Smudge,
Please don't read this as a personal attack, but I think you need to check some of your facts.
First of all there's IPSA, whose board is:
http://parliamentarystandards.org.uk...executive.aspx
Only one of these appears to be an
ex MP, leaving parliament in 2010. Can you point to evidence to back the comment (which I admit was only passed on from what you heard on TV) that
the board, appointed by MPs to carry out this onerous task were in fact MPs?
IPSA is independent, it says so on the tin, that's what the "I" stands for, and it is recommending something that MPs actually don't like...
By contrast the AFPRB
isn't independent.
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...accessible.pdf
It never claims to be, indeed every year (page iii in 2015), in it's terms of reference it states:
In reaching its recommendations, the Review Body is to have regard to the following considerations:
• the need to recruit, retain and motivate suitably able and qualified people taking
account of the particular circumstances of Service life;
• Government policies for improving public services, including the requirement on the
Ministry of Defence to meet the output targets for the delivery of departmental services;
• the funds available to the Ministry of Defence as set out in the Government’s
departmental expenditure limits; and
• the Government’s inflation target.
So, you are complaining about double standards of the government in their response to 2 "independent" pay review boards, but one of them isn't independent at all, and never claims to be!!
If you want to complain that public service bodies don't have truly "independent" pay review boards, fair enough - but make that your argument. But then again, I don't see any private companies, Tesco, BP, ICI, etc, having "independent" external bodies setting the pay they give their workers!