LETTER: MPs' salaries: market forces, professional parity and job cuts
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Your support makes all the difference.From Mr Stephen King
Sir: Andrew Marr makes as good a case as he could have for increasing parliamentary salaries. Nobody would question the need for the most able set of representatives that we can have. However, he has stretched his arguments too thinly and they are starting to tear.
The comparison of the salary of a columnist in the press with an MP is invalid, as the columnist will have to be seen to be good at their job in order to command a high salary, whereas the good and bad MP are paid the same.
The claim that ever higher salaries will make an MP lose touch with his or her constituents is important. They are almost certainly in the top 10 per cent of earners in the country. It is true that a good lawyer, doctor or director will earn more than an MP, but there are also professions where a talented person has very little chance of earning pounds 34,000, even after many years' service. They include nurses, teachers, actors and engineers like myself.
The greatest risk is that by raising their salaries, we will encourage yet more professional politicians and lawyers to go into Parliament. With the benefits of having friends already there, they will do better in the selection processes and eventually squeeze out the few teachers and engineers who do sit in the Commons.
This country is more than the political parties, the City and the lawyers' chambers. We need to broaden the knowledge of our representatives, not narrow it still further, if they are to govern wisely.
Yours faithfully,
Stephen King
London, SE25
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