MPs award themselves a website pay rise

The hike was recommended by a parliamentary committee to improve communication between MPs and taxpayers. MPs already pocket £7,000 for printed communications, which allows for the distribution of constituency newsletters, press releases, petitions, contact cards and hosting of online surgeries. It must not be used for campaigning, fundraising, recruitment of party members or for running surveys and polls.

The extra £10,000 is intended to make the content on MPs’ websites more uniform and to help them communicate more openly about their parliamentary activities. Jack Straw , leader of the Commons , said: “The purpose of this allowance is to contribute to better public understanding of what this parliament is about and what it does.” Straw said some material currently found on MPs’ sites would not have been allowed under parliamentary print rules.

After examining a variety of MPs’ websites, Dominic Johnson, managing director of website design agency Miramedia , said: “MPs’ websites generally follow the same pattern of content: a biography, parliamentary work and announcements, constituency
and national news, and lots of photos. But even the slickest of sites should cost no more than £7,000 to set up and around £1,000 a year thereafter to maintain.

“If they were to use standard off-the-shelf Web 2.0 technology such as Blogger.com , the sites could provide excellent functionality at a fraction of the price.” Liberal Democrat spokesman David Heath added: “We have to be extremely careful when awarding ourselves yet another allowance of substantial size without a clear indication of how the money spent is to the advantage of our constituents rather than us.”

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