Discussions about politicians? salaries ? and the likelihood of their being raised ? always have the potential to be public relations disasters.

This is not something that is exclusive to Bermuda.

MPs have to pay themselves. They control the Island?s finances on behalf of their constituents and therefore find themselves in the unusual situation of having to decide how much they are worth.

Measuring their worth is difficult. There are few benchmarks and examples from abroad, as the recent report on salaries found, vary enormously.

Comparisons with MPs elsewhere are difficult. A British backbencher earns much more than a Bermuda backbencher, but also represents around 40,000 voters whereas Bermuda MPs represent around 1,000. Does that mean Bermuda MPs should earn a 40th of their British counterparts?

It is even more complicated when it comes to Cabinet Ministers. In Bermuda these are technically part-time posts ? but most Ministers put in a full 40 hours at their Ministries or on other parliamentary duties and still find time to do their ?main? job.

But Bermuda?s politicians do work, and they need to be compensated, not least because poorly paid politicians are especially vulnerable to corruption but also because poor parliamentary salaries will discourage the best and the brightest from entering public service if it requires great sacrifices of time and money.

But if MPs and Ministers award themselves really big salaries, they risk being seen to be lining their pockets at the expense of the taxpayer. And the truth is that while good MPs work extremely hard, bad MPs can do nothing between elections (including not showing up at the House of Assembly) and still earn their salaries, at least until, one hopes, their party or their voters turf them out.

Last year, the House sensibly followed the example of other Parliaments by appointing an independent committee to examine the whole question. The committee was also asked to recommend salaries for Ministers working on both a full time and a part -time basis.

The Committee reported last week. It recommended a substantial increase for the Premier ? who should be considered to be full-time under any circumstances ? to $200,000 and increases for Cabinet Ministers to either $100,000 a year or $150,000 a year depending on whether they are judged to be full-time or not.

While the increases appear to be quite arbitrary, they are in fact closely in line with the salaries of top civil servants, thus ending what must be the invidious problem (for Ministers, anyway) of Ministers earning less than their Permanent Secretaries.

This newspaper has long held that Ministers should be considered to be full-time and while senior civil servants seem to earn remarkably high salaries, it is right that the Ministers should be in line with them.

In the last election campaign one of the few promises the Government made was to reduce the number of Ministers, and this could result in some cost savings as well if salaries are increased. It has not happened yet, and could lead to too great a concentration of power in too few hands. The practical reason is that any Premier who reduces the size of the Cabinet will add to the discontented on the back benches. In the snake pit that is the PLP?s internal political system, that?s a dangerous place to go.

When the salary committee was set up, Mr. Scott seemed to suggest that those Ministers who wished to keep their full-time jobs could do so and would be paid as full-time Ministers while those with no outside jobs would be paid as full-time Ministers.

The committee has in so many words said that this is nonsense. It is up to the Premier to decide which Ministries are full time and which are part time and to require those Ministers with full-time Ministries to give up their jobs.

That?s good advice. The Government would also be wise to phase in the pay increases over a period of three years to make them more palatable to the public.