The 30-year-old racism revealed in a memo from the Prime Minister’s policy chief, Oliver Letwin, shone a torchlight on attitudes currently kept under wraps largely due to the efforts of David Cameron. Politics.co blogger Adam Bienkov wrote: “Yet in some ways it merely serves to demonstrate how far British politics has come since 1985. Back then, senior Tories still had close ties with the racist Monday Club and Letwin’s comments about the ‘bad moral’ of black rioters would not have seemed well outside of the mainstream of Conservative thought. However, it is now impossible to imagine a Tory advisor, even a dinosaur like Letwin, ever putting such bigoted views down in print. As far as such views still exist within the Conservative Party, they exist unspoken, or at the very least unwritten. Thanks largely to Cameron, the Tories now also have a significant bloc of ethnic minority MPs. Britain’s demographics have shifted dramatically in the last 30 years and the Conservative Party is slowly catching up with that fact.”
House of Commons Speaker John Bercow is now paid more than the Prime Minister after accepting an extra pay rise on top of the 10 per cent already handed to MPs. His annual salary is £150,236, while David Cameron gets £149,440. Unlike the PM and ministers, Mr Bercow accepted an additional 0.62 per cent increase to the salary for his official role. The rise was triggered by an obscure part of the legislation underpinning the pay of officeholders, increasing in line with the average granted to senior civil servants at the end of each parliament. Mr Cameron has given up his non-contributory half-salary prime ministerial pension but Mr Speaker has held on to his – although he has said he will not draw it until he turns 65. In addition, he does not appear to pay any taxable benefit for his grace-and-favour home, unlike the Prime Minister.
New evidence has emerged that the Conservatives have shattered their promises on special advisors. The cost of “spads” in ministerial offices was £9.2 million, up 10 per cent on the previous year, despite David Cameron’s previous pledge to “cut the cost of politics”. And that compares to £3.3 million on 2009, the last full year of the last Labour Government – a 56 per cent increase. Figures obtained by Labour researchers showed there are now 10 special advisors in the top pay band (currently PB4: £95,000 to £142,000) compared to six before the last election – a two thirds increase. Overall, there are 97 special advisors in post, with 19 appointed since the May general election. In Government, the Tories said there would be a limit of two special advisors for each Cabinet minister but the latest available data revealed that 11 ministers had three or more spads: George Osborne, Jeremy Hunt, Baroness Stowell, David Mundell, Patrick McLoughlin, Philip Hammond, Theresa May, Sajid Javid, Iain Duncan Smith, Nicky Morgan and Michael Gove. Labour deputy leader Tom Watson MP, shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “The Government released dozens of announcements on the final day of Parliament, shortly before the Christmas break, in a deliberate attempt to avoid proper scrutiny of the information and proposals they contain. It is a shockingly cynical move. But David Cameron can’t bury the fact that he’s broken a direct promise he made to reduce the cost of politics and curb the number of special advisors in Government. These figures released show he’s spending more on these appointments than when he first entered Number 10. Taxpayers are picking up an ever larger bill for Tory spin-doctors. At the same time, the Tories are attacking the opposition and undermining democracy by trying to dramatically reduce the money they get to hold the Government to account. It’s one rule for the Tories and another for everyone else.”
The league table of the highest earners among government employees has been topped by Simon Kirby, chief executive of High Speed Rail 2 (HS2) who is paid £750,000 annually. His role is to deliver the HS2 program to “safety, cost, time and quality standards” in order to “transform Britain’s capacity”. He formerly worked at Network Rail. Jim Crawford, also working on HS2, earns £390,000. His role is to “plan, deliver and monitor” the project. Head of the Green Investment Bank Edward Northam earns over £330,000, while CEO Shaun Kingsbury earns £325,000. The bank was set up by the Government to fund environmentally-friendly infrastructure projects but is now set to be part-privatised. Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, earns £200,000, while her colleague Peter Lewis, the chief executive of the Crown Prosecution Service, is on £160,000. Lin Homer, head of HMRC earns £185,000. In recent weeks, she has been grilled by two parliamentary committees on her handling of the e-borders scheme and also failures to take action against UK citizens hiding money Swiss HSBC accounts. The highest paid employee of the Cabinet Office was the permanent secretary was John Manzoni, a former top BP executive, earning £230,000.
Government spending on ministerial car services in 2014-15 was nearly £2 million, according to the Department of Transport. In 2014-15, it cost £1,901,960.43 to provide ministers with cars – a reduction of around £50,000 on the previous year. However, this figure does not include car costs for Prime Minister David Cameron, Home Secretary Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers who use the Metropolitan Police.
According to the parliamentary website, since 1989 Jeremy Corbyn has signed 19,485 House of Commons motions, of which he was the primary sponsor of 766 and a co-sponsor on 2,727. More than 50 regarded his long-standing commitment to nuclear disarmament, but others reflected either a sense of humour, or a lack of one. For example, he signed a 2004 motion tabled by the late Tony Banks, an animal lover and prankster, which read: “That this House is appalled, but barely surprised, at the revelations in M15 files regarding the bizarre and inhumane proposals to use pigeons as flying bombs; recognises the important and live-saving role of carrier pigeons in two world wars and wonders at the lack of gratitude towards these gentle creatures; and believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again.”
An auction selling items belonging to Margaret Thatcher smashed expectations raising more than £4.5 million. The total raised at a six-hour sale at Christie’s auctioneers was boosted by an online auction. The top selling lot was a model of an American bald eagle awarded to the late PM by Ronald Reagan for £266,500. Her collection attracted buyers from more than 40 countries with auction bids “far exceeding pre-sale expectations”, Christie’s said. Her red ministerial box, estimated at £5,000, went for £242,000.