Numerology: How to make MP pay rises look very small
In March 2008, before the MP Expenses scandal had been broken into the wider knowledge of the public, even though some of us were writing about it (Hem-Hem!), a research paper (08/31) was published by the House of Commons to give background context to the debate around members’ pay.
As you can see, the scale starts in 1997.
Having checked back, the same starting point was for the corresponding salary graph in:
You have to go back to 2001 (RESEARCH PAPER 01/87 from November 2001) before the graph is not used, being omitted entirely, but the data table still starts from 1997.
There is a slight difference if this graph had been started in 1996, which can be seen if you take a longer term trend:
I’m not quite so cynical as to suggest that this is deliberate misrepresentation, as there was a sgnificant change in 1997 to have MPs’ basic salaries set in relation to Senior Civil Servants – in my view they should be fixed at something like the 90th percentile of income in the country.
But I’d certainly call the chosen starting point “convenient”, and likely to reinforce a view among MPs that they deserved better – especially as there was such an influx of new MPs in 1997.
In hindsight it was a bad decision.
Categories: All WW, Comment, News - Current Affairs, Number Crunching, Parliaments
