YEARS BRING CHANGE IN SPEAKER'S SALARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 237, 6 October 1928, Page 8 (Supplement)

YEARS BRING CHANGE IN SPEAKER'S SALARY.

■ The earliest English Parliamentary records show that the office of Speaker carried with it at one time only £0 per day as salary. This figure was maintained until after the Restoration, when Speakers got £120 for equipment grant and £5 for every private bill introduced to the House.

This form of payment was not deemed satisfactory, because of its irregularity, but it lasted until an Act of William IV. gave the Speaker £6000 a year, free of all dues and taxes and jiaid out of consols.

I/ater, under the same sovereign, the salary was reduced to £5000, the sum it stands at to-day, with au allowance of JioOO a year for au official secretary. At one time a grant of 2000 ounces of plate was given, but to-day a full permanent service is loaned with the rest of the furniture in the Speaker's house, and must be returned intact on retirement or replaced. . The ' £100 a year once allowed for stationery has been dropped, as have the two hogsheads of claret and the width of broadcloth from the Clothworkers' Company each Christinas. All that is left of this sort of perquisite is a haunch of venison from "Windsor. By long usage a . Speaker takes £4000 a year as a retiring allowance, but on condition-that £2000 of it is suspended if he holds any other office of the Crown where the salary is equal to or greater than the pension: but as ex-Speakers do not by custom hold further office, the rule is never applied. . " ■ The Speaker must have considerable private means, for the amount of entertaining he must do takes a, fair toll ot the £5000 salary, wjach now barely covers needful costs.