Call me cynical...but
From The Telegraph in 2011 www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8432684/Every-single-ex-MP-claimed-a-golden-goodbye-at-a-cost-of-millions-to-taxpayer.html
"All 220 MPs who departed the Commons at the last election claimed a ‘golden goodbye’ worth up to £65,000 – at a cost to the taxpayer of more than £10 million....
"Among them were a number of disgraced MPs who had been exposed for abusing their expenses, or who were forced to stand down as a result of sexual or financial scandals"
From the Beeb today www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-36262858
"Retired police officers found guilty of misconduct should have their pensions cut, the Labour Party has said.
"Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham made the call following the Hillsborough Inquests which concluded police blunders caused the tragedy.
"He said it was a scandal police officers could retire on full pensions and evade misconduct proceedings."
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...a number of disgraced MPs...
How many? Nothing like the full 220, who received what amounts to a redundancy payment. It's a reasonable measure to encourage capable people to take the risk of interrupting a successful career for the uncertain business of being MP for a marginal constituency. The tiny minority guilty of abuses can be - and were - dealt with under the criminal law.
Another example of poor Telegraph numerical reasoning.
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"How many?"
I recall a 'Number Cruncher' piece in Private Eye from about 5 years ago where the figures were given for 'proportion of general population in jail' compared with 'proportion of current administration' in jail. I'm afraid that I've lost the figures, though I recall that the parliamentary figure was about 5 times that of the rest of the populus.
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TIC, presumably, HW. I shouldn't need to remind you of the perils of small samples.
My question was more for Smokie: how much of the (relatively) piddling £10m went to MPs found guilty of misconduct?
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When looking for the link I chose the Telegraph from many. There were plenty of others making the same point. It's not the detail anyway, it's the principle. You know that many MPs who should have felt the long arm didn't.
It seems unfair to me that that a police officer with (e.g.) 30 years solid service should have his pension docked after retirement because of one failing.
EDIT to remove misleading comment... :-)
Last edited by: smokie on Wed 11 May 16 at 09:10
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"TIC, presumably, HW. I shouldn't need to remind you of the perils of small samples."
Oh, I'd have thought that populations of 600* and 65 million were big enough to give us a bit of an idea about things.
* I can't remember if they included both upper and lower chambers.
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Ah, but you said 'administration', which is a small subset of the 650 members of the House of Commons (plus a few peers.)
Regardless of the sample size, it's not really meaningful to compare a period just after a change in the climate, when abuses that had been ignored or tolerated for decades were suddenly tackled all at once, with the background offending rate in society as a whole. I'd expect a sample taken now to be much closer.
The police question needs nuance too. If we're considering officers who may have committed police disciplinary offences rather than crimes, which can already cause forfeiture of the pension, then you'd need to establish an appropriate degree of gravity to avoid undue consequences for an officer who uses the wrong polish on his truncheon.
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"Ah, but you said 'administration'"
If I kept back-copies of the Eye, then I would be able to give you the precise terminology that they used ....... but, I don't, so I can't.
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Five years on... - WillDeBeest
