Clocking in at the Commons

So MPs could be offered performance related pay.

Not a bad idea, you might think. After all, they are our servants and our representatives – if they want public money, they should be made to work for it, right?

Well, yes and no. There is something very wrong with the way our country is run if the only way we can convince our politicians to do any work is to pay them extra to turn up. I think the government may have lost sight of what their expenses are actually supposed to be for.

The trouble is, although being in Westminster to take part in the political process is an important part of an MP’s job, so is working in their constituencies to ensure they are properly representing the people who have elected them.

Striking this balance is bound to be harder and more expensive for those MPs who represent areas furthest away from Westminster. To do their jobs properly, MPs from these more distant constituencies will probably not be able to turn up to the House of Commons as often, yet paradoxically will need more money to do so, than their contemporaries based in London. This is inevitable.

Yet the government is suggesting paying the most money to those MPs who require the least to do their jobs. I wonder what Gordon Brown’s constituents in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath would have to say about that.

And all this is quite apart from the fact that we deserve to know how public money is spent. MPs need enough money to be able to fulfil their roles – which can vary wildly according to both geography and their other commitments, some of which may have been factors in the electorate’s decision to vote for them – but that money should be accounted for.

This policy proposal betrays a deep-seated disillusionment with politics and those who practice it, and what’s more, it is coming from the government itself. The only corruption-proof system they can seem to come up with is one in which MPs have to physically clock in and clock out to prove they are doing what they have been elected to do.

Nobody trusts politicians these days. They don’t even seem to trust themselves.