Strayside Sunday: Pay MPs more and ban outside interests

Last updated Aug 23, 2020

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party.

What are we to make of this weeks’ news that two Conservative MP’s and former cabinet ministers, Sajid Javid, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Ripon’s own Julian Smith, the former Norther Ireland Secretary, are both supplementing their income to the combined tune of almost a half a million pounds. This from “interests” beyond the walls of the Palace of Westminster? Mr. Javid is to work for the American bankers JP Morgan, for a reported salary of £400,000. Mr. Smith is set to work for a company called Ryse Hydrogen Limited and, as the register of member’s interests states, will provide 20 hours advice annually for the princely sum of £60,000, a billable rate of a cool £3,000 per hour. How do you like those apples?

Before I go on I should point out that both Javid and Smith asked for, and received, advice on the propriety of their new positions from the government’s Advisory Committee on Business Interests. Both sinecures were approved by the committee, led by former Conservative Cabinet Minister and professional Yorkshireman, Eric (now Baron) Pickles. In short, Javid and Smith played by the parliamentary rule book and their commercial actions and activities have been given a clean bill of health. Well that’s ok then. But it isn’t really, is it? Not now, not ever.

Let’s first look at the numbers. The salary of a Member of the United Kingdom Parliament is £81,932. None too shabby when one considers that the average full-time salary in the UK is £36,611. We pay MPs more than twice the average wage to exercise their duties – and I contend they are duties – as public servants. Given they ask for our vote and seek our trust at election, isn’t full-time working the least we can expect from them in return? I think so and that it is fair to demand it. I believe that MPs should not be allowed outside interests, however my view is that we don’t actually pay MPs enough to attract individuals of a calibre to deliver good government.

Most of our current crop of MPs seem like intellectual pygmies in comparison to the politicians we grew up with and that polls show we respected a great deal more than today’s lot. Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke for the blues; Harold Wilson, Barbara Castle, Dennis Healey for the reds; and Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Shirley Williams for the yellows. Giants all.

Being an MP was an entirely different proposition then of course: Far greater power was vested in local government, meaning that the volume of business conducted in Westminster was much less than it is today, constituency mailboxes could be dealt with (in written hand) in one good sitting per week, and the demands of the media and social media were not 24/7. Our politics was better because of it and our politicians were unambiguously superior. But nostalgia for the good old days will not a significant improvement make.

What do we need to do to make things better? Let’s say that we paid MPs a salary of £150,000 per annum and that outside interests are, in-turn, banned. By way of comparison and perspective, the basic pay for an NHS consultant (a Doctor with 5 years of medical school training and then another 8 years of on the job experience) tops out at £107,688. With bonuses known as Clinical Excellence Awards consultants pay nears the £150,000. This places them just below the average UK Chief Executive, who makes £156,000 per year. My argument, not original, is that increasing MPs pay will attract a much better quality of potential candidate and that politics can once again become one of the respected professions. In my view there should also be a lower age limit on parliamentarians, say 30 years old, so that they have to bring several years-worth of real-world experience into their role as elected representatives. I would create too an independent public HR body to vet potential parliamentary candidates of all parties for their suitability for the profession.

When one is recruited to any paid position of employment these days, expert interviews are held, salary benchmarking is conducted, reference checks are made, and personality tests are assessed – especially if the process is handled by a professional headhunting or recruitment agency. Which brings me back to the Right Honourable Julian Smith. Before he entered parliament Mr. Smith founded and ran a successful recruiting company. I doubt very much that he achieved a billable rate of £3,000 an hour for any of the candidates he placed.

Again let’s place this in perspective; a leading London commercial “silk” (a barrister appointed Queen’s Counsel; “Her Majesty’s Counsel Learned in Law”), of which there are very few, following 20 years of practice and an ascent to the very pinnacle of their profession, might, just might, be able to bill their multi-national corporate clients up to £2,000 per hour. I cannot, in any view, see how Mr. Smith can justify £3,000 an hour for the advice he is giving to a private company to his Ripon constituents (and, for that matter, to himself). It would be good to hear from Mr. Smith precisely the kind of advice he is to provide for such riches. It looks just awful.

With behaviour like this the Conservative Party is in grave danger of appearing (again) to harness the worst excesses of “the market” to fill its boots, rather than focussing on the now immense twin tasks of rebuilding our nation’s shattered economy and delivering the much vaunted “levelling up” agenda. This, by the way, at a time when competence and empathy seem in terribly short supply (think Robert Jenrick and his planning fiasco and; see also Gavin Williamson’s exam results debacle). When I worked for the party our obsession was to lose the tag of being “the nasty party.” If the current tone-deaf behaviour of its cabinet members continues it won’t be long before we regain that most unwelcome moniker.

And talking of tone deaf, what of the handling by Harrogate Borough Council of its plans to close James Street (the town’s main shopping thoroughfare) to traffic? Sara Ferguson, the acting chair of Harrogate Business Improvement District, felt moved this week to call out the fact that the council appears to have decided unilaterally on the pedestrianisation of James Street. The council had asked the BID to canvass opinion among local business about the plan and, in so doing, the BID found that two thirds of businesses on the street are against full pedestrianisation. However, with more than a whiff of fait accompli it seems that the council had no intention of waiting to hear the views of local business leaders and had already put in a request to North Yorkshire County Council to close the street for “safety and social distancing measures” (a measure since backed by NYCC to come into effect as early as next month). Through bull-headed incompetence Harrogate Borough Council, much like the United Kingdom government, is testing our patience and goodwill to the limit.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.