On the accountability and effectiveness of
Members of Parliament and
the No Other Wage (NOW) campaign
A discussion paper by Farel Bradbury.

Overview:
1) The "professional" argument
2) The vested interest argument
3) The divided loyalties argument
4) The Honourable Members argument
5) The above reproach argument
6) The external activities argument
7) The government posts argument
8) The past history of sleaze argument
9) The adequate wage argument
10) The competition for the job argument
11) The historical and modern world argument
12) The representing a Party argument
13) The intellectual fraud argument
14) The war and peace argument
15) The gravy train argument
16) What is the No Other Wage concept?

1) The professional argument turns on the concept of a representative as an ordinary person like any other voter and therefore subject to and aware of the ordinary things in life with which people are concerned. It is argued that, while representation is vocational, it must have its “amateur” side and that Parliamentary income is a form of compensation for giving up the earnings from what might have been the Member's usual occupation. It may be worth noting at this point how extraordinarily effective this approach has been in the past for the Peers in the House of Lords. The dedication of the Peers, for relatively extremely modest financial reward, has stimulated skilled and disinterested contributions across a wide spectrum of experience. Should Members of the Commons become dependent solely on their parliamentary income, it is suggested that we will produce a generation of professional politicians without real-world experience.