MEMBERS of Parliament will receive an 11% pay rise following the publication of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority recommendations later on this week
The rise will take place after the 2015 general election and will take pay to £74,000 a year, with parliamentary expenses to be added on. The pay rise will cost the taxpayer £4.6m.
The setting of MPs’ pay by an independent committee was a clever move since it allows the government to declare that MPs’ pay is ‘a matter for Ipsa’, while adding that: ‘The government has submitted its views to Ipsa as part of the body’s consultation on MPs’ pay.
‘It made it clear that, while Ipsa is an independent body set up by Parliament, in future decisions on remuneration it expects Ipsa to take into account the government’s wider approach to public service pay and pensions.
‘We believe that the cost of politics should be going down, not up.’
The government has the same line on bankers’ bonuses which it also feels should be going down not up.
There, as well, in real life, the bonuses of the banking class (the class that caused the 2008 financial collapse and the collapse in production that followed) are rising and getting bigger and bigger.
Ipsa is insisting that its pay award for MPs is taking into account the government’s austerity programme.
It stated that it had looked at increasing the current salary of £66,396 to anywhere between £73,365 and £83,430, but opted for a lower figure ‘in recognition of the current difficult economic circumstances’. Its line is that MPs too are making a sacrifice!
In fact, millions of workers, despite the massive cost of living increases, have not had a pay rise for years.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just found that more working households are living in poverty in the UK than non-working ones – for the first time ever the charity has reported that low pay rules.
Just over half of the 13 million people in poverty – surviving on less than 60% of the national median (middle) income – were from working families, it said.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation continued that low pay and part-time work had prompted an unprecedented fall in living standards.
The theme of the report, in a Britain where zero-hours contracts are the vogue and where millions are in debt to pay-day loan companies, is that, ‘Millions of people are moving in and out of work but rarely out of poverty.’
The report continues that the number of people in low-paid jobs had risen, with average incomes falling by 8% since their peak in 2008. It insists, ‘That the majority of poor people should now be in a job is not wholly surprising – the number of working poor has steadily been rising for years,’ while, ‘In recent years the weak economy has seen an increase in part-time working and often low, stagnating wages, which has exacerbated the problem.’
Julia Unwin, Chief Executive of JRF, said: ‘We have a labour market that lacks pay and protection, with jobs offering precious little security and paltry wages that are insufficient to make ends meet.
‘While a recovery may be gathering momentum in the statistics and official forecasts, for those at the bottom, improving pay and prospects remain a mirage.’
There will be a massive wave of anger at the MPs’ 11% pay hike at a time when millions are suffering and cannot even afford to feed and provide heat for their families. The fact that such a rise is being presented as being in line with ‘austerity policies’ will make millions furious.
The trade union bureaucrats of the TUC, who have allowed this situation of permanent wage freezing to develop, with millions at the mercy of part-time zero-hours contracts, and pay-day loans companies, must be called to order by their members.
For almost two years, the TUC General Council has been studying the practicalities of calling a general strike.
Its last September Conference carried a motion that the general strike and its practicalities should remain on the TUC agenda.
This leisurely attitude of the TUC contrasts with the desperate plight of the millions of poor and needy and with the energy that Osborne and Cameron are displaying as they work to return society to pre-1948, that is before the introduction of the Welfare State by the Attlee government.
Workers must demand that the 11% MPs’ pay rise, that is deemed to be in line with government policies by IPSA, must be adopted as the key demand of the TUC, for an 11 per cent pay rise all round!
Further, that studying the practicalities of a general strike must give way to its immediate organisation. A general strike must be called by the TUC to achieve an 11 per cent pay rise for all, and to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
Leaders who will not fight for this policy must be sacked.
