Allowed expenses would be reduced to only those costs incurred as part of their job; for instance, travel and accommodation.
Second home allowances will be scrapped, and MPs will instead have accommodation provided through parliament. This could be in dedicated accommodation, existing hotels, or long-term leases as appropriate. All MPs would be treated equally under this system.
Second home allowances will be scrapped, and MPs will instead have accommodation provided through parliament. This could be in dedicated accommodation, existing hotels, or long-term leases as appropriate. All MPs would be treated equally under this system.
The overall parliamentary catering budget shall be capped at a rate of five pounds per head, from then onward following in line with inflation.
All for having a cap, but £5 per head isn't enough detail. Is that per meal? Per year? What about the rest of the civil service? Lords? What about subsidised coffee? (Portcullis house is the cheapest place to get a coffee in London, if you can get inside).
Obviously we want to go into ridiculous detail, don't get me wrong, but there might be some more elegant way this could be put.
@philipjohn - about 7 years ago
As a big lover of pie, I'm struggling to support a proposal which would limit the amount of pie....
I'm joking of course :) Sounds good, but would be good to clarify a little what the £5 is as per @Floppy's comment.
Until this has a bit more detail, it's a no from me. Will happily change with a bit of clarification though.
Vote: ❎
@philipjohn - about 7 years ago
Same here, but mostly so I can try out the new Votebot voting :)
Vote: ❎
All for having a cap, but £5 per head isn't enough detail. Is that per meal? Per year? What about the rest of the civil service? Lords? What about subsidised coffee? (Portcullis house is the cheapest place to get a coffee in London, if you can get inside).
Obviously we (don't?) want to go into ridiculous detail, don't get me wrong, but there might be some more elegant way this could be put.
I was thinking "per day" and on all of them (they all waste money).
Then I got hung up on wondering whether it should mean "everyday" or "per day parliament is sat in office, doing actual work". Maybe I should have put "per day" and then worked out the fineries on that later on.
Also I'm not too sure whether this compliments, or is superceded by policies you've already got on the revocation of expenses. The idea behind expenses is that people who are poor can still afford to be politicians, or have time to work a second job or something. I forget the justification. To be a little more clear: I don't really want to put a ban on politicians eating, or even on their public subsidy for eating. I just think that the numbers that I'm seeing getting thrown around in articles to do with the subject are ridiculous. One I think said "£25 per day per MP", another said "£84 per week", another said that Lords (all 800 and something of them) get 5 bottles of champagne each per year. They get more in subsidised consumption than students get in education maintenance allowance. Then they introduce an added sugar tax "for your own good".
Oh, it's definitely a bit high, for sure. Maybe such catering subsidy should be removed completely, politicians should be well paid, and expenses brought into line with what a normal company would accept. Certainly the price of a beer in the Commons bar should be in line with the rest of the country, otherwise no wonder they are out of touch.
@philipjohn - about 7 years ago
Is it worth is trying to find out more about what the current situation is and working up from there?
I think if the current expenditure per head can be worked out, then we average the costs of restaurants and cafes and other food-and-drink-based establishments for a meal of burger or sandwich and a cup of tea or bottle of water within a given reasonable range of parliament, work out roughly how far most MPs have to travel to get the parliament and the costs involved, and then we can talk about what expenses should be. No point in talking about reasonable parliamentary budgeting if we don't actually have the numbers to budget with. @Xyleneb
@philipjohn - about 7 years ago
Okay, rather than an actual figure, which is going to have to change anyway because of inflation, perhaps we can have some sort of formula?
E.g., the average price of a main meal in a central London restaurant?
Not that exactly probably, but something similar that can be reasonably easily worked out by a single person spending a few hours on it each year so we're not advocating something silly like spending millions on PWC or someone to produce a report on the cost of a meal in London.
In fact, could we piggy back on how the costs/prices are decided for school meals?
@philipjohn - about 7 years ago
@xyleneb Any more thoughts on expanding this a bit so we can get it in?
@philpjohn maybe it should be dropped, and then the above section changed to "Allowed expenses would be reduced to only those costs incurred as part of their job; for instance, travel, food (equivalent in price to that of a meal of an average lower class worker, any additional expense would not be covered), and accommodation." from "Allowed expenses would be reduced to only those costs incurred as part of their job; for instance, travel and accommodation."
Actually, given that the policy hasn't been edited yet, it's probably more appropriate to vote against.
Vote: ❎
@LudovicD - almost 7 years ago
That part of London is quite expensive (due to the tastes of MPs & Lords in large part), i think letting them claim with a cap of £8/day total for food, drinks & all related would probably be fair. many/most were claiming £400/month for food anyway. & yes, to normal travel/accomodation. So i vote for such a cap. (£5/day might be acceptable also, but very likely to be too belt-tightening).
The OpenPolitics Manifesto
@Xyleneb - about 7 years ago
No 1 priority for constitutional reform - cutting the number of meat pies.