UPDATE: This post was based on a factually incorrect article. Andrew in the comments links to this; an MP's salary is about £64,000 and a Cabinet Minister's salary is an additional £79,000, i.e. a total of £143,000, in other words, if you were an MP last week and a Cabinet Minister this week, your gross salary has in fact, er, slightly more than doubled. I shall leave the rest of the original post as it was (or else some of the comments won't make sense).
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Excellent sleight of hand there by the Chuckle Brothers*.
Most of the papers, including the rabidly pro-Tory City AM, are peddling the line that "MINISTERS agreed to take a five per cent pay cut at their first cabinet meeting yesterday, suggesting the public sector is in for a round of tough pay settlements."
If you read the full article, you'll duly note that:
a) "Cabinet Ministers will see their pay fall by £7,082 to £134,565" and
b) "all ministers will continue to receive their £64,766 MPs salary on top of that, as well as generous expenses allowances and a gold-plated pension."
Let's assume that about half their MP's expenses are spent on things of purely private benefit to the MP concerned - because they are spent on things which have the sole purpose of being re-elected, stick on another third of base salary as pension benefits, and we'll find that last week these Ministers were on about £130,000 a year, and this week they are on £260,000 or so.
That looks suspiciously like a one hundred per cent pay rise to me, which is a tad different to a five per cent pay cut, n'est-ce pas?
*(c) Some blogger or other. I'd love to know who actually said it first.
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9 comments:
Oh give it a rest. What did Labour do? It is a start...
I've been wondering about this since the sweeping statement was made on yesterday's news without question or qualification.
It's a worrying whiff of hypocrisy to accompany the first Cabinet pronouncements; I'm sure public sector employees would be happier following their example of austerity if they too had an underlying basic salary that remained untouched.
'Same trough, new pigs' indeed!
Small questions - if you were promoted would you get a pay rise?
If you were expected to do two jobs at once, would you expect to be paid for both?
Maybe they'll change the 'two jobs' part of the system, but it would be difficult because each of them is an MP and represents a constituency.
The cut is a start. Can't imagine it would have happened under another party.
They're right, Mark. This comes across as an unjustified, sour, petty-minded whinge. Keep your powder dry; Ant and Dec will give you good targets soon enough.
Good post - Link love here:
http://www.westbournemouthukip.com/main.htm
Forgive me, but it Ministers have always been paid a salary on top of their MP's salary ...
and the expenses have been considerably curtailed by Wright and Kennedy ...
so how is this a doubling of pay?
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-information-office/m06.pdf
The ministerial salaries you mention, already include the MP's salary.
@ Andrew, thanks, I have updated.
@ Everybody else. Said is said. I'm not budging on this one. Had they halved their Ministerial bungs, fair play, I'd not have taken umbrage.
None of this diminished by one jot the delight I take from the previous bunch of incompetents being deprived a ministerial salary. Sadly they do get parachute payments and massive pensions, of course.
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