| DanaC |
03-04-2008 07:02 AM |
Wow. We currently have a major hoohah over MP's salaries and expenses (some of them are as high as a combined 180K!, for their salary (a little over 60k and their expenses for running their constituency office and if from the provinces a flat in London, plus communications allowance) and the fact that one of them paid about 40k to his son as a 'researcher' salary whilst he was actually in full time education.
Ministers get, in addition to their £60k salary different amounts according to position held (bear in mind the expenses side of things is to run an office and pay their staff) so, the Prime Minister gets a total of £189k as his salary, plus he gets the usual expense allowance which is subject to scrutiny to ensure it is going on actual expenses (wages for staff, rental for office space, office materials etc). So, the person who runs this country is paid less than £200k per year in salary.
Pensions for Members of parliament are contributions based and accrue at (I think) 1/40th of salary with a 6% of salary contribution. It is a voluntary sheme, like any employee pension.
People complain like hell about what our MPs and ministers get paid, but actually compared to many countries they don;t get paid so much. Of course they can usualy make a decent amount of money on speaking tours and books if they've been in the public eye (Blair has made about 5 mill I think). but in terms of the cost to the public purse it ain't much compared to many.
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