I don’t think being an MP is an easy job. Sitting on committees, attending debates in the House of Commons, scrutinising legislation, attending functions in your constituency, holding surgeries and assisting constituents with their problems – all are time-consuming and potentially demanding. To be a dedicated MP, even with the help now available in the form of taxpayer-funded assistants, requires a lot of stamina. That is why I have no problem with MPs receiving a decent salary. I don’t want the House of Commons to be full of under-performing MPs who aren’t up to the job.
However, do all MPs work as hard as they should? Are they all as effective as they might be? I make no comment on that and leave you to judge. One tool to assist in making that assessment is a website called “They Work For You”. This provides a substantial amount of information regarding the activities, expenses, and declared interests of all MPs and Lords at Westminster, and also some more limited information relating to members of the Holyrood Parliament in Scotland, the Senedd in Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly.
My personal view is that now that MPs (at last) receive a reasonable salary (£86,584 p.a. as of April 2023), plus generous expenses, with a decent pension scheme and “redundancy” payments (even if they step down voluntarily), it’s not unreasonable to expect them to devote their whole time and attention to working as an MP. I don’t regard it as appropriate for them to have other jobs. Full disclosure and transparency, via the Register of Members’ Interests, enable us to see what other work they have, which is better than nothing, but in my opinion, they shouldn’t have other work. With the best will in the world, having other jobs at the same time constitutes a distraction from the main job, and always runs the risk (however hard MPs try to counter the tendency) of the MP confusing his other employer’s interests with aspects of his or her own work in Parliament.
Campaigning newspapers such as the Guardian very properly draw attention to donations to the Conservative Party, and the benefits they perceive these produce for the donors. For instance, in this article the Guardian claims:
Housebuilders and property developers have benefited by billions of pounds from delays to low-carbon building regulations in the past eight years of Tory rule, while the sector became one of the biggest sources of donations to the Conservative party.
If there is a link (whether direct or indirect) between those two things, then that is simply wrong. The Guardian (and others) also, with equal propriety, draw attention to MPs’ interests of which they disapprove (such as connections to the fossil fuel industry). Let’s take a look at some of the things that perhaps aren’t talked about so much.
Sir Alok Sharma MP
In February 2022 (quote courtesy of the Guardian) Sir Alok Sharma said:
The changes in the climate we are seeing today are affecting us much sooner and are greater than we originally thought. The impacts on our daily lives will be increasingly severe and stark…Countries need to take action now. If we don’t take action now, the costs will be much higher, and the impacts higher, in future years.
It’s well-known that as President of COP 26, Sir Alok had a jet-setting time of it. Even the Guardian, which generally approves of his stance in opposing any watering-down of net zero etc., took a pop at him, both for his air miles, and for allegedly failing to self-isolate (this was during the dark days of peak covid) on his return from countries listed at the time by the UK government as “red-list” countries.
Most of Sharma’s trips were during the winter and spring months when international travel from the UK was mostly banned.
He visited India, Costa Rica, Qatar and UAE in March, while in April he travelled to South Korea and Japan before going to Bangladesh in June.
Not all of the 30 known trips were return flights to the UK, but travel to and from all the destinations would total 200,000 miles, or the equivalent to eight times around the Earth…
…A No 10 spokesperson said: “As Cop president, Alok Sharma is leading climate negotiations with countries including major emitters to cut emissions and secure ambitious action ahead of the Cop26 summit.
“The majority of this work is done remotely but some travel to key countries for face-to-face talks is essential. He has secured ambitious action as a result of the discussions he has had.”
The spokesperson added: “Ministers conducting essential travel such as this are exempted from quarantine, as set out in the rules.”
Carbon off-setting (presumably also at the UK taxpayers’ expense) was used as justification for his flights. Just how ambitious was the action he secured can be contemplated here. Of course, Sir Alok broke no rules, and everything was above board. It’s just that the rules that applied to his travel were different from the rules that applied to you and me.
He didn’t just indulge in long-haul flights in his capacity as COP26 President, however. As can be ascertained from the entries he has made in the Register of Interests he flew to New Delhi in March 2023, to attend and speak at the Trilateral Commission Plenary Meeting. The Trilateral Commission paid for (I assume) two nights’ accommodation to a value of £381. At least Sir Alok killed two birds with one stone as he stayed on for two days more to attend and speak at the SEB Nordic CEO Conference. The Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB very decently covered the cost of his flights (£7,271), accommodation (£536), meals (£660), and taxi transfers (£163). That sounds to me (though how would I know? I can’t afford this jet-setting lifestyle) like business class (or even first class) flights. Not for the President of COP 26 the self-denying ordinance that is urged on the rest of us. Why travel economy class to India to reduce your carbon footprint by anywhere between 60 and 80% (depending on which website you visit) when a nice Scandinavian Bank is picking up the tab? It’s more than a little ironic that the Scandinavian bank in question apparently has a net zero commitment.
In the following month, Sir Alok was off again, this time to New York, where he attended and spoke at the Global Citizen NOW conference (according to the website the Friday morning session included a conversation with Ali Velshi, Alok Sharma, Elizabeth Wathuti, and Catherine McKenna about getting to net zero). Fortunately, Global Citizen picked up the tab (£9,744 for flights – presumably business or first class again; £881 for taxi transfers; and £237 for meals). I wonder if the conversation about getting to net zero included a chat about air travel?
A couple of months ago he was off to Australia, this time with a staff member, to attend and speak at the Coalition for Conservation International Climate Conference. Happily the costs were again met by someone else – this time the Coalition for Conservation (“Our goal is to develop effective solutions to reduce emissions and protect the environment” – of course it is: that’s why you fly foreign politicians business class or first class half-way round the planet and back to attend a talking shop). I suppose the bill was a snip this time, since it covered the costs of two people – £9,374 for flights; £2,252 for accommodation; and £456 for meals.
That month saw some more globe-trotting – this time back to the Big Apple (“In connection with my role as Rockefeller Foundation Climate and Finance Fellow meetings with representatives of: governments, business and multilateral organisations”). Of course, the Rockefeller Foundation (“We’re a philanthropic foundation that promotes the well-being of humanity by finding and scaling solutions to advance opportunity and reverse the climate crisis” – but they haven’t yet discovered things like Skype, Zoom and Microsoft Teams) was paying for what looks like yet another business class or first class flight – £8,686 for transport; £565 for accommodation; and £152 for meals.
The Rockefeller Foundation also facilitated a trip last month to Nairobi for meetings ahead of the Africa Climate Summit. Naturally, it looks as though the flight was first class or business class, since the declared cost of the flights, visa and taxis was £9,522. Accommodation and meals were a trifling £214, but then the trip was a brief one – 2nd -3rd September.
Flying here, there and everywhere – and the associated entries in the Register of Interests – isn’t the end of it. On 18th May, Sir Alok received £20,000 from J.P. Morgan Securities plc for a speaking engagement. Happily they also provided transport and accommodation, so that the £5,000 per hour payment (the engagement lasted four hours, we are told) wasn’t reduced by costs.
Another speaking engagement in July was even more profitable. Neue Zuercher Zeitung AG coughed up £29,993 in return for four hours of Sir Alok’s time. Thankfully, they too provided the transport.
Chris Skidmore MP
In May 2019, when he was Energy and Clean Growth Minister, Chris Skidmore wrote:
I admire people’s passion in wanting to halt the catastrophic impacts of climate change. All parts of society will feel its lasting effects, and tackling it is rightly a top priority for all generations.
A look at Mr Skidmore’s registered interests shows much less in the way of a jet-setting lifestyle paid for by third parties, with the focus being more on the money he makes from working for others. One of the more interesting declarations he made in the Register is this:
From 3 January 2023 until further notice, Adviser to the Emissions Capture Company (industrial decarbonisation and clean technology), 8-10 Hill Street, London W1J 5NG. I receive £80,000 per annum, paid monthly, for providing advice on the global energy transition and decarbonisation. Hours: 160-192 hrs per annum. (Registered 07 February 2023)
Nice work if you can get it. That’s just £6,584 p.a. less than an MP’s salary. According to the Office for National Statistics average weekly total pay in the UK in July 2023 was £664. If we assume an average 35 hours worked per week, that equates to an average hourly pay rate of £18.97. Mr Skidmore will receive from The Emissions Capture Company hourly pay of £416.67 – £500, depending on whether he provides 160 or 192 hours of “advice on the global energy transition and decarbonisation”. Still, as The Emissions Capture Company’s website says, its “team members have implemented >$70B in major environmental and infrastructure projects globally.” Big Green makes lots of money out of this stuff, so what’s £80,000 for a bit of advice?
Mr Skidmore is also a Non-Executive director of Oxford Educational Group. In return for 6-8 hours of his time every month, they will pay him £40,000 p.a. That’s a similar hourly rate of pay to his earnings from The Emissions Capture Company (£416.67 to £555.55 per hour, depending on whether his involvement is at the lower or upper end of those monthly time commitments). Oxford Educational Group is involved, inter alia, in educating non-UK students in the UK, as is clear from the fact that they offer “pre-sessional” English courses. Or as they put it:
We are a unique accredited education provider dedicated to creating life-enhancing experiences for students worldwide. Our extensive portfolio covers university pathway programmes, a comprehensive range of online academic and vocations courses through the OI Digital Institute and English language schools for adult and junior students in the UK, Canada and USA.
All that seems to involve rather a lot of air miles. Indeed, Mr Skidmore in the Register of Interests, describes his involvement between May 2021 and May 2022 as being the “providing [of] advice on higher education and international student recruitment”. It’s so reassuring, therefore, to find out that they have a robust environmental policy, which includes, rather hilariously in the circumstances, “[r]educing carbon emissions through the efficient use of energy and reducing international air travel”.
That’s not the end of Mr Skidmore’s extra-curricular activities. From August to December 2022 he received more than £3,000 per month from Public Policy Projects Limited , which he describes as an independent public policy institute (they describe themselves as “an organisation operating at the heart of health and life sciences policy delivery” who “facilitate effective collaboration between public and private sector organisations” and “help businesses to grow their profile within the NHS and wider public sector”). Mr Skidmore describes his involvement with this organisation as “research work as senior research adviser”. My own view is that the amount of time he devoted, however good his intentions, to this organisation, might have reduced his effectiveness as an MP – 142 hours over 5 months. In August his hourly pay from them was £80.17; in September it was £106.90; in October it was £134.87; in November it was £137.80; and in December it was £137.15. Compared to some of the pay rates MPs seem to achieve from their non-Parliamentary activities, this is small beer, I suppose, but it’s still pay at a rate between 4 and 6 times the national average, in addition to his MP’s salary and other emoluments. Of interest, perhaps, is that the Chair of Public Policy Projects Limited is Stephen Dorrell, who was Secretary of State for Health from 1995 to 1997, and who is also a Board Member of LaingBuisson, the healthcare market intelligence company.
Mr Skidmore also receives £80,000 p.a. from Global Insight Exchange, which he describes, while registering this interest, as an independent policy institute. The payment is in return for “[c]hairing events and policy research, writing policy reports”. A little digging into the paperwork it has filed at Companies House suggests that this is another organisation linked to to Stephen Dorrell, who in May 2021 was listed as holding directly or indirectly, 75% or more of the shares and voting rights in the company, a state of affairs which ceased to be the case at the end of last year.
In November 2022 Mr Skidmore received £6,023.30 from King’s College London, for chairing a panel reviewing research methods and its report between May 2021 and August 2022. This took 24 hours of his time, so the hourly pay rate was a healthier £250.97.
Coincidentally or not, a couple of months later, King’s College, London hosted at its Strand campus the launch of Mission Zero, which was described as an “independent review” of the Net Zero agenda for the UK Government:
The President & Principal of King’s, Professor Shitij Kapur, opened the launch event with a speech welcoming the report and highlighting some of the sector-leading sustainability work taking place at King’s, which is central to the university’s strategic ambitions. Focused particularly on collaborations that will support the development of new solutions to enable just and fair net zero transitions, a new Net Zero Centre is being developed in the Faculty of Natural, Mathematical and & [sic] Engineering Sciences, and an Institute of Sustainable Business in the King’s Business School.
It all seems very cosy.
The “Mission Zero” report is described on its face as an “Independent Review of Net Zero”. My Concise Oxford English Dictionary describes “independent” as: “1. Free from outside control; not subject to another’s authority…Not supported by public funds. 2. Not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence. Capable of acting or thinking for oneself. 3. Not connected with another…”.
There are undoubtedly some senses in which the report might reasonably be described as independent, but in other respects, I would argue less so. Given the capacity to mislead, I think it would be better if a potentially ambiguous term such as “independent” had been avoided in this context. It’s also worth noting that this “independent” review of net zero wasn’t asked to review the merits of net zero, rather (from the introduction to the report):
…this Independent Review of Net Zero was commissioned in September 2022, to ask how the UK could better meet its net zero commitments, taking account of these global changes. It was commissioned also to ask how the UK might deliver its own net zero targets in a manner that was both more affordable, more efficient, and in a pro-business and pro-enterprise way…
A search of the document for “carbon capture” reveals 36 mentions of the term. A whole section (2.7, commencing on page 122) is headed “Reducing emissions through carbon capture and removal”:
The UK is uniquely placed to be a global leader in Carbon Capture Usage and Storage (CCUS), which will play a critical role in the transition to net zero. We must act quickly to foster certainty and attract the investment that we need. Key recommendations: • In 2023, government must act quickly to re-envisage and implement a clear CCUS roadmap, showing the plan beyond 2030. As part of the roadmap, government should take a pragmatic approach to cluster selection. This means allowing the most advanced clusters to progress more quickly. • By 2024, government must develop a strategy for the plan for non-pipeline transport and how dispersed sites and mini clusters can connect to the CCS network and what support should be offered for doing so. • As soon as legislation allows, government must finalise the business models and regulatory frameworks across the value chain, including for industrial CCS, Energy from Waste with CCS and CO2 transport and storage. • In 2023 HMT should set out the funding envelope available to support Track-1 CCUS clusters.
I have no doubt that Mr Skidmore sincerely believes in all of the above, and indeed of the putative benefits of, and need for, a UK net zero policy. I would just feel a bit more comfortable if the person conducting an “independent” review of net zero, who made such recommendations, didn’t receive £80,000 p.a. from The Emissions Capture Company “for providing advice on the global energy transition and decarbonisation”.
Lord Deben (aka John Selwyn Gummer)
Lord Deben, known to those of us of a certain age as the Conservative minister John Selwyn Gummer when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, has for ten years been the Chair of the Climate Change Committee, set up under the Climate Change Act to advise the UK Government regarding its obligations under the Act. He is now stepping down, and Professor Piers Forster has been appointed as interim Chair of the Committee until a permanent replacement is appointed. Lord Deben has been a vociferous advocate of net zero policies, and I commented on an example of his interview style here noting his comment that:
Well just a moment, you can’t revise the targets, because the targets are in the law, and they can’t change the law unless the Committee on Climate Change gives them permission, and we’re not going to.
Unfortunately, I have found the website “They Work For You” to be less helpful with regard to those Parliamentarians who are in the Lords, and the House of Lords Register of Interests seemed somewhat opaque by comparison. Nevertheless enough is visible to spot another jet-setting lifestyle, in the cause of addressing climate change.
Visit to China, October 2010, to act as Joint Chairman of Chinese/Globe Climate Change Conference; travel and accommodation paid by Globe International
Visit to Brazil, February 2011, as Chairman of Globe International, to co-ordinate plans with Brazilian authorities for Rio+20; travel and accommodation paid by Globe International
Visit to China, February 2011, as follow-up to previous visit in connection with Chinese/Globe Climate Change Conference; travel and accommodation paid by Globe International
Visit to Brussels, May 2011, as Chairman of Globe International, to launch legislative study; travel and accommodation paid by Globe International
Visit to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 14-19 June 2012, as Chairman of Globe International, to host and take part in discussions for Rio+20; travel and accommodation paid by Globe International
Visit to Beijing, China, 17-20 April 2013, as President of Globe International, to sign the agreement between the Congress and the House of Representatives for the meeting of the Second World Summit of Legislators on climate change; travel and accommodation paid by Globe International
Visit to Mexico City and Pueblo, Mexico, 13 May 2013, as President of Globe International, to have meetings with Ministers and the Leader of the National People’s Congress on climate change
Visit to Toronto, Canada, 23-25 October 2013, to address Electricity Distributors Association Annual Executive Symposium; travel and accommodation paid by Electricity Distributors Association
Visit to Oslo, Norway, 30-31 October 2013, to address Statoil Offshore Wind Summit; travel and accommodation paid by Statoil
Visit to Mexico City, Mexico, 6-8 June 2014, as President of Globe International to attend the Second Globe World Summit of Legislators
Visit to Oslo, Norway, 18 June 2014, to address Transport and Environment – Measures and Policies (TEMPO) Final Conference; travel and expenses paid by TEMPO
Visit to Tokyo, 28 January – 2 February 2017, for meetings on climate change and speech on stranded assets; travel expenses met by Smith Institute, Oxford
Visit to New Zealand, 16-28 February 2017, for a programme of speeches on climate change in Universities of Wellington and Auckland and meetings with Government Ministers and Opposition leaders and addressing Blue Green Conference; travel expenses met by National Party of New Zealand
Lord Deben was for some time Chair of Veolia Limited, and the question of possible conflicts of interest was raised at the time of his appointment as Chair of the Climate Change Committee. An interesting letter about this matter was sent by Sir Robert Smith on behalf of the Energy and Climate Change Committee to Lord Deben on 9th July 2013, which contains this section:
…when we asked about your interests in the [sic] Veolia Water, you reassured us that its remit was not relevant to your role as Chair of the Committee on Climate Change. After the pre-appointment hearing, it came to our attention that Veolia Water had a role in grid connections and other energy related work. This fact was publicised on its website, and in the forward to its annual report, signed by you, in the same month as the hearing. You have highlighted that the part of Veolia water dealing with grid connections is a subsidiary and that you were not involved in commercial decisions about this area of work. DECC has detailed steps that you have taken to avoid any perceived conflict of interest. Nevertheless, it is disappointing that the full remit of Veolia Water was not disclosed to the Committee at the time of the pre-appointment hearing. We had specifically requested information about your interests before the hearing took place. It is of concern that the steps outlined in the enclosed Secretary of State’s letter were only taken after we had pursued this matter in the months following the publication of our report….
The matter was obviously resolved to the satisfaction of the Committee, as Lord Deben’s appointment was confirmed and so far as I can ascertain no further action was found to be necessary.
Sancroft International is among Lord Deben’s declared interests. As its website says:
The Rt. Hon John Gummer, Lord Deben, is the founder and Chairman of Sancroft International, a consultancy that advises both businesses and investors on all areas of Sustainability and ESG.
This role has not been without (possibly confected) controversy. As Energy Live News put it in 2019:
Lord Deben, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), has been hit by conflict of interest claims regarding the relationship between his government position and family-owned business.
A newspaper investigation alleges Sancroft International has been paid more than £600,000 from green businesses that could potentially profit from the Conservative peer’s advice to Ministers.
Rules dictate all MPs, peers and public officials must officially declare their outside earnings and interests – while Lord Deben’s position as the Chairman of the private firm had been announced, official records show he has not publicly declared any payments received from green firms.
He has denied any conflict of interest and said he had fully complied with disclosure rules, insisting the work his company undertook did not involve climate change issues.
However, the Daily Mail claims the firm has been paid by at least nine businesses and campaign groups involved in projects to cut greenhouse gases, including electric car battery producers, venture capital firms involved with solar projects and Drax, which receives around £700 million a year in government subsidies.
The Lords Commissioner for Standards opened an investigation into this matter, but found no evidence of wrongdoing, saying:
“…how Lord Deben and Sancroft might benefit from Lord Deben speaking in favour of a policy which might at some point benefit a minority aspect of Johnson Mattheys work is not made clear in the complaints or evidence…
…Having investigated the allegations and gathered the relevant facts, I do not consider Lord Deben’s interest in Sancroft or its clients to be relevant interests that required declaration.”
Last year Lord Deben’s interests were updated in the register to make it clear that Sancroft International advises Greencoat Capital Limited on sustainability. As Guido Fawkes noted shortly afterwards:
Greencoat Capital (now Schroders Greencoat) happen to describe themselves as “a specialist manager dedicated to the renewable energy infrastructure sector.”
But the interest has been fully declared, it is therefore transparent and within the rules, and it seems that there is no conflict of interest.
Conclusion
I have highlighted the activities of the three gentlemen above for no reason other than that they are among the most vociferous Parliamentarians advocating for net zero and criticising the Government (despite all being Conservatives) at the slightest sign of a slackening of the pace towards net zero.
All three have registered their interests as required; the system has worked as it is supposed to do, inasmuch as their interests are recorded and fully transparent. No laws have been broken. None of them have done anything wrong. No impropriety has taken place. All three have complied absolutely with the rules as they apply to them.
And yet I’m not happy. I think the rules should be changed. I leave it to you, dear reader, to contemplate whether or not you agree.
Climate Scepticism 
Astonishing…
Snouts in the trough or what!
No wonder they’ll try to keep the AGW hoax going as long as possible.
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Thanks for your research, Mark.
You seem to be getting value-for-money from your subscription to Masochists Anonymous. 😉
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Sir Alok and the elite goals of The Trilateral Commission-
that is not in our interest.
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MH: ‘That is why I have no problem with MPs receiving a decent salary. I don’t want the House of Commons to be full of under-performing MPs who aren’t up to the job.’
Since Simon de Montfort summoned the first Parliament at Westminster in 1265 (and from before that, Parliament’s origins lying in the 8th Century Saxon Witan and Moot) until 1911, its members (other than Crown Ministers) sat without expectation of remuneration—and we had far better MPs unpaid than ever since. Apart from Winston, who have we had since that compares to political titans like Burke and Mill, PMs such as Pitt (Younger), Peel, Palmerston and Salisbury?
Although Crown Ministers were paid (and handsomely too—the Ministerial Salaries factsheet from the HoC Information Office records the First Lord of the Treasury (PM) receiving £5k in 1830, which the BoE’s inflation calculator has equivalent to over £½m today), they had to be MPs first so barrier to entry remained (there were also far fewer than in today’s ever-expanding governmental leviathan).
Introducing salaries for MPs:
• turned a patriotic service into a mere job and get-rich-quick scheme
• removed the need for talent at least sufficient to maintain themselves
• turned Crown’s subjects into Parliament’s cash-cows.
It is because of paying MPs we have cringing embarrassments like Diane Abbott and David Lammy. Absent their taxpayer-funded salaries and expenses, people like that would be shining shoes or cleaning lavatories (and probably ineptly there too).
MH: ‘[D]o all MPs work as hard as they should?’
Do we want them to? Do we really want them beavering away, legislating and regulating, micro-managing every aspect of our existence? Outside of crises, MPs should be part-time. Like Plato’s ‘Ship of State’—the government should be a captain ensuring a steady course, not breathing down everyone’s necks and turning the ship upside down and inside out every 5 minutes.
MH: ‘[I]t’s not unreasonable to expect them to devote their whole time and attention to working as an MP.’
Even amidst crises, MPs should be part-time—that’s what the Cabinet is for, to take care of the daily running of government. The Defence Minister (formerly War Secretary) in combination with PM, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer should be able to handle most serious stuff without input from the MP for Worsley and Eccles South.
Did Britain generally, or Newport specifically, suffer when the latter’s MP was absent, in the Peninsula fighting Buonaparte’s armies? Did either Britain or Westminster constituency suffer for the absence of its MP, as he led daring expeditions against Buonaparte’s forces in the Med? If we can fight, and win, a major war all over the globe with MPs absent for extended periods for various reasons, including fighting in that war, then we can surely handle the day-to-day problems that peace brings with at least as many absent MPs.
And given the sheer incompetence and ignorance of the sorry lot embarrassing Parliament’s green benches for at least the past few decades, even those occupying the top jobs would be doing the country a favour with extended absences.
The last time the shower (of s—) really pulled the stops out was to pass the most draconian legislation in the history of these isles, shredding centuries of hard won liberties and turning our country into an open-air prison—for something little more than a bad flu (in terms of deaths from all causes per million, 2020 was the worst year since… 2003; and not as bad as the Hong Kong Flu epidemic of 1968–69).
MH: ‘a reasonable salary’? 2½ times UK median which, given their extremely generous expenses, is little more than pocket money? Giving this shower of perfect c—ts a single penny to share between all 650 of them is a penny too much. The only thing they should be receiving is long prison sentences for Malfeasance/Misfeasance/Nonfeasance in Public Office (and I suspect a serious investigation would see a few indicted for high treason).
Paying salaries to untalented people also discourages them from taking risks, knowing that being an MP is their only means of enjoying their privileged lifestyle; whereas an unpaid, independently wealthy MP will have far more political courage, losing his seat being less of a concern (it simply allowing him to focus on increasing his wealth). Similar to how it is said today that the only people who enjoy full freedom of speech are those with ‘f— you money’ as only they have no worries about being sacked.
Whenever I air the notion of returning to those unsalaried days, the first objection is always to being ruled by the rich, an idea abhorrent in our democratic-socialist West. However, while insisting it is better to be ruled by a man of means with ability and integrity than a worker with neither, it is possible we had at least as many ‘men of the people’ with unsalaried MPs as we do now. Browsing the MP biographies on the History of Parliament website turns up many an MP far from the ‘idle rich’ they are oft accused of being. E.g. William Adam (1751–1839) whose ‘precarious financial situation created by his father’s involvement in his uncle’s speculative building ventures put his political career under constant threat of disruption’. There was John Agnew (1759–1812) and James Alexander (1769–1848) who both made their fortunes in India(*). There was Matthew Wood (1768–1843), son of a serge maker and ‘at 14 apprenticed to a chemist … five years later he was a wholesale chemist’s traveller’—far from born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Granted that many others, perhaps most, started off life fairly well set up, but I have yet to find one that could be equated to today’s ‘trust fund babies’ with their ‘snowplough parents’; they all seem to have put in some hard graft, albeit usually in more congenial circumstances than a miner—although not always as in the period 1790–1820 ‘more than 400 Members at some stage served in the regular army, including Sir Thomas Picton, killed at Waterloo[, and a] further 100 Members served in the Royal Navy’. Many MPs combined Parliamentary careers with military ones, such as John Norris, who combined representing Rye (1708–22, 1734–49) and Portsmouth (1722–34) with a Royal Naval career, commanding operational cruises to the Baltic; and the aforementioned MPs fighting Buonaparte in the Peninsula and Med, respectively Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, and Admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane (inspiration for C.S. Forester’s Hornblower and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey).
(* This might provoke accusations of ‘imperialist’ ‘exploitation’—but at worst they could have been no worse than liberal icon Steve Jobs taking advantage of cheap, unregulated labour in his factories in China.)
Stop rewarding incompetence, cowardice and corruption. If you want better MPs, stop paying the swine.
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ScotchedEarth,
Thank you for the time and trouble you have taken to write such a detailed comment, and apologies for the fact WordPress dumped your comment into “pending”, where it stayed until I found it and released it. It doesn’t seem to like lots of links, for some reason.
Suffice it to say, I disagree profoundly with your take on this. You and I obviously share an interest in history (as does Chris Skidmore, of course, his excellent book “Bosworth” adorns my book shelves), but we have drawn very different conclusions from our study of it. My reading of history alerts me to the very low qualities of many MPs in bygone years, whose “elections” (by tiny numbers of people in pre-democracy days) were surrounded by corruption. Parliamentary life, too, was riddled with corruption in the past, all in the days before MPs were paid. Greed seems to have been a huge motivating factor, and it was arguably far worse then than it is now. I also think you undermine your argument to the effect that better quality will be attracted if the pay for the job isn’t the motivating factor, given that you refer to Prime Ministers who you regard as having been great ones (again, we may have to agree to differ to some extent) who received salaries which (as you point out, after allowing for inflation) were far in excess of a PM’s salary today.
And yes, I do want MPs to work full time. I may not want them micro-managing every aspect of life, but they don’t do that now. They nodded through the NPIs of lockdown and associated policies during the dark days of peak covid, and they nodded through Theresa May’s net zero statutory instrument, just as they are busy nodding through the dreadful Energy Bill. I would argue that we have too little debate regarding the big topics, not too much. Leaving the Cabinet to get on with it, largely without meaningful scrutiny, isn’t exactly going well, is it?
And there’s so much more to being a good MP than scrutinising legislation, important though that is. I want MPs who care about their constituencies and their constituents, and who will actively intervene on their behalf (and see it through and not give up after writing a couple of letters on House of Commons notepaper) following problems being brought to their attention. Playing at the job part-time simply isn’t good enough, IMO.
Although we disagree, I am grateful to you for putting an alternative point of view. I hope it might trigger something of a debate. After all, what we want from our MPs is a very important subject.
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By the way, the Guardian seems to be at its inconsistencies again. In my piece above, I drew attention to a recent Guardian article claiming that building companies have donated millions of pounds to Tory Party funds and have benefited to the tune of billions of pounds from “delays to low-carbon building regulations”. Yet today the Guardian reports this (in the article even, in contradictory fashion, referring again to that earlier claim):
“Building firms tell Sunak undoing green policies will hit housing investment
More than 100 leading companies urge PM to reinstate net zero measures to avoid hardship for many”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/07/building-firms-tell-sunak-undoing-green-policies-will-hit-housing-investment
So come on Guardian, which is it? Does the building industry want net zero regulations, or does it oppose them? Do they benefit from their delay, or does their delay also delay investment in building? Do they mean cheaper housing or more expensive housing? Make your flipping mind up.
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Been wrestling with WordPress for nearly a week without success (until this morning).
I’m with you Mark on several grounds. MPs need to be adequately paid and should devote themselves exclusively to MP work (voters should expect this as a bare minimum). Thus they should not be paid anything else, nor from any other source (other than legitimate and reasonable expenses).
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(Replying to MH @07 Oct 23 at 7:38 am)
MH, every complaint you make about our formerly unpaid MPs can be levelled (with interest) at our modern MPs but with the proviso that, unlike our earlier unpaid MPs, the modern lot cost us a fortune.
‘low quality’—compared to… just about every one of our 650 MPs? I provided a couple of illustrative examples, that not enough? That foul-mouthed and ever-so-Woke slattern Mhairi Black? The execrable Jess Phillips laughing about male suicide? Grant Shapps trying to kick off WW3 by announcing the deployment of British troops to Ukraine—which turned out to be bs anyway (if I’m going to die in a nuclear holocaust, can it be for a better reason than baseless off-the-cuff remarks by a moron who shouldn’t be in charge of a gerbil let alone our country’s defence?)? I can do pages and pages if you want.
‘elections … surrounded by corruption’? Increasingly the case in this country due to postal voting, esp. in Muslim areas (‘Import the Third World, become the Third World’, as the saying goes).
‘Parliamentary life, too, was riddled with corruption in the past, all in the days before MPs were paid.’ Just like now then. Except now they’re funded by us as well.
‘Greed seems to have been a huge motivating factor’ Just like now then. Except now they’re funded by us as well.
‘and it was arguably far worse then than it is now’ And arguably the Earth is flat, and Elvis is running a truckstop diner on a faraway planet (Douglas Adams knows). Everything’s arguable—the trick is proving it.
‘you undermine your argument … given that you refer to Prime Ministers … who received salaries … far in excess of a PM’s salary today.’ Are you suggesting that Pitt the Younger, whose last words were ‘My country! How I leave my country!’ only became an MP out of a desire that some day, maybe, possibly, maybe, he might one day make PM and earn that big salary? I’d really like some evidence for that. Along with evidence that Wellington, Derby, and the rest were only in it for the dollarinos.
That Crown Ministers were sometimes handsomely remunerated does not undermine my point as we don’t have the American system where someone can go straight to the top job and then appoint his Cabinet from his unelected mates; to be a British Minister at any level required them to be a Member of Parliament first, which meant they at least had to have talent sufficient to maintain themselves while either patiently waiting or actively manoeuvring to be called to the Ministry. That provided at least some measure of ability.
As for ‘“elections” (by tiny numbers of people in pre-democracy days)’, this is the petitio principii fallacy. I’m supposed to be shocked and embarrassed at ‘tiny numbers of people’ voting—question: So f—king what? What about the quality of life enjoyed by all, whether able to vote or not? Was their country turned into an open-air prison for a bad flu? No. It took universal democracy to do that.
‘Leaving the Cabinet to get on with it, largely without meaningful scrutiny, isn’t exactly going well, is it?’ A Cabinet of MPs resulting from a dysfunctional system of selection favoured by you.
‘I want MPs who care about their constituencies and their constituents, and who will actively intervene on their behalf’ As Gene Hunt (Life On Mars) said, ‘I wanna hump Britt Ekland, what are we gonna do?’ This is fantasy as long as people condone and promote a system of MP selection that is a proven and demonstrable failure, and one that guarantees the selection of low quality, corrupt and treasonous cowards who have no interest other than milking the system for their own benefit.
‘Playing at the job part-time simply isn’t good enough, IMO.’ And yet my MPs, extended absences and all, beat Buonaparte, fighting him from Portugal to Denmark, from the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean; while your full-time MPs can’t even impede the flood of illegal immigrants sailing across the Channel in sinking dinghies.
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ScotchedEarth,
You clearly feel strongly on the subject, but I would appreciate it if you dialled down the abuse levels. I have a pretty low opinion of many of the current occupants of Parliament, but I believe in keeping things civil.
The key difference between us (though there are clearly many differences) is that I live in 2023, not 1803. Unlike you (it seems) I do believe (for all its faults) in democracy, as did your hero Churchill. I profoundly resent the idea that some rich people should be able to lord it over the rest of us, without anyone voting for them, and without poor people being able to sit among them, in your fantasy Parliament of unpaid politicians. Yes, there is lots wrong with democracy in the UK of 2023 – an unelected House of Lords, for starters; the fact that the establishment still runs things quietly behind the scenes. I am no fan of Liz Truss, but her removal looks remarkably like an establishment coup. By all means, let’s talk about how to make things better, but we need to do so by looking forward, not harking endlessly back to the Napoleonic Wars.
By the way, the “quality of life for all” has improved massively since the introduction of democracy. My family in the early nineteenth century “enjoyed” extraordinarily long working hours in dangerous and unpleasant occupations, extraordinarily short life expectancies, and lived in overcrowded hovels. Many of the improvements since then have come about for lots of different reasons, including the success of capitalism (as tempered by necessary controls on its excesses), but a democratically elected Parliament has played its part. As for the idea that my ancestors’ 19th century MPs cared about the lives of their constituents – don’t make me laugh.
Admittedly many/most of our current crop of MPs seem determined to take the UK backwards in terms of living standards, energy security, etc, and that is what we spend much of our time here at Cliscep debating. But in the 21st century, assuming we can find someone with sense on the subject to vote for, we can vote for them. There was virtually nothing anyone could do in the profoundly undemocratic 19th century to gather together to improve their lot. In the first half of that century (a time for which you seem to have a lot of fondness) if they tried to do so, they might find their lives cut short at Peterloo, or they might be transported to Australia, assuming they weren’t put on trial (and possibly hanged) for “treason”.
In 21st century Britain life is complex, possibly needlessly so. But MPs are needed to help their constituents when all others fail them – perhaps in dealings with intransigent state officials, such as local authority Housing Officers, intransigent tax officials, or bumptious energy company staff, or whomever. You seem to think that there’s little point in MPs. I think they have a valuable role to play. I want them to be paid a reasonable salary for doing so, and I want them to be banned from working for and being paid by others, to make sure that they spend their time working for their constituents and not (perhaps) (ab)using their position to further the interests of those others who pay them rather than the interests of those who vote for them (and who vote against them, for that matter – they represent, or should represent, all of their constituents).
I appreciate Alan K’s comment and support. I should be interested to know what others think.
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Mark there are a few remaining problems. We would ask our most and best motivated people to become our MPs, in some instances to take up very insecure posts – either by voluntary retirement or by being outvoted in some future election. Pension arrangements must be secure but on the other hand not too rewarding for only short stints in-post. Remember also that MPs that are in possession of sensitive and/or valuable information must be prevented from monetising this information upon leaving.
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Alan, I broadly agree. I think it’s worth remembering (I alluded to this when I wrote my piece) that MPs receive a reasonable chunk of money on ceasing to be an MP, and unlike a normal redundancy situation, they receive this whether they are defeated at an election or whether they simply choose to stand down.
By the way, the recently updated Code of Conduct for MPs can be read here, if anyone is interested:
Click to access 1083.pdf
Perhaps I am simply naive. I wouldn’t want to be an MP. But if I did, I can think of only a handful of constituencies I would be interested in representing, and they would be constituencies where I lived for such a length of time in the past that I feel a strong affiliation to them, or the place where I live now. I find the practice of parachuting in candidates to constituencies with which they have no connection to be deeply depressing, since that implies (to my way of thinking) a greater desire on the part of the candidate to have a political career than to represent a place and people about whom they care.
Despite finding ScotchedEarth’s comments to be rather odd in some respects, I do, sadly, think that he has a point regarding the quality or nature of some of our MPs. I don’t want MPs to have jobs on the side, but I do want MPs to have experience of life, so that they have a real, rather than only a theoretical, understanding of how things work. I want them to be able to spot that a new law might backfire, thanks to the Law of Unintended Consequences. And thus I don’t want as MPs people who studied PPE at university, became advisers to an MP or even a Cabinet Minister (how can someone with no experience of life possibly offer meaningful or useful advice to a politician?), then were selected for a safe seat with which they have no connection for no better reason than that they are seen as a rising star by the party high-ups.
And so ScotchedEarth does make a very valid point, inasmuch as I don’t want my MPs to be people who are simply motivated by money or by the non-Parliamentary career prospects that go with being an MP, or which might follow on from the connections made while serving as an MP. I disagree with SCotchedEarth, though in regarding paying MPs as having caused a quality problem. I think the answer is to pay MPs well (but not excessively), to ban them from having paid outside interests while they are serving as an MP, and to ban them from taking up a position with an outside entity where their "inside" Parliamentary knowledge might help them to assist their new employers in "gaming the system" for at least 10 years after they cease to be an MP. With such rules in place we might then find that only people who wish to serve would seek to become MPs. Or ScotchedEarth might be right, and we might find that we are left with a complete dearth of talent. Who knows?
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Mark, you remind of the days of the Community Power groups – were they called something else before that? Can’t remember. We had a local group at that time, which I attended as a pleb who wanted to know what was going on and offer my tuppence worth. We had liaison with local cops, visits from council officers, presentations on development plans, etc.
[Aside: it was at one such that a council officer told me that our newly-planned bypass was not about housebuilding, it was all about reducing traffic in the city centre. That was a lie. The bypass has now been built, most of the ground it enclosed has either been built on or soon will be, and traffic in the city centre is measurably worse, not least because of all the new homes disgorging a car every morning.]
Our first chair was great – apolitical, dedicated, energetic. Alas the group was taking up too much of her time and she had to chuck it in. Then we got a new chair, who just happened to be a well-known local Labour activist. She was elected easily since most folk were Labour voters. [As was I at the time.] Chairing the local groups had become simply a step on the ladder to becoming a councillor. It ceased being apolitical and became the exact opposite.
The final straw came when we were informed that all the Community Power groups were going to be given a sum to spend on something local – £500 I think it was. So I and others dutifully turned up to that month’s meeting, thinking we were going to discuss what to spend this little cash on. But our Chair announced the money had already been earmarked for a pet project of hers. I raised an objection and wondered what the point of the meeting was. Others naturally agreed. But it was too late. The money could not be diverted, so said the Chair. I think she spent it on a bench.
I never went back.
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JIT this is a very sad story. “You never went back”. I would imagine that such groups desperately need people like your good self to try to keep them honest and interested in doing the right things.
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I highly recommend this article:
“On the Legal Challenge to the Rollback of ‘Net Zero’ Targets”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/10/09/on-the-legal-challenge-to-the-rollback-of-net-zero-targets/
I could have posted it in a number of places, but given the discussion on this thread about what we expect of our MPs, this seems as good a place as any. The tendencies described in the article (for Parliament to nod through primary legislation which grants sweeping powers to Ministers to proceed via barely-scrutinised secondary legislation) are highly on display here:
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And when you’ve had enough of them and vote them out at an election:
“MPs defeated at election to get help finding a new career”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67629470
I have to say that if an outgoing MP needs help to write a CV, then they shouldn’t have been an MP in the first place, given the skill-set needed to do the job properly. Also, don’t forget:
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“EU Green Deal author gets job for gas network
Diederik Samsom, a former top aide to Frans Timmermans, will join Gasunie supervisory board next month.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-green-deal-author-job-dutch-gas-network-gasunie-diederik-samsom-green-policymaking-fossil-fuels/
One of the architects of the European Green Deal has taken a job advising Dutch gas network operator Gasunie.
Diederik Samsom will join the company’s supervisory board on July 1, and is expected to take over as its chair, after holding a top post running climate policy in the European Commission since 2019.
He served as chief of staff to former EU climate boss Frans Timmermans and played a key role in designing the sweeping package of laws that set the course for the EU to reach net zero emissions by 2050…
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