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AMENDMENT OF THE LAW

I know: that is why I said it. Denis Thatcher said that it might be called the Prince Albert Club, to greater advantage. By reducing the number of Members of this House by about a third, we would have constituencies of about 100,000. In fact, we could set a rule saying that the population of the Isle of Wight will set the number of target voters in each constituency. As the population of the Isle of Wight grows, we would reduce the number of Members of this House. That would be a good way of cutting down on costs. Lastly, although MPs’ pay this year is not controversial, because the increase is, I think, only 0.6 per cent., when our pay is readjusted, we will face the same problem in the future that we have faced in the past—that MPs are on a final salary pension scheme. The House should decide to go on to an average salary pension scheme and our rates of pay during our service should be taken into account in setting our pension, rather than having MPs who retire five or 10 year later getting a dramatically higher pension than people with the same amount of service who retired five or 10 years before. We need to make some kind of contribution to a rational system that would be applicable to others in different circumstances, rather than saying to them, ““We’ll leave you to rot, or to suffer, and we’ll go on looking after ourselves.””