From an article by Dave Nellist recently published by ‘Coventry Advertiser’. The Advertiser is available free from garages and supermarkets throughout Coventry.
What are politicians worth? Perhaps nothing in recent times has brought down lower the standing of politicians in general, and MPs in particular, than the last year or so’s scandal of hundreds of dodgy expenses claims. The 2010 election could see a record number of MPs retiring, and for many the expenses scandal will have been the catalyst.
People have been rightly angry at the public being asked to pay for everything from MP’s duck ponds to X-rated videos. Outrage has followed the exposure as to how MPs ‘flipped’ second homes to get the taxpayer to renovate them, or evaded capital gains tax when selling those ‘second ‘ homes. The papers relish stories about some desperate soul working for a few hundred pounds on the side whilst on benefits and demand prosecution and even imprisonment. So far, MPs, some of whom have used the system to gain thousands if not tens of thousands of pounds, appear to be getting off lightly.
Recent revelations have illustrated a perhaps even more corrosive tendency in national politics - using ministerial experience to gain lucrative private, second incomes.
Channel 4's Dispatches programme last month exposed ex-ministers trying to get up to £5000 a day as 'consultants' to what turned out to be a fictitious company. But in fact well over 40 ex-government ministers over the last 13 years have succeeded in just that, getting thousands of pounds a year on top of their MP’s wage of £65,000.
According to a report researched by an Independent journalist, Patricia Hewitt, the ex-Health Secretary, for example, and one of those in the Dispatches sting, already gets, on top of her MP’s wage, £55,000 a year from private hospital and health care group Cinven, £45,000 a year from AllianceBoots, and £60,000 a year from BT. All of those firms - and hundreds of others hiring MPs like taxis - clearly hope to get more business and more profit out public services trading on the MPs’ connections.
But what do we get? It's obviously not a full-time job for some of those MPs if they can work for several private companies at the same time. And what about the morality of MPs in charge of public services, built up with public money, quietly taking tens of thousands of pounds from companies seeking to take over, for profit, the running of those services.
I think the stables need a good clear out. There should be some new rules. MPs should live in the areas they represent, preferably be drawn from those areas in the first place. They should have one job, that of representing the people in their constituency, with no consultancies or directorships on top. And if, instead of being insulated and isolated from most people's problems, they had to live on the same wage, holidays and conditions that the majority of ordinary people do, perhaps their outlooks would be closer to the electorate who put them there in the first place.
Without such fundamental reform, even though the next Parliament is likely to have more new MPs in it than any other possibly for 60 years, the same pressures and temptations will undoubtedly will lure the next generation of MPs just like the last.
Directorships and other jobs on top are a disgrace. Directorships corruppt politics. You only have to look at the Tories in the 1980's and 1990's with the vast sale of state assetts to look at all the dorectorships that came out of that to realise why politics so badly needs cleaning up.
Look at the directorships in the energy firms, look at the directorships in rail, transport and private medical firms. If these are anyhting to go by, we must sort this out now!!.