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Low-paid constituents are making it pay for MPs' families to rake cash in
LOOKING in the Buxton Advertiser, I noticed that the typical advertised salaries for non-professional work but work requiring some qualification and expertise is somewhere within the range of £15,000 to £25,000 pa.
This is frequently the sole income for a family and for many would be considered quite a good income. Recently I heard an MP on the radio saying she would have difficulty getting anyone other than a relative to work for her because of the low rates of pay for office staff working for MPs, as if they received some paltry payment only done as a favour for an impoverished relative.
Another MP on the same Radio Five discussion programme said that employing relatives was often done in the private sector. I was shocked that this MP couldn't see the difference between paying a relative out of the profits from one's own business and employing a relative in a public office being paid from the public purse, as if it were the same and was something within their gift.
To me it seemed more like something from the middle ages than a Twenty-First Century democracy. I understand that the husband of the former Home Secretary worked for her as her "office manager/secretary" for something in the region of 40,000 pa (I can assure you that this is in no way a "low rate of pay", particularly as a second income in a family), a job which he often seemed able to do from home. I think ordinary people are disconcerted and shocked by jobs like this being handed out to relatives. They should at the very least be advertised and I'm sure there would be no shortage of applicants.
Comments and practices like these at the very best make MPs seem out of touch with the everyday life and living standards of most working people and at worse they smack of nepotism and even corruption. I don't know High Peak MP Tom Levitt's own circumstances and opinions on this but feel it important that he should understand that to me this is not acceptable whatever his policies in other matters.
Personally I feel this matter of employing relatives and giving advantages to family etc., although I understand the practical advantages of this practice, is more important than the issue of expenses as such and more likely to lead to corruption. One has only to look at a certain unnamed pair of husband and wife MPs to see how easily this sort of thing starts to look like people regarding their political situation as some kind of "family business".
Jeff Whitaker
Hague Bar
New Mills
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Weather for Buxton
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Light snow
Temperature: -1 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Light snow
Temperature: -2 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: South east
