ALLOWANCES OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT

6.45 pm

Mr Jeyaretnam: Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I expect Members are tired after the long session. Fortunately, we have only got half an hour for the rest of the business, so I have to be quite short.

I have asked for an examination on the allowances that are presently paid to Members of Parliament. May I say why I am raising it. The main reason is that so far, I have been talking about salaries of Ministers, the over-excessive salaries paid to Ministers. I do not want to be thought that while I am belly-aching about the high salaries of Ministers, I am happy that Members of Parliament can be paid the allowances that they are paid at the moment. I want to show that my concern applies equally to the allowances for Members of Parliament. I also want to say that I am not raising this out of pique, as may be thought by some Members, because I am not paid the same allowance. I only get about one-seventh of it. I am quite satisfied with that. It only shows the sort of puny mind of the PAP that they should try and be vindictive.

The present allowance paid to the Members of Parliament, I am told, is $11,800, if they opt not to take the medical benefits that are accorded to Members of Parliament, and it is $10,800, if they opt for medical benefits. Previous to this revision, Members were paid slightly over $9,000. If you consider that Members' allowances are exempt from tax, what do you get? Members are being paid something in the region of $13,000 or $14,000 a month.

What I want to put to the House is: do we lack a sense of proportion when it comes to paying politicians - Ministers and Members of Parliament? I say this seriously, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, when one considers that there are people in our society who are only paid $600 a month or even less, and for working for eight hours or more every day. May I make this observation that politics is a vocation. One chooses to go into politics or go into Parliament and be a Member not because it is a job, or because it has an attractive pay, but because of one's feeling of a vocation, one's feeling that one would like to contribute towards a better society, the present society which he finds himself. That is probably why the term "allowances" is used rather than a salary for Members of Parliament. I want to ask: are we lacking a sense of proportion when we are paying the Members of Parliament in this House $14,000 a month? The public is entitled to know, as I have been saying they ought to know how Ministers are paid. The public is entitled to know how this sum has been arrived at. What is the basis of assessment that Members should receive an allowance of the sums that I have set out?

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, it is not as though Parliament sits every day and for continuous periods with recessions, twice a year or so, to give them some time-off from sittings of Parliament. In Singapore, Parliament sits every six weeks or so and only for an afternoon or perhaps two, or it might sometimes stretch to three. This, of course, is outside the Budget sessions. Members are not obliged to give up their other work or pursuit of their professions to be Members of Parliament. And even beyond that, there are Members of Parliament who have very rarely spoken in this House.

So what is the workload of Members in this House that justifies a payment of the sums that I have said earlier? Do they have to travel long distances to come into Parliament as is the case in other countries? Do they have to maintain residences near Parliament to be able to attend the sittings, which they have to do in other countries? How is this decided? What is the workload? Has that been taken into account? I am only talking about Members of Parliament. I have dealt with the workload of Ministers and I have said that their workload did not justify the salaries. But the public is entitled to ask how are Members' allowances justified when Parliament only sits one or two days every six weeks and that only for an afternoon of four or five hours.

Of course, Members will say, "Well, it is not just work inside this House. We have got work outside Parliament." But there again, how much work do they have outside Parliament? Is the work outside Parliament such as to justify these allowances? I was a Member of Parliament, with a constituency to take charge of, for four or five years and I know what was required outside this House as a Member of Parliament - meeting my constituents once a week in the evenings. [Interruption.] I did not lose. I was re-elected with a majority. At that time, there were no town councils, but now we have town councils. But again, when we come to GRCs, what is the workload of Members of Parliament in town councils? I am quite serious about this. Let the public know how this payment is justified and not come up with answers that we would not be able to attract MPs in. Is that the reason? If that is the reason for paying Members of Parliament this amount, then I am afraid it is the wrong reason.

As I have said, politics is a vocation and you seek to enter Parliament because you feel you wish to do something about bettering the society from its present state. I hope whoever replies will give us an assessment of how the allowances were arrived at. Unless the public is satisfied that politicians do not just go into Parliament because of salaries or the benefits, but there are heavy responsibilities carried by them, they will begin to lose their interest or trust in politicians and that will be a sad thing for Singapore. And as I have said, many Members of Parliament have their own jobs or professions to follow or practise. Are they required to absent themselves from their other jobs to attend sittings of Parliament?

Let us have a sense of proportion about the payments. Let us try and justify to the taxpayers because it is their money, they are our pay masters, to justify to them that Members of Parliament in Singapore do need and justify the payments that are being made to them in the form of allowances.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Mr Chan Soo Sen): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, Mr Jeyaretnam made a speech on the allowances of Members of Parliament. He felt that Members of Parliament were over-paid and there was no basis for the computation of the allowances. Let me share with him the criteria on which the allowances were formulated.

Mr Jeyaretnam: Are you on the Committee?

Mr Chan Soo Sen: I am not on the Committee. But the Member of Parliament's allowance has been based on 68% of Grade G Administrative Officer's salary. This has been so even before the July 2000 salary revision. This same formula continues to apply. The criteria of arriving at Grade G Administrative Officer's salary have been very clearly explained by the Deputy Prime Minister when he presented the salary revision proposal to this House in June. The formula is what we call the 15P32. I do not know whether Mr Jeyaretnam was here when this formula was presented. It is defined as the principal earned income of the 15th person aged 32 belonging to the 6 benchmark professions, and these are the bankers, accountants, engineers, lawyers, MNCs and local manufacturers. So, you get the people who are aged 32 in the six professions, rank them, get number 15, look at the salary, that is the benchmark for Grade G. And the elected Members of Parliament's allowance is 68% of that. This was the basis before the salary revision. This is still the basis today. The fact that elected Members of Parliament's allowance has gone up by roughly 30% is because the Grade G benchmark based on the market has gone up by about 30%. It is therefore not true that there is no basis for the computation of the elected Member of Parliament's allowance.

Mr Jeyaretnam: May I ask by way of clarification?

Mr Deputy Speaker: Do you wish to give way, Mr Chan?

Mr Chan Soo Sen: All right.

Mr Jeyaretnam: Thank you. Is it suggested that the workload, responsibilities and duties of Members of Parliament, the Backbenchers, approximate even anywhere near those drawing the salaries which are being used as the benchmark?

Mr Chan Soo Sen: Sir, I am coming to that. Mr Jeyaretnam asked what was the criterion on which the allowance of elected Members of Parliament was computed. I just explained the basis to him. Now the workload.

Mr Jeyaretnam said that Members of Parliament apparently worked one or two days every six weeks in this House. I submit that more than 85% of an elected Member's work is actually done outside this House. Many Members of Parliament nowadays give our e-mail addresses away. So, we are on call 24 hours a day. When there is a fire, we go to the site. We are on call every day. We reach out and keep in touch with our constituents, not only once a week during the meet-the-people sessions. Many of us attend a large variety of constituency functions to keep in touch, collect feedback ---

Mr Jeyaretnam: Attend hungry ghost festival dinners.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Order, Mr Jeyaretnam.

Mr Chan Soo Sen: Many of us also donate to constituency functions, and some give during funeral rites of constituents. These are the kind of intangible things that elected Members of Parliament do, not in this House, but outside this House. I think the situation has changed quite a bit since Mr Jeyaretnam was in Parliament in the 1980s. That was quite a number of years ago. So, now we work harder. As to whether a Member of Parliament justifies the allowance that has been given, his or her electorate will judge.

Mr Jeyaretnam said that politics was a vocation, was not a job, and that Members of Parliament should not go for the job because of the high salary or high allowances. Well said indeed. I would want to assure Mr Jeyaretnam that at least for the PAP, we select our candidates based on whether they consider politics as a vocation. We the PAP MPs are very, very clear that we are subjecting ourselves to the judgment of the electorate, and we trust the judgment of the electorate. The electorate is able to look at every one of us and see whether this MP comes just to go through the motion or is he or she really committed to be a good Member of Parliament. A good Member of Parliament is on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day nowadays. I am not saying that he is physically in the constituency all the time. I am saying he is on call all the time. If we do not serve our electorate well, we are very clear that we will be out of the office the next round.

Mr Jeyaretnam: You go on holidays!

Mr Chan Soo Sen: Well, once I received an e-mail from a constituent when I was holidaying in Tianshan mountain because of some GST problem. And I e-mailed an appeal to the Director-General of Customs to explain my constituent's case. That particular problem was resolved by the time I returned. Such is the new work style of MPs in the new economy.

An hon. Member: Hear, hear!

Mr Chan Soo Sen: That is why I say that it is very different from the 1980s. I would say that whether each one of us is taking our job as a Member of Parliament as a vocation or just as a job, our electorate will judge. If any one is judged to be here just for the allowance and is not putting his heart and mind into the job, he will be out. This is the environment all of us have submitted ourselves to. So, I agree with Mr Jeyaretnam entirely that politics is indeed a vocation. On behalf of all my political colleagues from the People's Action Party, I say we consider being an MP a sacred vocation we are totally committed to, and we are here to serve the electorate with total dedication.

Sir, I have explained to Mr Jeyaretnam the basis on which we arrived at the amount of allowance. I have also explained to Mr Jeyaretnam that MPs' jobs have changed since he was an MP some 15 years ago. We are now the new age MPs, rising to the challenge of the new economy. At the same time, we have the good old spirit of putting our hearts and minds into the vocation, like what a good MP in any era will do.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,

That Parliament do now adjourn.

Adjourned accordingly at Nine Minutes past Seven o'clock pm to a date to be fixed.