A comparison of lawmakers' pay

IN TIMES of austerity awarding yourself a big fat pay rise is not generally considered a good idea. A new report that proposes a salary increase for Britain's members of Parliament while wages for ordinary Britons are stagnating, is, therefore, a sensitive matter. The report is the result of a consultation by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, a regulatory body that was set up in the wake of a 2009 scandal that revealed the extent to which MPs were bending (or breaking) their own generous rules on expenses. Under the new recommendations, MPs' basic salaries would rise from £66,396 ($105,400) to £74,000 in 2015, but they would lose other lucrative perks such as final salary pensions. Britain's legislators currently earn the equivalent of around 2.7 times the country's GDP per person, on a par with many rich countries. Indeed, their basic pay is relatively parsimonious when compared with that of their compatriots elsewhere. Lawmakers in poorer countries in Africa and Asia in particular enjoy the heftiest salaries by this measure. Kenyan MPs, known for their largesse, were recently stymied in an attempt to increase their salary from $75,000 to $120,000 a year. In Thailand, the governing party's MPs are paid more than those of the opposition.