Let’s end the farce over MPs’ wages once and for all

Today IPSA are going to propose a pay rise for MPs of around £6500. At a time when wages across the country are stagnating and a public sector pay freeze is backed by all sides of the house, MPs getting a sharp bump in their salaries (around 10%) will be deeply unpopular – and rightly so.

I’ve written before about why I think don’t need a pay rise and why it would be politically toxic for them to accept one. I won’t rehash those arguments here, except to say that if the public perceives MPs to be filling their boots at a time of austerity, it may well kill off whatever limited, lingering respect they had for politicians once and for all.

But if the plan was for the sting to be taken out of the periodic spats over MPs pay (specifically pay rises) by handing it to an independent body and giving MPs no say over whether or not to accept the rises, then that plan has been a manifest failure.

There is a simple solution though – and one that be used to restore rather than erode the esteem in which MPs are held by the public.

Why not set MPs salaries at a level that is a multiple of the average UK salary? (For example 3x). That would mean that being an MP would continue to be a lucrative profession, but their salaries would only rise at a rate at which they were delivering prosperity for ordinary working people. It would also make future pay rises completely defensible, and might also encourage some MPs to take a greater level of interest in the real average national salary – and how to increase it – than is currently the case.

The alternative is persistent wrangling which makes MPs look venal and greedy. I don’t believe they are, but every time this row flares up it’s another open goal for the anti-politics brigade. MPs need to stop this farce once and for all, puncture the political football and tie their future pay levels to those of ordinary working people. And some of them might even learn what a real low salary looks like in the process.