Austerity news
The cost to the taxpayer of saying goodbye to former Cornish MPs Julia Goldsworthy (defeated,) Colin Breed and Matthew Taylor (both retired) is at least £100,000. Add pension costs and the bill is considerable more. For each MP the payments are tax free for the first £30,000.
The minimum resettlement grant, paid to all departing MPs, is half the £64,766 basic annual salary. MPs with more than five years' service, or over the age of 50, can get more. The total resettlement pot for all departing MPs is today put at £10.4 million.
´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4's "File On Four" programme (tonight, 8pm) reports how the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority plans eventually to examine resettlement grants as part of its post-expenses-scandal-stable-cleaning. The Taxpayers' Alliance, naturally, froths outrage.
MPs claim the resettlement grant is simply a form of redundancy payment (albeit considerably more generous than you're likely to find in most workplaces.)
Is there not a case for treating MPs as if they are on fixed-term contracts which end (and might be renewed, if the voters agree) after a maximum of five years? I'm told that in this age of belt-tightening and ever-thinner gruel, we are all in this together.
I'm ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Devon’s Graham Smith, blogging on news, views and some fresh insights into West Country life, particularly the way government works locally and nationally.
Comment number 1.
At 9th Jun 2010, Alex Folkes wrote:Except that if MPs were treated as being on a 5 year fixed term contract then:
- those in non-safe seats would be spending a lot of their time towards the end of the 5 years looking for a new job 'just in case' rather than doing what they were mean to do
- MPs would be far less likely to give up old jobs in the first place
- if the Parliament ended early then MPs would have to be paid out for the whole 5 years. If a Parliament ran for just four years then the minimum payment to losing MPs would be £64,000 rather than half that.
There is a genuine discussion to be had about whether these payments are sensible, but this is not the answer.
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