A less contentious debate on ministerial pay gives PAP more room to focus on leadership renewal

SINGAPORE – Those anticipating a heated debate on ministerial pay in Parliament this week would have come away somewhat disappointed.

The debate on this emotive topic, as both parties in the House characterised it, was shorter than observers expected and less combative than in 2012, when MPs discussed at length a new framework for political salaries.

Those who had followed the debate would probably also agree that the PAP and WP appear to have found more common ground than before.

This augurs well for the ruling party on what could have been a contentious topic.

It also puts PM Wong on firmer ground to focus on his priorities of leadership renewal and recruitment going forward, having no protracted back-and-forth with the WP casting a shadow beyond the debate in Parliament.

In 2012, then Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean framed the debate as both sides of the House taking a “major step forward to bridge the once-wide gap” on the issue of ministerial pay.

That 2012 debate, which spanned 2½ days and had 29 MPs speaking including eight from the WP, saw several drawn-out exchanges between the PAP and the WP on the formula used to calculate the pay and the reference pool that the benchmark pay is pegged to.

But clashes aside, both parties affirmed the three basic principles that the new salary framework had used to determine how much ministers should be paid.

These are: that salaries should take reference from the market to attract individuals of the right calibre to lead the country; that a discount should be included to reflect the ethos of political service; and that pay should be transparent and linked to individual performance and national outcomes.

In 2026, it seems the House – which spent just over four hours on Sept 10 debating the issue – has further converged. Thirteen MPs made speeches – four PAP backbenchers, five Nominated MPs, three ministers, and WP chief Pritam Singh. He was the sole MP from the opposition party who spoke.

Both political parties still agree on the three basic principles but crucially, the WP also agreed with PM Wong’s decision to increase ministerial salaries by up to 9 per cent.

The Prime Minister had said he would give ministers a one-off adjustment, subject to performance, rather than immediately take on the review committee’s proposed increase in benchmark pay from $1.1 million to $1.8 million for the entry-level MR4 grade.

Tacit in the WP’s agreement is that since ministerial pay has remained stagnant over the last 15 years, it should be raised, though the opposition party did not agree with the new benchmark pay.

It preferred a more modest increment, derived from its pay formula proposed in 2012, which the party continued to stand by. This formula would have come up with a benchmark pay of $1.08 million in 2026, the WP said.

Despite this, it seems the PAP and WP are closer in their stances, compared with other opposition parties outside the House that criticised the overall pay package and objected to having any increment at all.

While observers might have also expected the parties to continue to cross swords in Parliament over differences in the pay formula, Singh did not push the Government further on taking up his party’s suggested formula beyond his initial speech during the debate.

Neither PM Wong nor Coordinating Minister for Public Services Chan Chun Sing rebutted Singh on its formula, and there were no further clarifications from either side on this.

Instead, there was stronger pushback from several Nominated MPs, who questioned the continued usage of the top 1,000 Singaporean earners as a salary benchmark and proposed alternative models. Businessman Azhar Othman even mooted a larger variable component in the overall salary package.

On Singh’s part, much of his clarifications centred on having more public information on the pay package ministers receive – in line with the WP’s continued advocacy for transparency and accountability that it ties to its role as a check on the Government.

He pressed the ministers for more information on the actual remuneration figures, citing bonus ranges that had been provided for 2013 to 2017 but were not similarly made available for 2018 to 2024 when requested.

To this, PM Wong said he would consider disclosing more information on the distribution of salaries and range of individual bonuses while cautioning against a public popularity contest.

The other topics raised by Singh in his speech lay outside the core of the salary framework – he questioned the continued relevance of the role of mayors and asked for a review of allowances for legislative and secretarial assistants.

Overall, the tone of the debate was more restrained than in 2012, with less partisan discourse.

With little pushback from the WP to manage on the formula itself, PM Wong could then use his time on the floor to convince the broader House and the watching public of why he chose to move on political salaries now, and in this manner.

On these two issues, he circled back to his priorities of leadership renewal and recruitment, which he had made clear in his Sept 8 statement.

He identified then the succession gaps in his Cabinet that he hoped to fill and continued to underscore the pressing need to bring in strong members to shore up his team – a message he had emphasised ahead of the 2025 General Election and at the two subsequent Cabinet reshuffles.

He highlighted four key ministries – Trade and Industry, Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Finance – helmed by experienced and senior members of his team and himself, that have no clear replacements.

The Prime Minister also stressed the difficulty in attracting someone of ministerial calibre from the private sector, echoing what his predecessors have said.

But while previous prime ministers have found it difficult to recruit from the private sector, there were still success stories such as current ministers K. Shanmugam and Vivian Balakrishnan, former minister Ng Eng Hen and more who were cited by MPs during the debate.

Since the 2011 election, Tan See Leng is the only PAP candidate from the private sector who is a minister.

The benefits of having someone like Tan - who is Minister for Trade and Industry (Energy and Industry) - on the team are underscored by his involvement in two recent debates.

This week, he weighed in on the debate on pay, pointing out that no realistic amount of ministerial salary could have matched what he was earning before politics. During a WP motion on the future of Singapore’s economy last month, he provided the dual perspective of a successful entrepreneur in Singapore and a minister involved in shaping economic policy.

There may be no “politically convenient” time to move on ministerial pay, as PM Wong said, but by moving now, he has also given himself a longer runway possible to recruit new faces, who can play a similar role as Tan, with an updated remuneration figure.

While the higher benchmark is not meant to incentivise prospective candidates, his hope is that it will remove a hurdle that would have deterred some of them.

Ministerial pay will remain a prickly issue that the PAP has to contend with even as the debate in the House has concluded. The party will have to continue defending its decision to Singaporeans, some of whom will continue to use the million-dollar figure as a retort when policies go wrong. The issue will also rear its head again in future reviews, which PM Wong has promised.

In the next few years, Singaporeans will also be watching how PM Wong fills the gaps he has identified, and come GE 2030, the candidates that he puts forward will show whether this move has borne the party any fruit.