Scandals over MPs’ expenses are like Tube trains. Depending on where you stand, they may be frequent or less common, but you know that one will come along soon enough, before you get bored. The latest offender (or victim, depending on your perspective) is the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, once the great hope of the Corbynite Left, now somewhat marooned without a portfolio to exploit.
It was The Sun which paraded its civic thriftiness by highlighting that Rayner had spent £249 of public money on a pair of “personalised” AirPod wireless earphones in April 2020. These were but one purchase among many, as she had spent over £2,000 on office equipment and technology, including an iPad Pro, a smart keyboard and a “velvet” chair. The earphones, however, were deemed to be particularly egregious, and The Sun noted sniffily that “other Bluetooth headphones are available on Amazon for £8”.
There will be some people who think this is prima facie appalling largesse, elected representatives making free with taxpayers’ money to avail themselves of luxuries they should properly pay for themselves. A spokesman for the increasingly splenetic Taxpayers’ Alliance noted that this “will no doubt be… ‘within the rules’”, but added that “MPs should be asking themselves if it was necessary when millions of Brits may face unemployment”.
At this point it might help to recall some facts. The basic salary of a backbench member of parliament is £81,932. This is set by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA). In addition, MPs may reclaim expenses related to their parliamentary duties, particularly office costs, in a scheme administered by IPSA. Last year, in response to the new working practices imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, IPSA authorised MPs to claim an additional sum of up to £10,000.
We can conclude various things from this. Firstly, Rayner was within – well within – the additional spending limit when she purchased an array of computer equipment to help her work remotely. This may well reflect that she already owned much of the kit necessary: most MPs work from iPads already, especially those who sit on select committees, the paperwork for which is distributed electronically.
Secondly, there is no suggestion that this spending was in any way improper: it was claimed in accordance with an IPSA-authorised scheme and the reimbursement was approved by IPSA. Again, it is worth saying that IPSA is, as its name suggests, an independent organisation. It is a statutory body led by an independent chair, chief executive and board, and is not part of the House of Commons.
Why did the spending generate headlines, then? Journalists know that, nearly 15 years after the expenses scandal which was uncovered by The Daily Telegraph, the simple phrase “MPs’ expenses” is enough to attract attention and either clicks or purchases of a physical newspaper. Sleaze sells. So does the suggestion of sleaze. Rayner is also a relatively high-profile scalp to claim, as Labour deputy leader, and she had been unwise enough to criticise the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, for his use of an expensive Ember 2 travel mug (RRP £180), a gift from his wife, from which to drink his coffee. Clearly, Nemesis, the dark-faced goddess, was watching Rayner’s embrace of hubris, and struck.
I worked in the House of Commons for more than ten years, and the expenses scandal is burned into my memory. It was a reckoning for greedy and careless MPs, and the Commons’ authorities, from Speaker Martin down, handled it badly. Responses to the media were defensive, reluctant and occasionally drenched in victimhood. In the end, however, the result was the right one: salaries and expenses were removed from the control of the house, and policed instead by an independent body.
Yet here we are, arguing about a £249 pair of earphones. There seems to me only one valid argument against what Rayner did, which is that some items of technology should be paid for by MPs themselves from their reasonable salary of £80,000. I say “reasonable” deliberately: it is more than a nurse, a firefighter or all but a senior police officer earns; but then it is less than a senior GP or headteacher. In major private sector professions, it would unremarkable.
If an MP should pay for some of his or her office equipment from salary, how much? Remember that MPs are effectively 650 small businesses, with staff employed across (usually) two offices. It would seem unreasonable to expect them to foot the bill for every office expense, as £80,000 would disappear rather quickly, so there should, surely, be some public money involved. How much? Where is the line drawn?
The critical issue exposed here, though, is that we are unrealistic and adolescent in our approach to what we pay our legislators. £80,000 is a comfortable salary, but we expect MPs to govern the country, or else hold those who do to account. That is an important job, and just as it has grave consequences so it should attract an appropriate salary. Senators and representatives in the US, who have fewer functions and sit far less than MPs, earn $174,000 (roughly £126,000) and have much larger staffs. German, Italian and Austrian legislators all command higher salaries.
Parliament should attract the best and brightest. We want accomplished, talented, learned, experienced and empathetic representatives. As things stand, anyone successful in a private sector career would likely take a considerable reduction in salary to become an MP, as would some senior public sector workers. Is that what we want? Or should we, perhaps, be grown-up, apply a sense of proportion and realise that, on a national scale, the remuneration of MPs is a very small amount of money, but one which, if increased slightly, might attract better Members?
We want the best, but we want the cheapest. We begrudge spending of a few hundred pounds, yet we criticise the people we elect when they are, as many are, patently out of their depth. We want the best of all possible worlds, and that’s something we usually leave behind in childhood. Let’s grow up, raise our focus from the minutiae, and pay good people well.
