Sir, MPs must now take their medicine, accept Sir Christopher Kelly’s recommendations in full and pay up as Sir Thomas Legg demands (“Kelly consigns angry MPs to lonely lives in one-bed flats”, report, Nov 5). None of this retribution is pretty, but it is justified by MPs’ manifold past misdemeanours in exploiting a lax system of controls over their expenses claims.

MPs may weep and wail at the draconian rules they now face. But they are where they are as a result of years of political cowardice and hypocrisy by successive prime ministers and party politicians in denying MPs and ministers properly justified pay increases recommended by the independent Senior Salaries Review Body. It always looked good to turn the increases down but then turn a blind eye to the continuing exploitation of the expenses system and ignore proposals for tightening it up, no doubt in the belief that no one would notice.

We did notice. The outcome has been wholly predictable, and predicted, for years.

However, now is the time to move on. Once the new expenses regime is in place and the last repayment made (ie, in the first year of the next Parliament) there should be a substantial increase in MPs’ pay no matter what the “court of public opinion” or tabloid headlines may say. MPs and ministers have fallen way behind their job-weight peers in both the public and private sectors. An MP is paid today only half the top of a headteacher’s pay scale in London or two-thirds the pay of a GP. We want the best professional headteachers to ensure that our children get a good education and we want the best doctors who will look after our ills: that is what it takes to recruit and keep them.

We need the best MPs, although ideally a lot fewer of them — 450 should do it — but we need good- quality people, capable of meeting the policy challenges of our complex society, of producing legislation that is coherent, thought-out and considered with care, and of holding the Executive better to account. That, too, is going to require the right rate for the job, and today that will not be far short of £100,000. So the policy objective should be fewer but better: that means paying the right price, not settling for shoddy goods in the bargain-basement.

Sir John Baker
Former chairman, Senior Salaries Review Body

Sir, MEPs are paid far more than their UK equivalents and have an extremely lax expenses regime that will probably never be reformed because these politicians do not face day-to-day media barrages.

Europe now becomes an increasingly attractive option for the politically ambitious.

Professor J. R. Shackleton
Dean, Royal Docks Business School, University of East London

Sir, MPs living in and around London who are “lucky” enough to fall just outside the 60-minute commuting zone should choose their words carefully over the coming weeks. The many thousands of their electorate, who have to travel in and out of London at their own expense without a taxpayer to feed them and pay for their hotel, may start to look for candidates living in the real world at the next general election.

Steve Higgins
Ramsgate, Kent

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