David Cameron, who is apparently the new leader of the Tories, says that Members of Parliament should not set their own salaries. Superficially, it sounds like a good idea, but I wonder if it’s anything more than a soundbite.

As I understand it, changes to MPs’ salaries are based on recommendations from the Senior Salaries Review Body, put formally passed by the Commons. Some MPs vote against their own pay raises, of course, knowing that their constituents will approve of such a stance.

Now, does anyone know the last time MPs passed a motion that differed from the SSRB recommendation? Does it happen? And when it does, do they tend to raise pay and allowances by more or less than the SSRB suggested? My suspicion is that the SSRB recommendation is always adopted, but that on occasions when it isn’t a lower level is chosen instead. If the former is the case, then Cameron’s proposal would make no difference; if the latter, it would actually result in MPs’ pay rising faster.

Buckingham Palace is quite canny about the way it releases its royal spending figures. The BBC reports today:

The Queen and the Royal Family cost the UK taxpayer £37.4m in the last financial year, her financial public accounts reveal. The cost, equivalent to 62p per person in the UK, rose 4.2% over the previous year, accountants said.

By doing the “How much do they cost each person?” calculation (and that’s every man, woman and child, not every taxpayer), the cost seems very reasonable.

And yet the story seems to come across differently when we hear about MPs’ expenses – £80.8m in 2004-5 is the best figure I can find – when it’s made out to be a huge sum (and, of course, for most of us it is). Compare it with the Royal Family figure, though, and bear in mind that it’s paying for over six hundred of the blighters. Perhaps Parliament should adopt the Royals’ cost per person calculation: using the same population basis, it indicates that £1.33 from each person in this country funds MPs’ salaries and allowances. Suddenly it doesn’t seem to much – perhaps only proving you can do anything with statistics…