Zero hours all right for some
While the debate rages among the party leaders and candidates about zero-hour contracts, a surprising 86 of their former colleagues are earning almost £265 a day for officially working zero hours.
The figure has been highlighted by Peter Williams, the co-founder of a new web site Rate Your MP that is benchmarking and costing MP performance. Williams points out that last Monday, the House of Commons official Twitter feed proclaimed - 'Parliament has dissolved. There are no MPs until after the general election on May 7’ - yet all the ex-MPs continue to be paid, even those standing down and not seeking re-election.
“There are 564 former members standing again for Parliament,” he says, “but they are now officially simply candidates – they can no longer describe themselves as Members of Parliament. They will however, continue to receive their salary right through to polling day and even at just the basic MP salary the amount being paid to those candidates is close to £4.2million."
But it is not those members standing again that first caught Williams’ attention, it was those standing down.
“I do think it’s surprising that the 86 members of Parliament not seeking re-election - effectively retiring from the House - will also continue to be paid right through to May 7 despite the fact that Parliament is closed and they can no longer fully represent their constituents.” He calculates that these particularly retirees or job-seekers will earn around £265 per day and collectively cost the taxpayer almost £650,000 during the campaign.
MPs standing down can also claim expenses until July to meet the costs of “closing down their office” - despite the fact that in many cases they have known for months that they would not be seeking re-election. Those costs will not be publicly available until September.
The former MPs job seeker allowance of close to £265 per day compares to actual maximum job seeker allowance of £72.40 per week. At £1,320.08 per week the MP allowance is a little more than 18 times higher. Among the more prominent members standing down are former ministers such as William Hague, Jack Straw, Francis Maude, David Blunkett, Menzies Campbell, Tessa Jowell, Malcolm Rifkind and former PM Gordon Brown.