TD Blog

q-photo-money-down-drain Matt Wardman has tagged me in a meme to name “the best £200k waste of public money you can think of” in response to Tom Harris MP’s post bemoaning the £200,000 spent on the Haltemprice and Howden by-election.

Despite the question being a bit of a contradicion in terms ["best waste"? Matt!] I’m going to do my best to continue it.

To start with, what Tom Harris is suggesting is that £200,000 of our money should not be spent on allowing us to cast our votes. [£200,000 is little to pay for a bit of democracy, Tom. Maybe you and your party would like to give us all a chance to cast our votes...? Thought not.]

And how great a percentage is £200,000 of what the government spends every single day? A thousandth? A millionth? At any rate, not very much. I’m sure if we wanted, we could come up with Daily Mail style list of what £200,000 could have bought… such as ‘two hospitals, 5,000 hip operations, twelve nurses, nine police officers…’ etc**. But that is just stupid. Because the money wouldn’t have been used for that.

Matt’s suggestions for the “most monumental waste of 200k” are:

The £200k costs being paid by the taxpayer for Ann Winterton MP and Nicholas Winterton MPs to rent their London house from themselves, and the death duty tax dodge that goes with it.
The £200k estimated to have been spent by Mr Speaker Michael Martin on Legal Fees in order to keep MP’s expense details concealed from the public.
The £200k of public money spent on each 0.04% of the £500 million just written off by the M.O.D. over the Special Forces Helicopters disaster.
The £200k (ish) being spent on Tom Harris MP and his office. (Ed: no comment, I have no quarrel with MPs running offices )

But I ask just one simple question: How much does it cost for one MP in the House of Commons for one parliament?

Let’s be generous and say a salary of just £60,000 and expenses of only £20,000 per year - and a parliament of four years. So, £80,000 times by four = £320,000. And by the time we’ve added on any other costs they that encur to us, we’re bound to be nearing £400,000. And if we add in the cost of running their office as well…

I’ve got an idea! Let’s abolish one MP [since you're so concerned about our financial situation, are you going to offer, Tom?] and use that money to hold two - or even three! - surprise by-elections per parliament, with an MPs name picked out of a hat completely at random. This will cost us no extra money and give us a greater say over our democracy.

What, you mean they won’t go for that? I wonder why…

Seriously though, £200,000 is pennies to the government. I am absolutely certain that they waste way more than £200,000 of our money pretty much every day in one way or another. Be it on white elephants like the Dome, on IT fiascos, or on making polcemen fill in paperwork rather than patrolling the streets and many others.

The simple fact is, whatever you think of David Davis’ resignation in order to spark a by-election, you can’t call it a “waste of money” unless you think all elections are. If you think that, go live in Zimbabwe.

It is our money - something Tom Harris seems to have forgotten - and there are certainly many many worse uses that it can be put to than on an exercise in democracy.

I tag: Devil’s Kitchen, Steve Green, Ian_QT, Tony Sharp, Croydonian, and Trixy.

* The cost of one MP over a parliament

** Please note that these examples have no basis in fact ~~just like the Daily Mail’s~~