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Telegraph

Old-fashioned MPs

Sir – Are MPs harder working than they were in the Fifties, Sixties or Seventies? My husband, Richard Wood, later Lord Holderness, elected in 1950, was paid a small salary, received a first-class railway ticket to and from London and his constituency and nothing else. He paid for his accommodation in London for some years, his stationery and stamps as well. There was no secretarial allowance and I did this work. He had no research assistants and no allowance for a wife’s travel. The House did not meet until 2.30pm and the mornings were free for other work: it was felt then that it was of value in having MPs with outside experience.

Though he was an MP for 29 years and in the Government for 13 years, my widow’s pension from this is £10,107 a year before tax. I do not complain but I am astounded at the cheek of MPs who expect large salaries, massive expenses and free housing.

Must we have people representing us who are so greedy and who it seems are totally out of touch with how the majority of their constituents live?

Lady Holderness, Windsor, Berks

Sir – The demand for payment of £100,000 a year for MPs in addition to generous expenses allowances is absurd, but being a MP should not be regarded as a job at all.

In happier times membership was regarded as an honourable form of public service by persons who had made a mark in the world and brought a range of experience to politics. Now political activity is seen as an end in itself, and increasingly the majority of MPs enter Parliament without any experience of life in the real world.

The result can be seen in the dismal quality of debates, in the failure to hold an overweening executive to account and in the domination of personal self-interest. Should the House of Lords become an elected chamber, it will soon become as bad.

Kenneth Stern, London W2

The third is written by Helen Szamuely see Eureferendum 

a taster

So, this letter is to them all, ladies and gentlemen, Members of the House of Commons!

I note in this morning’s newspaper that you have so far forgotten the honour that is being a Member of the House of Commons is as to complain, not for the first time, about your remuneration. Apparently, the basic salary of £60,277 for a back-bencher with an average allowance of £134,000 is insufficient for your individual needs or for the position you seek to occupy in society. And that is not reckoning the assured high pension out of public funds at a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer has ensured that other pension funds get ever lower.

It seems that you feel that your salaries have fallen behind those of people in comparable occupation. Dear me. What comparable occupations would those be? I note that one MP, who had enough shame to want to remain anonymous, has groused that he was earning considerably less than the local GP.