Talent, Not Cash, Favoured. by Rise in M.P.'s Salary

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 49, 20 November 1937, Page 18

Talent, Not Cash, Favoured. by Rise in M.P.'s Salary

LONDON — Talent, not money, is now to become more f ully tke latchkey admitting ■ to tke gr.een benckes of tke British House of Commons. This is the meaning of the decision reached practically( unanimously by that assembly prior to its summer recess, namely, to pay M.P. 's £600 annually instead of £400ias in the.past, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, when he proposed the measure, told of authentic cases of M.P.'s whose endeavours to serve their country in Parliament are being handicapped by what the ancient Bt.nans called "res angusta domi" (s.raitened circumstances at home). A committee on whieh h$ had himself sexved, he said, had found M.P.'s whose savinga were being slowly nsed.up. . , "We found other cases," he added, "where they were obliged to curtail or diminish the amount of education that they were hoping to give to their children. We found cases where they wen aetually giving themselves insufficient food in their anxiety to keep within their means." The problem still remains of pensions for M.P.'s grown old in House of Commons service — some of whom have become Teduced to extreme poverty— but this is now to be looked into with good will on all sides, when Parliament reassembles. ,