entitled to sit in the Upper House and far too many to be ‘needed’.

Many of them just clock in, park their butts on the red benches for five minutes and claim £325 daily attendance allowance.

No ifs, no buts and all perfectly within ‘the rules’! The reform of this archaic institution is centuries overdue.

What’s that – pay our MPs more? I can already hear the cries of horror from some of your readers. But if we want better value from our MPs and with strings, we must pay for it.

To put things into perspective, the BBC pays some of its newsreaders up to £600,000 a year just for reading an autocue a couple of days a week out of our licence fees, and coupled with this they pay millions of pounds to some sports presenters for their weekend’s work during the football season.

Think about that before you jump down my throat!

I’m sure the majority of our MPs are hard-working and conscientious but their reputations are being destroyed by a hard core (if you’ll pardon the pun) of rotten apples.

Edward Kynaston Lydney, Gloucestershire