PRIME MINISTER’S PAY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 198, 21 August 1929, Page 8

PRIME MINISTER’S PAY

MR MACDONALD’S STRAITS SALARY ONLY £3500 NET OTHER MINISTERS RECEIVE MORE I ‘A living wage for the Prime Minister of Britain” epitomises the purpose of a new movement which is being eagerly canvassed in political circles in Britain. To state the case cjuite frankly, says the Sunday Chronicle, Mr Ramsay Macdonald, having risen to the highest post of honour and responsibility which public life has to offer, fiuds himself the recipient of a total salary of only £5OOO, reduced by taxes to £3500. Is it good enough for Britain’s Premier?

The comparison between Mr MacDonald’s financial position and that of other Ministers of the British Crown and of public representatives abroad is startling. It is as follows:—Prime Prime Minister of England, £5000; At-torney-General (with, fees), £20,000; ►Solicitor-General (with fees), £16,000; British Ambassador to U.S.A., £18,000; President of U.S.A., £15,000; Lord Mayor of London (for expenses), £lO,000.

Out of his £3500 —much less than the income of thousands of moderately successful and obscure business and professional men—the Premier has to maintain the dignity of his office in the State and the Empire, a task which none of his predecessors has been able to accomplish on less than £15,000 a year. How con he do it? He is a poor man. He started life as a potato picker, became a pupil teacher and has never had a profession in his fingers which would yield an adequate private income. It is therefore felt by many resj onsible people in all the parties that the time is now ripe ho end the anomaly of the Premier’s inadequate saiaiy.

The Sunday Chronicle understands that adverse foreign comment was occasioned recently by the news that when Mr MacDonald went to Windsor to see the King and accept His Majesty’s invitation to form a Government he travelled in a car lent to him by his friend Lord Arnold.

When thg Premier arrived at Hendun by air from Lossiemouth he found no cay awaiting him. An Aii Force vehicle had to be placed at his disposal. It is also remembered that during Mr Mad Donald’s previous short tenure of the Premiership his friend Sir Alexander Grant, chairman of the biscuit-making firm of McVitie and Price, came to his aid with the gift of a motor-car and the interest on 30,000 £1 shares for its upkeep.

Sir Alexander then revealed that the Premier was travelling about London on the Underground Railway. Even after an important speech at such a full-dress function as the Pilgrim’s dinner he had to travel by Underground and the Metropolitan Railway to a station near Chequers and thenceforward in an old Ford car.

The question of raising the salary of the Prime Minister is understood to have been under consideration by Mr Baldwin, who is himself not a wealthy man. But each occupant of the office naturally feels diffident about proposing an increase in his own emolument.

Certain sections of the Labour Party are, therefore, tactfully suggesting that the matter should be raised by the parties out of office. I am led to believe that they view the idea favourably, and the coming session of Parliament may possibly see the unusual spectacle of the Leader of the Opposition taking the initiative in a move for better payment for his opponent in Downing Street.