A COMMITTEE that was asked to review the salaries of Jamaican parliamentarians has held that the island’s MPs are not overpaid, but recommended the delinking of their pay from that of senior civil servants.

Instead, the committee proposed that compensation for legislators be periodically established by a Permanent Salaries Committee, but underlined that recommendation with a suggestion that annual pay adjustments be made to lag behind inflation.

“The committee… recommends that in 2004, annual adjustments should be made on April 1st of each year, to coincide with the start of the financial year, to MPs pay of an amount equal to half the inflation rate of this country, subject to a cap of the average inflation rate of our major partners: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Japan,” said the committee, whose report was tabled in the House yesterday by Prime Minister P J Patterson. “The inflation rates could be those relating to the calendar years previously completed.”

It also raised the prospect of tying increments to economic growth — a seemingly backhanded suggestion to the MPs to tie some of their pay to the outcome of the policies they engineer and proposed, too, that MPs could earn for being accountable and transparent.

For instance, MPs would receive the annual equivalent of three per cent of their taxable basic pay if they tabled an accountability report on their stewardship during the previous financial year, including how they utilised funds allocated to parliamentarians for discretionary spending in their constituencies.

Parliamentarians would receive a similar incentive payment for tabling a transparency report, declaring the source and amounts of personal finance apart from what they earn as MPs. “The exact format of these reports should be debated and agreed on in Parliament,” said the committee. “Parliament should decide on sanctions that would be applicable if the reports are not filed.”

It was not immediately clear if, or how, the proposed transparency report was intended to relate to the annual declaration of assets and liabilities that parliamentarians are supposed to file with the Integrity Committee.

Yesterday, Patterson signalled the government’s willingness to embrace many of the recommendations, if not the entire document, and proposed that a working group, chaired by finance minister, Omar Davies, be established to prepare “a plan of action and calculating the fiscal cost of the recommendations”.

“It is neither possible nor appropriate, at this stage, to announce a definitive acceptance of all 40 recommendations made,” Patterson said, but added: “In the main, convincing reasons have been put forward by the group in respect of each and every recommendation…”

At present the salaries of parliamentarians move in concert with those of civil servants, with ministers maintaining a differential of $52 a year on their permanent secretaries — the top civil servants in their departments.

But Patterson was in February driven to set up to the review committee, headed by Gleaner Company chairman, Oliver Clarke, in the face of a public outcry over a steep rise in the salaries of parliamentarians, the result of the linkage between their pay and what civil servants earn.

The civil servants were given big increases under a programme, over three years, to bring their salaries to within 80 per cent of their counterparts in the private sector. These hikes, plus other differed increases, pushed the basic pay of the prime minister from $2.4 million to $4.7 million, while that of a Cabinet minister moved from $1.74 million to $3.5 million. Under the arrangement the MPs were due another five per cent hike in April and six per cent at the start of the next fiscal year, followed by another rise of four per cent in April 2005.

But with the public anger on the boil, fuelled by the announcement that the government had bust it deficit targets, Patterson ordered a freeze on further increases to MPs until the Clarke Committee reported.

But in his report, Clarke stressed that parliamentary pay “is not at the top of either the private or public sectors”.

“This committee does not feel that parliamentarians are overpaid,” the report said, citing a number of public and private sector jobs which paid far better than the people who go on the hustings and eventually sit in Gordon House.

Nonetheless, it recommended the hiring of a consulting firm to do a job evaluation of parliamentarians, which could help in determining a structure of their pay.

The Clarke Committee also called for a clear demarcation of ministerial pay between the income as an MP and the additional amounts for ministerial responsibility and said that the pay scales between the prime minister, Cabinet ministers and other members of Parliament should be changed to “more adequately reflect the additional responsibilities of each position”.

For instance, the prime minister should receive a position premium of twice an MP’s pay, while Cabinet ministers would get a position premium equivalent to the MP’s pay.

They also proposed that the position of Leader of Opposition and its compensation package be made equivalent to a full minister rather than a minister of state.

MEMBERS OF THE CLARKE COMMITTEE:

* Oliver Clarke (Chairman)

* Bishop Charles Dufour

* Tony Lewars

* Corrinne McLarty

* Las Perry

Some key recommendations of the Clarke Committee

* Delink the salaries of parliamentarians from those of civil servants

* Permanent committee to decide on MPs salaries

* State should provide offices for MPs as a point of contact with constituents. These offices are not to be party offices.

* MPs should get $500,000 a year for rental and upkeep of office, but monthly payments would be made only if the office is opened a minimum 20 days for the month.

* Prime minister should receive three times the pay of an MP and other Cabinet ministers twice the MP’s pay.

* Opposition leader should be on same rank as Cabinet minister

* MP should receive bonus of three per cent of basic pay for preparing reports detailing performance in constituency.

* Similar three per cent for tabling transparency report showing income outside of parliamentary earnings.

* MPs compensation should be taxed in same manner as private citizen.

* New pension scheme with six per cent obligatory compensation should be set up for MPs

* Parliamentary Commission of leading citizens and should be established to play an oversight role for parliamentarians and to monitor transparency and accountability reports.

* New Parliament should be built.

* Some of the incremental costs of implementing the recommendations of the report could come from money now allocated to MPs from the Social and Economic Support Programme (SESP).

The Clarke Committee’s proposal for Parliamentary Salaries Committee:

* Comprised of five members

* Appointment by the governor-general.

* Three members proposed by the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition. At least one of these from the public sector.

* At least one selection by the PM from a list of names provided by trade unions.

* One selection by the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica

* The secretariat of the Permanent Salaries Review Board to act as secretariat for the committee.