According to Van der Velde, the early retirement of some Members of Parliament can be easily explained: ‘Members of Parliament leave, for example, because they become MPs after the coalition negotiations. Also, some get elected as aldermen somewhere in a municipality, so it’s all quite logical.”
High workload
But Van der Velde – who is himself a member of the Zeeland States – also hears a different voice: “People literally fall over due to the pressure of work,” explains the chairman of Statenlidnu. ‘An MP spends an average of 22 hours a week on this, in addition to his normal work. And the fee is also not very high,’ explains Van der Velde. Combining work, normal work and private life seems to be a sum with which more and more MPs are having difficulty.
You don’t have to get into politics to get rich. ‘
Pay for work as a deputy was recently increased by nearly 40 per cent to around €1,895 gross per month. This often leaves around €900 because Members of Parliament also receive income from other activities. “You don’t have to get into politics to get rich,” says Van der Velde. “But you certainly don’t want the situation we’re in now, which is that Members of Parliament literally fall over.”
“The Hague Cheese Dome”
Turning the job of Members of Parliament into a full-time job is not the solution, according to Van der Velde. “The charm of members of parliament is that they still have one foot in working life. As a result, they hear a lot, and this has advantages. The House of Representatives is sometimes referred to as the ‘cheese dome of The Hague’ and we don’t want a ‘provincial cheese dome’, says Van der Velde.
But the president of Statennu sees that something has to change, because the outflow is ‘too high’. In any case, it’s good that the problem is now being recognized, says Van der Velde. ‘It is also an option to provide better support to parliamentary groups, for example, because they now often do the preliminary work themselves. We can also do more with training and it is also an option to optimize the proposals and thus lighten the register,’ says Van der Velde. “It would be nice to implement these solutions simultaneously in all twelve provinces, otherwise we all reinvent the wheel.”