My argument in The Times (November 5) for increasing MP's salaries. Expecting very little support but it needs to be said...

1. To attract better politicians, we must pay more
The Times
5 November 2012
Just before the 2010 election, I chaired a debate on behalf of
Barnardo’s between Ed Balls, David Willetts and David Laws.
Memories of the expenses scandal were still raw, and when the
question of MPs’ pay was brought up there was little sympathy
from the floor for the idea that MPs might be underpaid. But in
summing up the debate, I asked the audience whether they
believed that a salary of a little over £60,000 would continue to
attract MPs of the calibre of our three speakers: Balls, a Kennedy
Scholar at Harvard before he was 25, Willetts, the head of the
Treasury’s Monetary Policy Division at 26 and Laws, a vice
president at JP Morgan at 22.
“No Shame MacShane” — as TheSun dubbed Denis MacShane,
who resigned as an MP last week after he was found to have
abused the expenses system — will have given encouragement to
those who already believe that MPs are cosseted. The Independent
Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) reported in July that it
found little support for the notion that MPs were inadequately
rewarded. Members of the public thought MPs were paid about
£78,000 but believed they should be paid only £54,000.
Of course, the current salary of £65,000 is much higher than the
UK average. But it is much lower than the sort of salaries that most
current and potential MPs could command. An acquaintance of
mine, a young, talented local councillor, has just abandoned her
ambition of entering Parliament. She has a family and, as she
observed to me, salaries paid to many of her own council officials
dwarf an MP’s pay. She’s right. And although it’s true that MPs
earn three times as much as a new nurse, they earn less, often
much less, than a director of nursing.
I know of a number of MPs who have been asked if they might be
interested in becoming chief executive of the NSPCC. Selfishly, I
hope that at least one of them, who makes a consistently well-
informed and non-partisan contribution on childrens’ issues,
declines and stays in Parliament. But that this charity would

2. double his pay might just sway him.
The unpopular truth is that MPs need to be paid a lot more. The
issue, as Sir Ian Kennedy, Chair of Ipsa, has said “has been
ducked, dodged or fudged to meet the political whim of the
moment”. The consequences can be seen in the deteriorating
quality of select committees over recent years.
We need to persuade more outstanding individuals to stand for
Parliament. For a job that offers little security and exposes
individuals to persistent scrutiny of everything they do, £65,000 is
simply not enough.
Martin Narey is a former chief executive of Barnardo’s and Permanent
Secretary at the Home Office