MPs have signed off their own bumper 5% pay hike and expenses boost despite Treasury warnings that the move was “unjustified” and would be rejected for a Government department. The Mail has the story.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury tried to intervene as a powerful Commons committee considered the proposals.
But the appeal for restraint was ignored, with the 5% rise – more than for the NHS and most public sector workers – taking effect in April.
That pushed salaries to £98,599, while the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) has also made their expenses more generous.
Ipsa has been handed responsibility for setting MPs’ pay, but the watchdog’s budgets must be approved by the cross-party Speaker’s committee.
That happened in March – but the committee has only just slipped out a letter from James Murray, who was Rachel Reeves’s deputy at the time.
Referring to the 5% pay increase, Murray said: “This would be significantly higher than ONS wage forecasts across the whole economy (3.2%) and the OBR’s inflation forecast (2.2%) for 2026-27.
“It would also outpace other public sector workforce pay uplifts for 2026-27, such as the recently announced 3.3% headline pay award for nursing staff.
“I am not aware of any issues being identified for MPs that would offer a potential justification of this pay award, and HMT would therefore reject this pay award request if it came from a Government department.”
The letter, dated February 27th, was also scathing about Ipsa’s total budget increasing to £316 million in this financial year. That is up from £293 million in 2025-26.
“This equates to around a 5% real terms uplift, which is higher than most Government departments over the same period,” Murray said.
The minister noted that the Treasury had no power over Ipsa, but stressed that if a part of Whitehall asked for such an increase he would demand to know the “business case for this funding, as well as reassurance that all possible efficiencies and reprioritisation had been taken to minimise the size”.
Ipsa has signalled that MPs’ pay will continue to rise fast, aiming to reach £110,000 by 2029.
The Commons watchdog is planning to spend £300 million on politicians’ salaries, offices and business expenses over the next 12 months.
That compares to £268 million originally estimated for last year – although Ipsa was granted an extra £13 million after costs overran.
Ipsa has pointed to higher take-up of budgets by MPs as driving the extra funding requirements, but it has also made provisions more generous.
Under the plans, rubber-stamped by the whole House, staffing budgets are going up 7%, including a 5% pay award.
The total staff budget has risen from £103 million in 2019 to a proposed £184 million in the coming year – including £7.7 million for resource to tackle “backlogs” in work.
Each MP office will be able to spend £4,000 on “health, wellbeing and development”.
London MPs are getting a 6.3% uplift to cover accommodation, while those representing other parts of the country have been handed 5.2% – boosting costs by £900,000 a year.
Greater London MPs are now being allowed to rent properties in Westminster even though they live within commuting distance.
Worth reading in full.
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Very few of the Prize Pigs in Westminster are there for any reason other than self-enrichment, particularly on the Labour benches.
Nah. They are there because Labour can’t find anyone better.
A hundred grand a year for rubbish.
Its just a minimum wage.
It is a bit higher because they don’t work in McDonalds [although I suspect quite a few ought to be instead].
MPs’ pay should be decided by a small committee comprised of small-business owners, freelance contractors and the self-employed. The meeting would last 3 minutes and be held once every 300 years. In it, all delegates would write a number on a small piece of note paper. The lowest number would be the new salary.
MPs expenses would come out of their own pocket and never under any circumstances whatsoever be reimbursed.
Once MPs have completed their “stint” telling the rest of us what to do they would be outright banned from holding any job, post, consultancy or freelance speaking engagement ever again because of the possibility of corrupt payment offers being made whilst they were in office.
I would not make it illegal to throw coinage at ex-MPs begging in the street. But I wouldn’t encourage it.
Very reasonable!
Why do London MPs need any accommodation allowance. They presumably lived somewhere before seeking election.
On RPI I suspect the numbers are systematically too low. Everyone complains about significant price rises on everything from beer, household costs, food and building materials. Car repair costs have risen a lot. Government services are now often charged for at high prices whereas they used to be low priced or part of what we got for our taxes.
If RPI is being under reported it could well mean GDP is being overstated because it is affected by the deflator of estimated prices.
“Why do London MPs need any accommodation allowance.”
Because they need two homes – in London and in the constituency – unless of course they live in London but then at least some seem to find ways still to claim an allowance.
It would be cheaper to pay for their accommodation in a cheap hotel chain, than a load of allowances that extract the yellow stuff from the public.