This email was sent to Money Box subscribers on 8 May 2009

Dear listener,

The expenses claimed by MPs are not one of our topics. But here is a tiny bit of context. Of course the amounts are not great in comparison to the tens or hundreds of billions (or is it trillions now?) committed to helping keep the banks afloat and borrowing to pay for the government's spending programmes. Nor are they large, as my colleague Nick Robinson has pointed out, compared with the amounts involved in alleged corruption by politicians in other countries – some of them democracies. But they are large compared with the amounts that MPs themselves specify for the rest of us to live on.

For example, someone on a basic state pension (set by MPs) gets just £95.25 a week after a lifetime's work. About the same as the £400 a month food allowance which MPs (who are paid £64,766 a year) can claim – and some do.

Anyone under 65 with an income above £121.52 a week is deemed (by MPs) rich enough to pay income tax. One Tory frontbencher is reported in the Daily Telegraph to have spent more than that (£134.30) on two lamps for their home.

A single person out of work and seeking a job is expected to live on an amount (set by MPs) of £64.30 a week. Rather less than the £77 to repair a swing chair claimed by one Lib Dem frontbencher.

A person working 40 hours a week on the national minimum wage (set by MPs) earns £229.20 a week – before tax. So it would take more than two weeks for them to earn (before tax) the £575 one Labour backbencher claimed for underfloor heating in a shower room.

(Detailed information from The Daily Telegraph)

*** IN THE BEST RADIO PROGRAMME THIS SATURDAY ***

And talking of the National Minimum Wage we look into the apparently attractive change announced this week by the government to stop restaurants using tips to boost waiters' wages up to the minimum. But will it work? Or is there a loophole big enough to drive a sweet trolley through? In other words can restaurateurs carry on taking the tips we leave for their staff to boost the bottom line? We ask the minister in charge.

The Advertising Standards Authority is investigating commercials by NatWest that it offers impartial financial advice after complaints that the advisers were in fact selling NatWest products. What has been going on?

If you put your ear to the ground you might here a low rumbling sound. But is it the economy falling down or the distant sound of bulls running as share prices rise 20% in less than three months? Bull meets bear on Money Box. But who will get eaten alive?

It's an Equitable Life, Henry. So ran the ads – until 2000 when one of the UK's biggest pension providers almost collapsed after the courts said it had to meet the impossible promises it had made. But since then it has been an inequitable story as report after report has complained of the way its millions of customers have been treated. Now the Ombudsman has berated the government again for failing to implement the findings of her last report. We talk to Equitable chairman Vanni Treves.

Best wishes,

Paul

PS Don't forget the programme taster on BBC Breakfast between quarter to nine and nine o'clock. If you miss it, you can watch it on our website. In March our pages and stories were viewed more than half a million times.


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