A Prime Minister can appoint as many ministers as he or she wishes. However, there is a statutory limit on the number that can be in receipt of a ministerial salary. Under the Ministers and Other Salaries Act 1975, no more than 109 ministers can be in receipt of salaries. Under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 no more than 95 MPs can be in receipt of ministerial salaries. (That is, no more than 95 of the 109 can sit in the Commons.) If the intention of these measures is to limit the number of ministers, they have not had the intended effect.
One of the less noticed features of the latest ministerial changes is the number of MPs and peers appointed as ministers who are unpaid. In the Downing Street Press Release detailing the new Government, no less than thirteen ministers are listed as being unpaid: seven in the Commons, five in the Lords, and Paul Myners who has yet to take his seat in the Lords. Among the MPs are Quentin Davies (junior Defence minister) and Chris Bryant (Deputy Leader of the House). I am not aware of the number of unpaid ministers being so high before. The largest single number of unpaid members of the government is to be found among the whips.
MPs appointed as unpaid ministers remain in receipt of their parliamentary salaries and allowances; peers remain in receipt of their allowances. However, they receive no payment for the work they do as ministers. Two ministers may be sat on the Government front bench, each of the same rank, but one being paid considerably more than another. The lure of office is clearly considerable. The effect is to enhance considerably the scope for prime ministerial patronage.
Very interesting Lord Norton, how do you get hold of this press release?
I find it fascniating so many people are willing to go unpaid, can you tell me what the wage difference is between being paid and unpaid in the Lords and Commons?
floetry: The press release can be found on the No.10 website at: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page17089
The salary of a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Commons (Nov. 2007 figures) amounts to £92,100 (ministerial salary plus parliamentary salary). If the MP appointed to the post was unpaid, they would only have their parliamentary salary of £61,820.
In the Lords, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary is paid (Nov.2007 figures) £70,986. If unpaid, they receive no salary at all.
There is a useful House of Commons Information Office Factsheet on Ministerial Salaries. It is available at:
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/M06.pdf
Dear Lord Norton,
I, too, was struck by the number of ministers who are unpaid. I wonder, although they do not receive a salary, do they get a ministerial car? That in itself is quite a perk.
Howridiculous.
So are the two 1975 part of UK constitutional law? Why does the government keep to the letter of these laws and yet ignore their spirit? It could repeal or replace these laws relatively easiiy. Why doesn’t it do so? Because it believes that to do so would draw attention to a discrepancy which most people don’t notice?
“amounts to £92,100 (ministerial salary plus parliamentary salary). If the MP appointed to the post was unpaid, they would only have their parliamentary salary of £61,820”
And yet in the long term, but before we are all dead, much of the experience of ministers of state is highly marketable, in the private sector at far, far more than just the difference between the paid and the unpaid salaries.
This may be less so with Labor ministers. The unions’ first campaign
in the 1840s was for payment for Members without which they could not afford to attend.
Now why should we want or need to have a Government or House of Lords (second House) if the Treaty of Lisbon becomes activated? Why on earth should we be expected to continue to pay and vote for a Government that cannot actually instigate our laws or actually govern us?
If I take the smallest article in “Lisbon”, Art 47 ‘The EU shall have legal personality’, it means that our Government has given away the Royal Prerogative of Treaty Making Powers to the European Union, and it was not in their gift to do so. That was a constitutional move upon which the people should have been asked about. Was the Queen asked if she minded? I doubt even Her Majesty could have given Her permission even if she had indeed been asked. It was only given to Her Government Ministers to use on Her behalf. There was no excuse for such an action for all have sworn allegiance to the Crown and through the Crown to all the people of this land. The people were betrayed by the very people that they had voted for. It is not what the politicians want for themselves, the money or the power, they are in Parliament on behalf of the people that voted for them, and to speak on the people’s behalf.
It would be much better for all if the Treaty failed, for our Government ratified a ‘dead’ Treaty anyway.
Howridiculous: All ministers, as far as I am aware, are entitled to a ministerial car, the justification being that they require them in order to fulfil their ministerial duties regardless of whether they are in receipt of a salary or not. The point you make, though, is a good one.
Peter Browning: you raise a good question; I say that not least because you touch upon something that I have written on at some length elsewhere. Both Acts have the same status as any other Acts of Parliament and could, indeed, be amended by a Government keen to achieve change and secure in a parliamentary majority willing to support it. Governments, however, are reluctant to seek to make changes to the framework within which they govern, not least for the reason you touch upon and because of what I have termed an equilibrium of legitimacy. There has to be a balance between Government and opposition in order for the system to be recognised as fair and legitimate. If it isn’t, opposition parties and others could make the system more or less unworkable. The parliamentary system requires consent beyond the ranks of Government in order to work effectively. There is also the constraint that parties in government will not always be in government. The Opposition is accused sometimes of working as the Government in Waiting. The Government sometimes operates as the Opposition in Waiting! It is therefore reluctant (though it sometimes does it) to change too fundamentally the rules of the game by which it and other parties abide.
Gareth Howell: There are indeed incentives, beyond that of an immediate parliamentary salary, to accepting government office.
Anne Palmer: You may find of interest the recent report of the Lords Constitution Committee on the constitutional effects of the Lisbon Treaty on the British Constitution. It can be found at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldselect/ldconst/84/8402.htm
The Treaty is not as benign as supporters claim, nor as malign as opponents suggest. In many respects, the main problem with the Treaty is that it does not address the principal concerns it was meant to address as identified at the Laeken summit. It will be no great loss if it disappears and the EU has to come back to the issues addressed at Laeken, not least ensuring that the institutions are closer – and more responsive – to the peoples of the European Union.
Thank you for your response to my contribution to your page Lord Norton. I had already read the web page re the Treaty of Lisbon as it happens, and I find, because of the first Treaty ratified in 1972 all have to agree to anything that may happen to be in any forth coming Treaty. Almost everyone in Government “welcomes” most things in the Treaties, even though with every Treaty more sovereignty is given away with each one.
I mentioned Art 47 previously? I would suggest that the giving away the powers of the Royal Prerogative was not in the Government’s gift to do so. We should surely remember that no Minister of the Crown may lawfully sign any Treaty using the Royal Prerogative that is in conflict with the Treason Act 1702, as the Minister is bound not to sign any Treaty in conflict with their Oath of Allegiance to the Crown.
I wonder then will this Government finally agree to transferring our remaining Seas and remaining Territorial Waters to the EU for their Motorway in the Sea? Would World Maps be changed to reflect this? At paragraph 93 I read that all this or any other Government would have to do to come out of the EU would be to repeal the European Communities act 1792. Could we get our territorial waters back?
In World War II, the sharing of any details that concerned this Country’s National Security was treason, and of course the penalty then was death by hanging, yet the EU Security Strategy and ‘sharing’ details from our proposed National Security Strategy is absolute folly if it goes ahead. Sharing details of the whereabouts and what we have in the way of protecting our National Security would be disastrous in any future unforeseen circumstance. Would America want its details given to others? Would the USA want to continue to hold certain US services here in the UK? We have currently become aware of how quickly our friends may become our enemies, or at least, no longer our friends. Yet, because we may have shared our national security knowledge with these countries, they know our strengths and weaknesses. Surely, if I can see the great danger here, others can too? Sharing national security issues is a great danger to this Country and all the people in it. “Careless talk costs lives”; that saying from WWII should be remembered by all now and more so than ever. Conflict and war is on many people’s minds at the moment. (See UK and EU Protection of Critical infrastructure)
Our Country is very quickly now being altered to “fit in” with every facet of the EU and its system of Corpus Juris. But I would like all of those that sit in that wonderful building to realise that the EU will completely govern all in that building too. Unless they all go to live abroad they will have to live among the people that they have forgotten they are supposed to represent.
I seem to recall reading that ministerial salaries did not change(£5000) between 1832 & 1965
Dear Lord Norton,
Many thanks for responding to my point. It would seem that although some ministers are not paid they are paid in kind! I’m not sure they should be.
Howridiculous.
Lord Norton’s first post on this thread is an interesting reflection of the subsequent “Expenses” Scandal, that there are some people who are prepared to work for the state without the extra pay, unlike those who want more, and take more, than they have any right to.
Interesting also that it has probably been the “changed relationship between the Courts and parliament” which has allowed the plebs
to discover the extent of the….. excessive expense claims.
Meanwhile some people do a good job of work without any pay at all. I was at a HofL FA+Defence committee meeting this week. Perhaps Lord Teverson (chairman) gets a little but the rest of the committee put in a morning’s work, with no fee at all, other than an attendance allowance which really only pays for attendance.
My own attendance costs me £100. I can do it on no less, for the pleasure of being up to date on European matters perceived by their Lordships in committee, in person.
It is true that, it is a pleasure.