THE UNIONIST PARTY AND PAID M.P.'S.
This report of the Public Accounts Committee must necessarily compel both parties to face the whole ques- tion of payment of members, and we sincerely hope that the Unionist Party will take advantage of this opportunity to declare emphatically that it is their intention at the first possible moment to get rid of this unwarranted innovation in the practice of Parliament. As matters now stand, it would not even be necessary to repeal any statute, for the payment of members has never been sanctioned by a permanent law. All that members of Parliament have done has been to vote themselves salaries in Committee of Supply, and that vote has been given legal sanction by the Appropriation Act of each session. It seems improbable that the Government will attempt, in view of the congestion of business, to pass a permanent Act, and therefore when the Unionists succeed to office payment will automatically cease unless they renew the practice by proposing in their first session a fresh vote in Committee of Supply. Thus Unionists cannot possibly escape responsibility for a practice which most of them have opposed in Parliament and attacked upon the plat- form. They cannot plead that they are bound to accept an existing law.
Before we deal with the arguments for abolishing pay- ment at the earliest possible date, it is desirable to lay stress upon the peculiarly scandalous character of the method adopted by the Liberal Party to introduce the practice. It is a well-understood principle of English law that a trustee cannot pay himself out of the trust funds for duties that he undertakes, and any trustee who did so would be liable to a criminal prosecution. In the same way directors of a company cannot vote themselves fees or All increase of their fees without direct authority from the shareholders. A member of Parliament is both a trustee and a director. He voluntarily undertakes to discharge 'certain services for the presumed benefit of the nation, and he is endowed with powers very closely analogous to those of the director of a company. Further, owing to the elas- ticity of our Constitution, a member of Parliament has almost unlimited powers to deal with the finances of the nation. As has often been said, Parliament in England is omnipotent, in the sense that it is not restrained by any written Constitution. But just for that very reason a great moral responsibility rests upon members of Parliament not to abuse their powers for their own private benefit. This is exactly what they have done. They have laid hold of the money of the taxpayers of the United Kingdom and put a considerable portion of it in their own pockets. In every moral sense that is a crime, and if our laws were sufficiently rigid members of Parliament who have thus acted would be liable to criminal prosecution. The inspiration for and the consummation of this crime came it is true from the present Coalition majority, and the Unionists did their duty by voting against it. But that does not absolve them from complicity unless they make it clear that they will, when they attain to power, either abolish the system altogether or specifically consult the electors as to the desirability of maintaining it. Failing this, we have no hesitation in saying that every Unionist member of Parliament will be a particeps criminis with the Radical Party. He shares the guilt of appropriating public funds for his private benefit.
This of course leaves unaffected the further question whether payment of members is in itself desirable or undesirable. Assuming it for the moment to be desirable, the proper course would be for Parliament to pass a Bill through all its stages authorizing payment of members, and to add to that Bill a clause that the Bill shall not come into effect until it has been approved by the electors of the country by means of a referendum. That this course was not proposed by the Liberal. Party is itself a confession that the Liberals knew that the country would probably not approve of paying members of Parliament. All available evidence goes to show that the average elector is distinctly opposed to the principle of payment, and is contemptuous of members who voted payment to themselves.
That a plausible case can be made out for paying members of Parliament we fully admit. The practice is almost universal throughout the world, and can be defended on the ground that a member of Parliament, if he fully discharges his Parliamentary duties, finds it extremely difficult simultaneously to earn a living. It is therefore only reasonable that the community, which presumably profits by his services, should provide him with at least a bare minimum of subsistence according to the standard of living expected of a legislator. That is the theory, but it breaks down in practice, for two good reasons. First, a great many of the persons whose services in Parliament would be extremely valuable are business men who could not afford to give up their business incomes for the sake of any such salary as £400 a year. Unless they are impelled by patriotic enthusiasm or by some other powerful motive, the offer of £400 a year would lease them cold. In practice it is notable that in foreign and colonial legislatures where members are paid the tendency is for the professional politician to increase in numbers. At any rate, it is certain that the British House of Commons so long as it was unpaid did maintain a far higher standard in personn,e2 than the average foreign or colonial legislature.
The second answer to the plausible theory that it is just to pay members for services rendered is even more conclusive. In all ordinary walks of life, when a man is paid for a service the paymaster has the power of controlling the services and ascertaining that what is paid for is fully rendered. If the daily-wage labourer or the clerk or the lawyer or the doctor fails to give what his employer regards as an adequate service, employment ceases. But where members of Parliament are paid out of the public exchequer there is no control of any kind by the paymaster over the quantity or value of the service. It is notorious that the attendance in the House of Commons at the present time, when members are receiving £400 a year for attending, is actually worse than it was in previous sessions when they were paid nothing. But mere attendance at the House, even if it could be regularly checked, would not furnish any proof of the value of a member of Parliament's service to the country. A member who does his duty must not simply attend with reasonable regularity at debates, but he must also work hard in studying blue-books, in corresponding with constituents, in attending Committees. None of these services can be checked by the Treasury, which is the present paymaster of members of Parliament. The Treasury as a Govern- ment office has neither the means to check the work of members of Parliament nor any interest in doing so. Even the Party Whips have no interest in a member's work ; they only care for his vote ; and he can avoid even the labour of voting by habitually pairing with an opponent. There is nothing to prevent members of Par- liament drawing their £400 a year and arranging to pair with one another, and never attending at Westminster at all. The only persons who exercise even a partial control over the services rendered by a member of Parliament are his own constituents or, to be more accurate, the caucus of his constituents to whom he owes his election. The caucus is certainly anxious to see that the member votes regularly, occasionally speaks in the House, frequently speaks in his constituency, and replies with promptitude to political or to begging letters. And, what is even more important, it is the caucus which procures him his job and which can bring that job to an end. Therefore if a member of Parliament is to be paid at all it is by the caucus that he should be paid. The people who call the tune should provide the money. When once this point is grasped it will be seen that the only solid argument for payment of members by the State disappears. That argument is that without some system of payment the membership of the House of Commons would be confined to rich men or to moderately well-to-do men who are content to live simply. The artisan and the poorer professional or business man would be entirely excluded. This undoubtedly would be an evil. But the difficulty can be met, as it was met until two years ago, by the voluntary payment of members of Parliament by the caucuses which secure their election. To argue that this system of voluntary payment involves the subordina- tion of the member to the caucus is to ignore patent political facts. A member of Parliament must, under existing conditions, be subordinate to his caucus. No wealth will enable him to escape that subordination, and certainly 8.400 a year provided by the State does not render him effectively independent. As a matter of fact, many Labour members are now finding that they are actually worse off than they were before. Previously they received £200 a year from the Labour organizations which secured their election, and it was understood that that ..t200 was their own as a definite salary for the work which they had been appointed by the caucus to do. Now that they receive a grant from the Treasury of .R400 a year they have become a mark for every member of their con- stituency to shoot at, and they find in many cases that when they have satisfied all the demands which they cannot politically afford to refuse they have less for their own expenditure than they had before.
On every ground, then, we urge most strongly upon the leaders of the Unionist Party to declare without any further delay that they are resolutely opposed to the system of payment of members out of the public exchequer, and that they will bring that system to an end the moment they are placed in power. Such a declaration would be welcomed throughout the country by a good many Liberals and Socialists as well as by Unionists, and it would immediately relieve the Unionist Party of that taint which attaches to the acceptance, even temporarily, of salaries voted by members of Parliament to themselves without consulting the country.
Previous page
