Calculating the cost of Bercow

After a year out of the headlines, John Bercow is back. The former Commons Speaker appeared on the Observer front page in June to announce his membership of the Labour party, eighteen months after retiring from Parliament.

The onetime Tory right winger is still smarting over the government’s refusal to award him a peerage and thus a seat for life in the Lords to happily chunter away. There is now speculation as to whether Bercow’s revised goal is a return to the Commons under Labour colours – as if his former colleagues there had not suffered enough.

One story Bercow will have been less pleased about was the news last month that he has broken his promise not to claim his gold-plated Speaker’s pension until he is 65. The former Buckingham MP, who is still only 58, promised in 2012 to save the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds by not receiving the benefit until 2028. Yet he has in fact been taking the final salary pension – worth over £35,000 a year – since he retired as Speaker aged 56 in November 2019.