SALARY TOO SMALL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 132, 2 December 1930, Page 11

SALARY TOO SMALL

BRITAIN'S PREMIER

AN EXPENSIVE HONOUR

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 9th October. That the salary of the Prime Minister should be raised from £5000 to £7000 per annum is a recommendation made in the report of the Select Committee on Ministers' Remuneration. The report is now published as a White Paper. Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Lloyd George, and Mr. Banisay Mac Donald, who gave evidence before the Committee,- all admitted tho inadequacy of the present Prime Ministerial salary, and the unpleasantness of No. 10, Downing street, from the housekeeping point of view. "Downing street," said Mr. Baldwin, "is extraordinarily inconvenient in every other respoet. Tho electric light and gas bills are enormous.'^ Mr. Lloyd George' was indignant. "It is perfectly preposterous," he declared, "that a Lord Chancellor should be getting £10,000 while the Prime Minister is only getting £5000. Take tho Attor-ney-General and the Solicitor-General. I think it is outrageous that they should be receiving something like £40,000 a year, one £25,000 and the other £15,000. The Prime Minister's salary of £5000 is ludicrously inadequate, and is equal to £2500 before the war." He thought that the cost of private hospitality to a Prime Minister would be £1000 a year, but said: f'My wife could tell you much bettor than I can. How she managed to do it I don't know." DOES NOT LIKE No. 10. Mr. Mac Donald agreed that the work of a modern Prime Minister is vastly greater than it used to be when, the salaries were first -fixed. ' "I could not live at Hampstead and do my work here (House of Commons), and do my work as Prime Minister. I apologise, but perhaps I might just tell yon this. lamup in the morning at halfpast six, and I rarely go to bed before one. At nine o'clock I am at work with secretaries, boxes, and despatches. I cannot get them away up to the top of Hampstead Hill. I have to come to my work. It takes half an hour by a good car to get down to Downing street. Then, of course, there are'all sorts of. other things; you have got to have your clothes by you, and so on. Without gi»ing into details, I believe a Prime Minister cannot live in Hampstead and do his work here when the House of Commons is sitting. Therefore, very much against my will—because I do not not like No. 10, Downing street, my people do not like No. ! 10, we love our own house —very much against my will and all our wills we decided to come down to No. 10, Downing street." Mr. Mac Donald said that in regard to the burdens on the Prime Minister, there had been improvement since 1924, and continued: "In 1924, for instance, if I sat in the Cabinet room, where I think most Cabinet Ministers sat and did their work, you paid for the light and the coal; but I have not worked in the Cabinet loom. I have always worked in the loom immediately above it, which has generally been a bedroom for other Prime Ministers; but working up there I had to pay for my own coal and light. That was-the case in 1924; it It not the ease now. In 1924 I had to bring all tny household goods, plate, and'so on. That is not the case now. They have changed that. They are doing much more at No. 10 now than they did before. , STRAIN OF ENTERTAINMENT. "There is a staff of men messengers downstairs. They are paid for by the Treasury, bnt all the maids are paid for by me. Tho kitchen is run by mo, and that means, I think, four servants more than I usually employ, and so on. It is a bit of an expense. The entertainment side of No. 10 is very much a matter of a Prime Minister's sense of decency and conscience. My rule—it is only my rule —is that I never ask anything from the Government Entertainment Fund which has got the least aspect of a personal entertainment. Practically the whole of my Naval Conference entertainment has been done out of my own pocket. I have recovered a little from the Entertainment Fund." ■ Mr. Mac Donald said that a Prime Minister without any privato income and dependent on his salary of £5000 alone would have practically nothing left if he bore the cost of such semi-, official gatherings. "Any Prime Minister in this country without a private income would be on the Poor Law in two years after he left office unless ho was an extremely careful person and unless he was supported by friends. If, is no use closing your eyes to the fact.''