Tuesday, June 19, 2007

How much does each MP actually cost?

I love the figures like this, I'm not casting judgement upon whether they are good or bad to be honest, it's up to people to decide. I imagine there are some MPs that people will say don't do nearly enough work to justify the spending, and others that go above and beyond their relative cost.

This said, the House of Commons itself, including MPs and general running costs is expected to have cost the taxpayer £365,800,000 in 2006-07 (subject to final auditing etc). According to the Leader of the House, Jack Straw, this figure equates to a cost to the taxpayer of approximately £550,000 per member, per year.

Make of this what you will, I am merely the messenger.

6 comments:

Old BE said...

I think the number of MPs should be halved, and the money spent per member should also be halved.

Might instill a bit of rigour into them knowing they might lose their cushy jobs!

Chris Paul said...

If the number of MPs were halved the cost per MP would go up and the total cost - barring their own wages and allowances - would not even go down that much. Discuss.

"Less MPs" needs to be supported by a different argument than cost.

For example "any old MP could deal with the casework from 200,000 not 100,000 people with no increase in allowances or decrease in representation".

Cost of everything, value of nothing blah blah.

Athos said...

Damn, that's expensive. To think... one could buy a life peerage for what a single MP costs per year.

Old BE said...

CP - the "good" MPs probably do twice as much constituency work as "bad" ones, so cut out the chaff and you probably have the same amount of "work" being done with the added bonus that there is a bit more competition for places.

What's that old saying "if the answer is more politicians, then you're asking the wrong question"??

Chris Paul said...

Ed - you may be right about good/bad MPs etc. But 100,000 souls is already quite a lot to look after (versus 10,000 for Irish TDs). I certainly can't see much cost saving. And nor do I think that any shake out to half as many MPs would see the ones good at casework being returned. It will always be the ones good at getting selected!

Tom Mason said...

Ed sed: 'the "good" MPs probably do twice as much constituency work as "bad" ones, so cut out the chaff...'

Surely that's the business of the electorate? and no matter how many (or few) MPs there are there are always going to be some hard workers and some duffers?

Tom