As expected, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) has said that MPs should get a 9.3 per cent pay rise. This would mean that while their pay would go up to £67,060 in April 2014 it would rise substantially to £74,000 in 2015.
At the same time, their pensions should be based on a career average salary (which should save around £2.5m a year), spending on subsistence and taxis should be curtailed, and smaller redundancy payments should be brought in, with so-called resettlement payments scrapped.
Equally predictable has been the response from political party leaders, with Downing Street repeating the Prime Minister David Cameron’s comment that the cost of politics should go down, not up. Number 10 also said that MPs’ pay should not rise while public sector pay is being pegged back year after year. The PM’s official spokesperson insisted: “it’s not a pay rise, it’s a proposal”.
There have also been calls for the findings of the independent body – set up to remove the politicisation of such decisions – to be blocked by the government.
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The Labour leader Ed Miliband and the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg have joined Cameron in criticising the proposed pay rise.
