by Steven Forde, Westminster Correspondent for the Daily RantAn influential committee of doctors has slammed the pay deal granted to MPs as offering poor value to the taxpayer. MPs earn 250000 a year* yet constituents cannot visit them in their surgeries on a Saturday morning or in the evening. Despite record pay rises (voted for by themselves) they have failed to make themselves more available. Changes to their contract in recent years have seen a dramatic reduction in OOH (out of hours) sittings in the Commons yet their salaries have risen at the same time. The committee was dismissive of claims that the reduction in OOH was to make the job more family friendly.
The doctors were also highly critical of the long holidays that MPs take. They sit in parliament for only 208 days a year, and don't work weekends. A spokesman for the BMA (British MPs' Association) claimed that much of the remaining time was spent dealing with "administrative" duties in their constituencies, but the committee suspected that it was more likely that they spent it doing private practice as paid advisors and company directors. The gold plated pension scheme, which sees MPs retiring on full pensions after only 20 years' service, was also felt to be a further unnecessary contribution to their excessive remuneration.
*the sum of the basic salary of an MP and the highest expense claim of any MP last year is £245698, but why not round it up to 250000, since that sounds much more dramatic, and not bother to mention that actually, most MPs don't claim this much, and they don't spend all of it on themselves.
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7 comments:
Doctors also expressed concern over the self-regulation of MPs which was demonstrably failing to protect the public interest. Ministers who had clearly breached the professional code of conduct- for example by failing to declare conflicts of interest or by having sexual relations with subordinates- were allowed to continue practising without any sanction.
This was posted last week on DNUK by a consultant anaesthetist. Does that mean he is one of the Rant team or have you just nicked it?
Strike!
Dr Ray
We have the author's permission to post - the server was playing up last night so I haven't been able to attribute it until this morning.
We approached him for permission to reproduce it here as we enjoyed it so much.
Long Winded doc - nice addendum!
slighty unrelated but what has happened to your blogosphere colleague, Dr Crippen? You lot talk, don't you? We need him firing away..
MPs earn 250000 a year*...
*the sum of the basic salary of an MP and the highest expense claim of any MP last year is £245698
Ah. I see. Then we can also say that doctors earn 250,000 a year. (Don't you mean 'are paid...'?)
Very Good post.
Mind you, even if Doctors earn £250 000 per year, at least they are worth that money. More than most polititions are worth.
Always makes me smile that they give themselves huge pay rises. Did any of the Doctor Rant team hear the one about the Nurses getting a 1.9% pay rise?
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