Do we really need to put an end to dual mandates?
ONE of the widely accepted wisdoms of the election campaign was that double jobbing was a bad thing.
Most politicians joined the rush, with parties including the DUP, Tory-UUP and Alliance pledging to end it.
Earlier this year, politicians who were both MLAs and MPs ceased to get extra money for their dual mandate.
Until then, they got all of their 65,000 MP's salary and one third of their 43,000 Assembly salary (total 79,000).
Now they just get the MP's salary, although they do still get extra office and costs allowances if they are a member of both parliaments.
In the last decade, it ceased to be possible to be a member of both Westminster and the European parliament.
Despite these changes, there is a widespread push to go further and prevent membership of both the Assembly and Westminster.
Indeed, yesterday Stormont held hearings into going yet further – and preventing MLAs from being councillors.
This would mean that an MLA could hold almost any full-time job and be a part-time councillor, unless the full-time job was MLA.
These changes are on the verge of becoming fixed, after very little argument against them.
In the course of researching this article, we asked critics of double jobbing if they could point to examples of voters rejecting double jobbing politicians, and no-one was able to point to such an outcome.
The rejection of Peter Robinson in East Belfast followed recent financial controversies, but in previous decades he won easy re-election despite dual mandates.
Yet even though voters in 17 of the 18 Ulster Westminster constituencies backed MPs who are also MLAs, few politicians were prepared to argue in favour of such mandates for this article.
Many pundits draw a distinction between holding a dual mandate (two or more elected positions) and double-jobbing (holding a job outside politics, such as doctor or lawyer, while also holding elected office). It is the former that is set to be banned.
But some of Northern Ireland's most prominent and successful politicians have held multiple elected posts.
Many people have been bitterly critical of the politics of the former SDLP leader John Hume or the DUP leader Ian Paisley, yet not many of these critics argued that their multi-jobbing was the problem: both men were MEPs, Westminster MPs, and members of the Assembly.
Dr Paisley, indeed, managed to run his own church.
So should workaholic MPs, who are resoundingly endorsed by their electorates over a period of decades, actually be legally prevented from holding these various roles, now that they are not actually paid extra for it?
After all, their voters can sack them at the polls if they think having multiple roles is a problem.
A Tory-UUP source said: "If your voters think that you are capable of doing all of the jobs, then there is a serious question over what right legislators have to block that decision. I think you are in a bit of a slippery slope there.
"This is not an argument anyone is going to make this argument in the current climate, where no politician wants to be seen as defending greed."
The Committee on Standards in Public Life issued a report on MPs' expenses last November, in which it recommended that dual mandates be brought to an end by 2011 ideally and 2015 at the latest.
"They felt that it is a time thing — you can't be in two places at the same time," said a spokeswoman for the committee.
The banning of dual mandates, however, raises questions about who will fill the numerous vacancies that will arise.
A consequence of the political process that followed the 1998 Belfast Agreement was a large increase in Northern Ireland's political class.
The British government created as big an Assembly as possible, to ensure that the newly devolved parliament was as representative as possible of the Province's many political shades.
Each of the 18 Westminster constituencies was given six MLAs, totalling 108 seats, rather than for example five, which would have totalled 90 seats.
This means that Northern Ireland, with a population of only 1.7 million people, has 711 politicians who hold elected office: three members of the European parliament, 18 Westminster MPs, 108 Assembly Members, and 582 councillors.
If dual mandates are phased out, an even larger pool of politicians will be required to fill all these places.
It has been widely reported that the Review of Public Administration will, when it creates 11 new councils, cut the number of councillors to around 380. But the final number is uncertain and could be as high as 460 councillors (up to 60 for Belfast and up to 40 each for the remaining 10 councils).
If that is so, Northern Ireland will continue to have around 600 elected politicians.
The Stormont Assembly is set to lose a raft of up to 17 of its most able members if dual mandates are ended, yet there has been little examination of whether being elected to two bodies is necessarily a bad thing.
The DUP finance minister Sammy Wilson appears to be lukewarm about his own party's proposed ban on being an MLA and an MP.
"The party's position on it has been decided and I will abide by it and when I am asked to stand down I will stand down," the East Antrim MP and MLA told the News Letter.
But he said that there had been some obvious advantages to "having a foot in both camps".
"As a Finance minister, for example, I have found over the last year being at Westminster on a regular basis has given me an opportunity to talk to the people who are taking the decisions. You know them, it is not flying over on a one-off business, I have not had to fly at the cost of the department of finance."
Mr Wilson said it was difficult to see a distinction between those who are farmers, businessmen and even councillors, while MLAs and those who are both MPs and MLAs.
"Often the role at Westminster complements the role at the Assembly. The issues are not as clear cut as some commentators seem to make them out to be."
Indeed, Mr Wilson added: "There has been a certain amount of hysteria about it."
The News Letter asked secretary of state Owen Paterson yesterday when a ban would come in, and he said that he was still hoping to agree a voluntary approach with the various parties.
The SDLP is not as rigid in its opposition to dual mandates as the pro-Union parties, seeking instead all-party agreement on the ending of dual mandates. Even so, its politicians seem reluctant to defend the practice.
An SDLP source, however, raised concern at a possible talent vacuum that could emerge at Stormont after a ban.
"Take out Mark Durkan and some of the DUP big hitters and the Assembly will soon become a playground in terms of the quality of politicians," the source said.
Politics is an increasingly unattractive profession, subject to both career uncertainty and scrutiny. In the 1990s measures were introduced to give politicians payments to compensate for the sudden loss of office if they were rejected at the polls, yet this is sometimes now reported as a 'fat cat' provision.
MPs now earn markedly less than many other professionals: the average GP in the UK earns 106,000, more than 50 per cent more than an MP.
But Mark Wallace, campaign director of the Taxpayers Alliance, is unsympathetic.
"Most people would say MPs earn too much — they get two-and-a-half times the average salary. They are the fourth best paid parliamentarians in Europe.
"There is still an awful lot of competition for the job. In each party in each constituency numerous people apply to be that party's official candidate. Once selected, they are competing against several other parties to be MP. The number of applicants does not seem to be falling."
And he says the question of dual mandates is not just a financial concern.
"We would question whether it is possible for someone to be in position of serious responsibility in the Northern Ireland executive and be an MP for example," he said. "Each of these jobs demands someone's undivided attention to their constituent, to provide a good public service."
Despite significant reservations in the political class, few commentators anticipate that it will be possible to have a House of Commons and Stormont dual mandate by the end of this new Westminster parliament.
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