Tuesday 8 June 2010

Austerity news

The cost to the taxpayer of saying goodbye to former Cornish MPs Julia Goldsworthy (defeated,) Colin Breed and Matthew Taylor (both retired) is at least £100,000. Add pension costs and the bill is considerable more. For each MP the payments are tax free for the first £30,000.

The minimum resettlement grant, paid to all departing MPs, is half the £64,766 basic annual salary. MPs with more than five years' service, or over the age of 50, can get more. The total resettlement pot for all departing MPs is today put at £10.4 million.

BBC Radio 4's "File On Four" programme (tonight, 8pm) reports how the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority plans eventually to examine resettlement grants as part of its post-expenses-scandal-stable-cleaning. The Taxpayers' Alliance, naturally, froths outrage.

MPs claim the resettlement grant is simply a form of redundancy payment (albeit considerably more generous than you're likely to find in most workplaces.)

Is there not a case for treating MPs as if they are on fixed-term contracts which end (and might be renewed, if the voters agree) after a maximum of five years? I'm told that in this age of belt-tightening and ever-thinner gruel, we are all in this together.

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