Pritam Singh Backs MP Pay Rise but Presses Government on Mayors’ Roles and Stagnant Staff Allowances

A Qualified Endorsement

Workers’ Party (WP) secretary-general Pritam Singh voiced support on Thursday for the increase in Member of Parliament allowances, citing inflationary pressures, and endorsed Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s decision to cap the rise in ministerial salaries at nine per cent. The endorsement, however, came wrapped in pointed questions about the logic underpinning Singapore’s political salary framework — questions the WP has been asking, largely unanswered, since 2012.

Speaking during a parliamentary debate on the government’s response to a salary review committee’s recommendations, Mr Singh (WP-Aljunied) made clear that support for the quantum of the increase does not amount to acceptance of the formula used to derive it. The distinction matters, and he pressed it carefully.

The Formula Dispute

The review committee recommended continuing to peg ministerial salaries to the median salary of Singapore’s top 1,000 earners, with a discount applied. The WP’s counter-position, consistent since its 2012 parliamentary submission, proposes instead pegging ministerial pay to a multiple of an MP’s salary — itself benchmarked against a senior public servant’s wage — combined with a more modest variable component.

Mr Singh argued this alternative formula would produce more modest salary growth over time while remaining competitive enough to attract capable individuals to public life. Crucially, he contended it would anchor the benchmark to a reference point more legible to ordinary Singaporeans, reducing the emotive charge that surrounds any discussion of political pay.

He also raised a structural observation that tends to be elided in official discourse: while the government cites the need to compete with private-sector compensation to attract ministerial talent, the majority of ministers continue to be drawn from the public sector or civil service. For those individuals, he noted, a ministerial appointment can represent a wage increase rather than a sacrifice — a reality that complicates the standard justification for high ministerial salaries.

PM Wong, in his closing remarks, pushed back against what he characterised as a mistaken premise — that the salary framework exists to entice people into politics with money. He indicated he would consider whether more granular disclosure of variable components and bonuses was feasible, but cautioned against turning ministerial performance assessments into a “public popularity contest.”

What Do Mayors Actually Do?

Among the sharpest lines of questioning was Mr Singh’s challenge to the continued existence and compensation structure of the mayoral role. He argued that many Singaporeans remain unclear on what mayors do and why their pay should be linked to the MR4 ministerial benchmark — the lowest ministerial grade.

His concern is grounded in an observable institutional shift. Functions previously performed by the Community Development Councils (CDCs), which mayors head, have progressively been transferred to Social Service Offices and other government agencies. The CDCs retain a community-facing role — PM Wong highlighted their involvement in the CDC Vouchers and Jobs Nearby schemes — but Mr Singh questioned whether that residual scope justifies the current salary linkage.

The 2026 Review Committee itself acknowledged that community-facing roles such as MP and mayor may warrant different salary considerations from full-time political appointment holders. The government has accepted a recommendation to study how to delink mayoral pay from the MR4 benchmark. Mr Singh asked the government to clarify, within that study, whether it intends to retain the Office of the Mayor at all — and if so, to define its scope with precision.

Nineteen Years of Static Allowances

A less prominent but substantively significant point concerned the allowances paid to legislative assistants and secretarial assistants — the support staff who help MPs serve their constituents and discharge their parliamentary duties. These allowances were last updated in 2007. The government confirmed in March this year that the matter fell outside the review committee’s terms of reference.

Mr Singh called the omission difficult to justify. Nearly two decades of inflation have eroded the real value of those allowances, and the individuals receiving them perform functions that underpin the effectiveness of every MP in the House, regardless of party affiliation. Overlooking them while adjusting pay elsewhere, he argued, represents a material inconsistency in the government’s approach to parliamentary resourcing.

On Why People Join the WP

Mr Singh reserved his most pointed remarks for the question of political recruitment. PM Wong had argued that adequate MP allowances help both the PAP and WP field strong candidates and improve the quality of parliamentary debate. Mr Singh accepted the general point but rejected the implied equivalence between the two parties’ recruitment dynamics.

Standing on a WP ticket, he said plainly, carries no reasonable assumption of electoral success. Structural advantages — incumbency, access to grassroots infrastructure, the weight of a one-party dominant system — mean that opposition candidates face what he described as a “gargantuan challenge,” personally and professionally. No WP candidate, he argued, chooses to stand on the basis of remuneration prospects, because the prospect of actually receiving that remuneration is far from certain.

What drives WP candidates, he said, is a conviction that Singapore’s political system is strengthened by a credible opposition presence — one capable of functioning as a genuine check on executive power. He called for at least one-third of parliamentary seats to be held by the opposition, framing that threshold not as a partisan goal but as a structural requirement for accountable governance.

The broader argument Mr Singh advanced across his speech is one about institutional design rather than individual pay packets: that the benchmarks, formulas and structural assumptions embedded in Singapore’s political salary framework deserve periodic scrutiny, not periodic ratification. On that front, the WP’s position has been consistent for over a decade — and Thursday’s debate suggested it will remain so.