Pay Rises: For the few and not the many

Throughout the duration of university, the majority of students have held down a part time job at some point. If you have then you would know that minimum wage is £7.38, which most companies love to pay their employees, only increasing this amount as the government requires. There has also only been a 1% increase to our civil service workers, such as nurses and teachers, which provide vital work to help our children and within the NHS. These positions are usually funded through taxes, and an increase in wages for these careers would mean an increase in taxes. As you may know, these jobs are essentially vital and due to the lack of funding there has been a large fall in the number of teachers and nurses who stay within the field for more than 5 years.

So, imagine the shock when MPs have recently received an annual raise of 2.7%, which means that they will get an enormous £79,469 annually as their income. This doesn’t include the list of expenses they can file for such as travel, lunch costs and even stationary! To give some insight in to why this is so atrocious, the average wage is currently £28,677, which is barely a quarter of what MPs will receive next year. Teachers on average earn even less at £18,007 which barely covers their basic necessities such as rent and bills, and there are plenty of news articles and opinion pieces which illustrate teachers having to provide books, stationary and classroom utilities that enable them to do their jobs efficiently. Add this is the long work hours and multiple exams, assignments, class planning and an increase in student numbers, they are not being paid what they deserve.

In comparison to this though, there is an argument to be made that MPs are representative of the population, therefore the responsibility of ensuring that the voices of the people are heard should fall down to them and as such they should be paid more.

However, in the current climate of Brexit, austerity, increased living expenses and even a decline in education funding, we should really be questioning what our taxes are going towards. MPs have argued that they require this extra funding, given the huge amount of work they are currently doing in the run up to the Brexit negotiations and the necessity to have a staff force which is able to keep up with it. However, following the multiple extensions that the government has asked for, it seems that they are more arguing about Brexit as opposed to getting anything done regarding it. Obviously, this is a hot topic right now, and the decisions made from these important negotiations impact the society, however there is a narrative that MPs are projecting by accepting and allowing this wealth divide to continue.

The House of Commons are supposed to be an elected body which we rely on to make good decisions regarding the current laws and regulations which they initially put forward when they were asking the population to vote for them. Yet this is a complete demonstration of an ‘Us VS Them’ mentality where they still vote to maintain the 1% wage increase for civil servants (which doesn’t even align with inflation) which therefore means that the people who are most vital to our civilisation are worse off then ever.