Higher MPs' salaries: for and against

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/11/mps-salaries-higher

Version 0 of 1.

Zoe Williams: 'MPs are underpaid because they are cowards'

It is with a queasy heart that I weigh into a debate on the opposite side to the people I respect – the One Society, MP for Slough Fiona McTaggart – but I agree that MPs should get a pay rise, and a significant one. I don't think the increase needs to be held to average pay increases, and I don't think it needs to be held to some relatively small multiplier of median income. It needs to be comparable to similar jobs, and at the moment it isn't: nothing fancy, not CEO of British Gas; but a headmaster, a GP, a senior council official – roles of similar standing, requiring similar leadership skills and plausibility, jobs that if you do them properly take up more than 40 hours a week. Those people are better paid than MPs because they bargain collectively and they're not afraid of asserting their own value. You don't want a public sector stuffed with people who think they're not worth anything. You want it populated by those who think they're easily as good as anyone in the private sector, just more civically minded.

MPs are underpaid because they are cowards, constantly trying to curry favour with people who haven't given the matter much thought. I don't admire them for it; but I note the unwanted consequences, which are twofold. First, they make the money up in expenses and this gives them the air of people who will take the taxpayer for everything they can get. Second, the relatively low salary attracts into politics either people who have got a lot of other business interests – consultancies, board memberships, classic revolving-door stuff that corrupts political process – or who are independently wealthy. It's not the difference between 60k and 80k that leaves them unable to comprehend the budgetary constraints of a nurse or firefighter – it's the million quid trust fund, or 40 grand for four afternoons' work.

Furthermore, there are real problems with inequality of salary in this country, but MPs aren't one of them; the least unequal this country has ever been was in the 70s and early 80s, when those at the top earned four to six times as much as those in the middle. Now, it's 148 times. MPs don't come anywhere near this problem.

There is a lot of hostility to politicians, and a lot of it is grounded – they lie, they are unprincipled, they are patronising, they are simplistic, they are shortsighted … but to use their salaries as an unacknowledged punishment for their other shortcomings is childish. They're not going to become more principled, the less they are paid. They're just going to put more of their Kit Kats on expenses, which you could argue was less principled still.

• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Rupert Myers: 'They appear to be in it for the money'

Decades of growing wage inequality and the criminal scandal of MPs' expenses mean that advocates of an increase in the pay of backbenchers are arguing for greater pay inequality between the voters and their elected representatives at a time of rock-bottom public trust in politicians.

We love it when politicians experience the grind of life outside Westminster, like reading about the rail minister's commute to work, but while our politicians will never be like the rest of us, it's fair to demand that those who enter public service are doing so for the right reasons. Yes, they should receive somewhere to stay in London, a group of staff, and travel to their constituency, but the privileges of office shouldn't extend to the right to vote themselves increases of a level of pay which is already several times the average income. Nobody could realistically argue that they don't get enough to pay the bills.

Voters don't trust politicians because they appear to be in it for the money. This would be about the worst time in recent history to call for higher pay. If we were to reform political funding so that wealthy unions and individuals didn't hold so much sway, if lobbying were more transparent and controlled, then pay wouldn't be the issue that it is now.

You could argue that increasing their pay might mean that politicians aren't forced to sell their services, but you could equally argue that raising their income might attract those who are financially motivated. It isn't the pay that acts as a financial barrier to entry for prospective MPs of all hues, it's the cost of electioneering: reform of political finance is the way to solve this.

The central issue in the pay debate isn't quality, or representation, at the moment it's trust. I've no objection to millionaires leading the Labour and Conservative parties – we'd be foolish to criticise success and daft to demand that politicians be like the rest of us in every way – but it is reassuring to know that many politicians take a pay cut. If you don't see the value of public service and you're put off by the pay, don't quit your lucrative day job.

• Rupert Myers is a barrister