Do Cabinet Ministers and MPs deserve a raise? Ministers do and should become full-time as well, but MPs probably don?t.

MPs now earn about $40,000 per year. The Premier makes about $72,000 and the Attorney General, who got a hefty raise when Dame Lois Browne-Evans became the first political holder of the post, earns $100,000 or so.

Most MPs fall somewhere between the ?MP who never sleeps? and the ?MP who is always asleep?.

Premier Alex Scott said in the debate in the House of Assembly on Friday that salaries for Bermuda politicians had fallen behind those in other jurisdictions. That may be so. An historical study would probably show that MPs salaries in Bermuda have always been behind other countries, largely because the MP?s job in Bermuda has never been full-time.

Then too, there was a time when the MP?s job was largely a matter of public service and was never meant to be financially rewarding. But many MPs could also call on at least some independent wealth.

This is no longer the case on either side of the House. Most importantly, Bermuda?s constituencies are much smaller than those of other countries. A British MP represents a constituency of 80,000 voters (about twice the size of the Bermuda electorate) and earns about $100,000 plus getting administrative support.

A Canadian MP represents a riding of about 70,000 voters. He or she earns around Cdn$100,000. Bermuda?s MPs represent constituencies of around 1,100 people. So if Bermuda?s MPs were paid in proportion to the number of people they represent, they would probably end up with a pay cut and not an increase.

However, Bermuda?s voters have closer contact with their MPs ? who often perform a local councillor role as well as that of a national MP ? than their overseas counterparts. Even so, MPs? workloads cannot justify their being full-time and it is difficult to make a case for a large increase in their salaries. Cabinet Ministers, on the other hand, deserve an increase and the time has come to make them full-time, as many of them are now.

On that basis, it is invidious that the Minister often earns less than the Permanent Secretary of a particular Ministry. Premier Alex Scott?s desire to reduce the size of the Cabinet to around nine also falls in line with this, and has the added merit of increasing the influence of Government backbenchers over the governing party?s parliamentary caucus. However, the primary value in making the job full-time and paying accordingly is not to reward the current holders of the posts, but to encourage more able people to enter politics.

The time demands on Cabinet Ministers, combined with the high financial sacrifice that, for example, a chief executive of a local business, or a leading lawyer, would have to make to enter and stay in politics, is a disincentive to the ?best and the brightest? to enter politics in the first place and this needs to be remedied. Premier Scott has gotten himself into some difficulties over the question of making Cabinet posts full-time positions, and by extension, requiring Ministers to give up outside employment. The problem is that some very well paid Ministers have no desire to change. Hence, Mr. Scott thought that there should be some kind of sliding scale whereby people who stayed in private employment would be paid proportionately less than the full-time Ministers. It would seem that all this would do is create two classes of Ministers, thus solving nothing.

The Opposition and former Tourism Minister Renee Webb?s idea that all Cabinet Ministers should be full-time at a reasonable salary is better. To be sure, this will never be high enough to match the best private sector salaries. But it should at least be competitive and high enough to reduce the risk of corruption.

At the same time, the establishment of an independent committee to review salaries is a good decision, since it removes the perception of self-dealing by MPs and reduces the risk of arbitrary changes in how salary increases will be decided, as occurred this year when Finance Minister Paula Cox changed the policy from linking it to inflation to linking it to the much more generous increase civil servants had negotiated with Government.

However, the House would still have to pass (or reject) the increases because it has constitutional responsibility for all spending. This is right. But MPs will also know that if it rejects the independent commission?s recommendation, they do so at great risk to their own re-election chances, and that?s the best safeguard there is for the public?s money.