The Mayor of London deserves applause

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has agreed to take a pay cut of ten per cent. He says: “I didn’t enter politics to administer government austerity, and I will do everything in my power to persuade ministers not to force another era of austerity on local and regional government.” Khan adds: “It’s only right that I should volunteer for an immediate pay cut in these extremely difficult circumstances and continue not to take any pension contributions.”

Some have criticised it as a gesture. His salary is £152,000 a year (Only just below that of the Prime Minister who is on £158,000 a year). That means that the Mayor will still be on over £136,000 a year. Still rather a lot isn’t it? Can he really go round expressing empathy with those in hardship by assuring them: “I’ve made sacrifices too.” Some cynics might also suspect that after the elections next May that if he is safely returned for another term he might decide that the financial crisis has happily eased sufficiently to allow him to quietly resume accepting his full salary.

Furthermore, while his salary might seem a lot in the overall budget, it is rather footling. Therefore a saving of £15,000 doesn’t amount to much. Since he became Mayor staffing costs for City Have have risen by 82 per cent, from £36 million to £65.5 million.

I was once given a tour of that building when Boris Johnson was still Mayor. It was enlightening to have the true horror brought home of the scale of waste and overmanning. The facts and figures can never quite convey it in the same way as the physical manifestation. I felt sorry for the staff. You look into people’s eyes and know they are unfulfilled in their non-jobs, even though they may be lucrative roles. It is beyond belief that such a dire state of affairs has got twice as bad.

Yet just because something is a gesture does not mean it is wrong to offer it. Emotional literacy is a necessary item in the skill set of a modern politician. When some disaster has taken place — a flood or explosion — those in a position of leadership are expected to visit, even if it interrupts a holiday and is of limited practical benefit. Might not some who had long waits in “socially distanced” queues for the shops have felt slightly better when MPs put themselves through the same inconvenience to vote? (Albeit that they quickly ditched the tiresome procedure.)

Certainly taking a pay cut was something the Conservatives thought worth doing ten years ago. When David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010 one of his first announcements was that all Ministers, including himself, would take a five per cent pay cut and a pay freeze for the rest of the Parliament. “If we pull together, come together, work together — we will get through this together,” he said. Just to make sure we have got the message he added: “We’re all in this together.”

There was still anger, from students faced with increased tuition fees, from households who saw an increase in VAT, from ordinary public sector workers who had a pay freeze and thus a fall in their standard of living, from those on welfare who had their benefits cut. It’s just that Cameron’s gesture probably helped a little bit. It was not worthless.

Khan now expects that having cheerfully been expanding his empire he will be forced to retreat. Already the bailout at Transport for London has meant he has been forced to surrender a degree of control. It is rather like the Labour Government in 1976 when the IMF came in and imposed conditions, ordering Jim Callaghan and Denis Healey to make spending cuts.

The Mayor says that the Greater London Authority group (which includes the police and the fire brigade as well as TfL and various development bodies) “faces a forecast £493m budget shortfall over the next two years as a result of an unprecedented loss of business rates and council tax income”. If he scraps bus routes and closes police stations while leaving the City Hall bureaucracy fully bloated then he can expect a degree of criticism. That would apply even if the buses had trundled along virtually empty and visits to the police stations were rare. Perhaps by taking a pay cut the Mayor has shown some sensitivity on this point and may also slim down his army of flunkeys.

It is also welcome that Khan’s example will prompt others to be challenged. If local authorities are cutting back, should those cuts not include councillor allowances — including the “special responsibility allowances” to council leaders? We have nine million workers “furloughed” on 80 per cent of their earnings. It is feared that in the coming months many will be unemployed. Is it right that MPs should have continued to be paid their full salaries, despite a reduced workload in terms of Parliamentary and constituency visits?

Back in 1909, the debate was over whether MPs should be paid at all. Sir William Bull, Tory MP for Hammersmith, in 1909 said it was a bad idea. “I believe that if a careful account were taken of all the labours performed in this world, the labours of a father on behalf of his children, the labours of the mother, the brother, the sister, and friends, and all the various work that is done in this world on behalf of our fellow creatures, I think you would find the balance would be in favour of the work of the world which is done for love,” declared Sir William.

“Why are you going to stop that? Why are you going to start this payment of Members?” He predicted the next thing would be that local councillors would be paid. Sir William warned of “a very distinct class of professional politicians, who outwardly avows the fact that he goes into Parliament for what he can make.” Can we confidently claim that these warnings proved altogether unfounded?

Khan has been a disastrous Mayor. If he was a chief executive of a business he would surely have been ousted long ago by furious shareholders. In that context, the acceptance of lower pay might be acknowledged rather grudgingly, even before the new “austerity” era kicks in.

Yet our democracy will thrive if the belief in public service is restored. Voters need to be confident that their elected representatives have the right motives: that our politicians might have the wrong policies or do a poor job of implementing them, but at least they are inspired by duty. That might seem a distant goal. It might also appear unrealistic to have unpaid councillors, let alone MPs serving without salaries. But the Mayor of London has made a tiny step in the right direction. For that, he should be applauded.