MPs and taxpayers’ money

For Malaysia to avert the same problems, the Malaysian parliament must be transparent. An annual statement must be published to let the people know how much taxpayers’ money each of our parliamentarian is spending.

By Wan Saiful Wan Jan, The Malaysian Insider

The British parliament is in crisis because of the way MPs spend taxpayers’ money. According to the rule book, British MPs receive a salary, allowances, and they can also claim certain expenses. Details of MPs’ pay and allowances are openly available to the public.

The salary for British MPs comes to about £65,000 per annum.  After tax, their monthly salary come to just under £4000.

But they also receive around £100,000 staffing allowance, £22,000 incidental expenses allowance, and around £24,000 to cover additional costs associated with working away for home. Many MPs use this last category to pay for their “second home”. There are also a few more allowances that MPs here can get.

MPs who hold certain official positions receive more pay. For example the Prime Minister gets around £195,000 per year and cabinet ministers and the Speaker get a salary of £142,000 per year.

Opposition MPs holding certain official positions also get extra pay. The Leader of Opposition, for example, gets a salary equivalent to cabinet ministers, around £142,000 per year. The Chief Opposition Whip gets £104,000 a year.

Converting these numbers to ringgit would create a wrong impression. The reality is, these are not very big salaries.

But the crisis facing Britain now is not because of MPs’ salaries. It is caused by the amount of money they claims as expenses.

The whole thing started when the newspaper Daily Telegraph published a series of revelations about what expenses MPs are claiming. It has been almost a month since the first revelation, and the newspaper is not selective about which party or which politician to attack.

One of the earliest revelations was that of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He claimed £650 for food, £83 for telephone bills, £1,403 for cleaning, £90 for home repairs, and £108 for his satellite TV.

Another senior minister, the Chancellor Alistair Darling, was reported to have claimed £2,000 for furniture, another £2,000 for new carpets, and £300 per month for food. He also claimed £1,200 to pay for his council tax and mortgages.

The Daily Telegraph also reported that David Miliband, the foreign secretary, claimed for a £412 handcrafted chair, a goose-down duvet and chenille throw from Marks & Spencer. He also bought a £450 John Lewis sofa, and claimed £9,000 to do his kitchen, plus £89 for “household items”.

All these are not including the hundreds of thousand of pounds that MPs have claimed to pay for their second homes.

The expenses of more than 200 MPs have been disclosed so far, and it doesn’t look like it will stop very soon. Britain has 646 MPs in total.

The crisis has become so severe such that the Speaker was forced to announce his resignation from mid June. This is the first time for more than 300 years that a Speaker in the Westminster parliament was forced to step down.

Many are now saying that the only way to restore trust in the British parliament is for the Prime call a general election. Only a general election will allow unethical MPs to be booted out.

There are lessons that Malaysia can learn from Britain’s crisis.

First, the money being used by parliamentarians are, in reality, taxpayers’ money. It is we, the people, who are funding our politicians. It is therefore incumbent upon us to keep track of where and how our money is spent. To let politicians roam free spending our money is simply irresponsible.

For Malaysia to avert the same problems, the Malaysian parliament must be transparent. An annual statement must be published to let the people know how much taxpayers’ money each of our parliamentarian is spending.

Details of MPs’ salaries, allowances, expenses, and financial claims must clearly outlined. If Britons can know that the British Foreign Secretary claimed £89 for “household items”, we must also know the smallest amount of expenses incurred by any of our Malaysian MPs and ministers.

I think the British royal family is far more transparent that the British parliamentarians. Their accounts are published annually and can be easily accessed on their official website.

Perhaps one of the many Malaysian royal families can show leadership in this area, and publish their royal accounts first like what their British counterparts are doing.

The second lesson is how much the British MPs respect their rules and procedures.

Since the first week the crisis started, there have been calls for the Speaker to resign. Criticism towards the Speaker peaked in the second week. One of the MPs even started collect cross-party support for a motion of no confidence.

Despite the mounting dissatisfaction towards the Speaker, the MPs still behaved respectably. They followed the procedure and tradition, and did not behave like monkeys in the Chamber. They continue to obey the Speaker, and no motion was proposed without the Speaker’s permission. So long as he is in the chair, they respected his authority as the ultimate judge in the House.

MPs know that the people are watching them and one wrong step will destroy people’s trust in the system.

Another lesson is how important it is for political issues to be resolved in the Chamber. Despite the magnitude of the crisis, no MP suggested that the issue is brought to the courts, or even to the British monarch.

The British monarchy is respected worldwide because they put themselves above the day to day politics of the country. The British people understand this. No one has suggested that the monarchy should intervene.

Neither Queen Elizabeth nor the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, has indicated that they want to intervene in this crisis, despite it being one of the biggest crises of confidence faced by the country for decades. Perhaps it is their dignified silence that makes it rare for Britons to speak ill of the royal family.

* Wan Saiful Wan Jan is Director General of the Malaysia Think Tank (www.WauBebas.org ), and currently lives in London.