PSST! Need a new £10,000 kitchen, a luxury three-piece suite, the latest widescreen plasma TV, even free dry-cleaning? Don't be a mug and pay for them yourself, become a MP. Want to make a killing on the Edinburgh property market? Get in quick, because a number of MSPs have. Fancy £145,000 to spend on scams? Easy, get the initials MEP after your name.
By remarkable coincidence, Westminster, Holyrood and Europe all had to address expenses fiddles last week because our elected representatives have been feathering their nests with our money. And, grudgingly, all three parliaments are now being dragge
d into a new era in which integrity and value-for-money count. They may be too late, because a quiet revolution is under way; finally, we have come to realise that there are too many politicians costing us far too much.
Scotland, in particular, is suffering from a surfeit of democracy. Every Scot has no fewer than – count 'em – eleven elected representatives at his or her beck and call. Every Scot can now call on one local councillor, one Westminster MP, one directly elected first-past-the-post MSP, seven regional list MSPs and an MEP. We should be the best-served and most utterly contented constituents in Britain, if not the world.
But a lot of them are not very good – and unless the parties act to raise the quality they will pay the price. As traditional party loyalties collapse, constituents will vote not for the label but for the calibre and personal principles of the would-be MP, MSP or MEP. In industry and business, the gravy train hit the buffers years ago. It is long past time for politicians to be subjected to the same hard disciplines as other workers – job evaluation, weeding out the unproductive and, yes, redundancy.
Because of the cover-up culture, it came as news to most of us that our MPs have a 'John Lewis list' and can charge up to £23,000 a year to furnish the second homes on which they will already make a profit. The amount they can trouser without a receipt has been reduced from £250 to £25, but they can still pocket £400 a month food allowance. Why do MPs need £400 worth of free grub every month when the rest of us have to feed ourselves?
It is no better at Brussels, where a review of parliamentary expenses has been ordered after a secret report uncovered widespread fiddles. MEPs may lose the right to manage their annual £145,000 staff budget because of dodges, including paying large sums to political parties or to arm's-length companies with no employees. They rejected the EU Ombudsman's call to publish full details, arguing that this would breach "privacy considerations". Constituents should bear this in mind when their MEPS stand for re-election next June (they might also ask them what the hell they do for a living).
At the Scottish Parliament, the MSPs' salary-allowances-expenses-and-holidays package has been a running sore since the place opened in 1999. In the latest tawdry episode, an independent review team dealt with the scandal of profits on second homes in Edinburgh, with mortgage interest paid by the taxpayer. The depressing aspect of all of these abuses is that none of these "public servants" saw how offensive it is to make a personal profit from public money. They can blame the media all they want, but it is their own fault that their reputation is at rock-bottom.
Now, here's a thing I never thought I would say: the leader of the Lib Dems has been talking sense! Nick Clegg suggests removing 150 of the Commons' 647 members, saving about £30m a year. Makes sense, since devolution and Europe have taken powers and responsibilities from MPs. Parliamentary etiquette presumably prevented him from pointing out that at least a quarter of them make minimal contributions and are mere lobby fodder, obediently herded to vote as they are told.
The case is even stronger for doing the same in Scotland. Nine years' experience of Holyrood has shown that the "S" in MSP stands, in too many cases, for "superfluous". With 73 first-past-the-post constituency members, why do we need as many as 56 list MSPs who either duplicate the work of the directly elected MSPs or simply fill the desks in the chamber – at £114,000 each in salary and allowances? That is too a heavy price to soothe the feelings of party members who could not get themselves directly elected.
The make-up of the Scottish Parliament was not set in tablets of stone. A reduction to five list MSPs per region would reduce the Parliament to 113, surely enough for over-represented Scotland, with a saving of £1m. And they'd none of them be missed.
The true cause of this belated concern about the cost of our representatives is the perception that many are not worth the money. Parties select low-calibre candidates who will do what they are told, rather than bright sparks with potential to think for themselves. Once elected, they go into feather-bedded hibernation until they next have to face the voters and rely on party allegiance to renew their lucrative franchise.
Early in the first term of the Scottish Parliament, words like "numpties", "sweetie-wives" and "skivers" appeared in print, while one member said the performance of his colleagues was "pathetic". In the third term, many of those same dullards are still in place and have not noticeably improved. By the next Holyrood election, they will have been there for 12 years and overdue for a clear-out.
It will take courage and unselfishness (qualities not in plentiful supply in the political world) for the parties to improve their intake. If they do not, the voters will surely do it for them.
