Parliament’s pay watchdog has admitted more than half of Britons think it sets MPs’ salaries at too high a level.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which decides the pay of MPs and their staff, recently carried out a ‘listening exercise’ with the public.
This included establishing a ‘citizens’ forum’ – made up of 23 members of the public – on MPs’ pay and funding.
Ahead of the forum’s work, IPSA commissioned polling that found 58 per cent of respondents thought MPs’ pay and funding was either a little or far too high.
The YouGov survey, carried out in August last year, also showed less than a quarter (24 per cent) considered MPs’ pay to be about the right level.
MPs currently earn a basic annual salary of £93,904 for their parliamentary duties, more than twice the UK average salary for full-time workers of £39,000.
The polling results were revealed within a newly-published report by IPSA on its consultation exercise.
But, despite the YouGov findings, the watchdog suggested it would not be cutting MPs’ pay.
It pointed to a change in views once members of the citizens forum were given a ‘deeper understanding’ of the role of an MP.
In its response to the ‘What’s Democrary Worth?’ project, IPSA said: ‘There was a significant difference between the opinions gathered through polling and the opinions of the forum members after completing the process.
‘Following the forum’s completion, 67 per cent of members viewed MPs’ pay as about right.
‘For IPSA, this showed us the importance of continuing to work to raise awareness of what we do, our role in independently setting and regulating MPs’ pay and funding, as well as what MPs are responsible for.
‘As referenced in the post-forum report, the change in forum member opinion reflects deeper understanding of the role’s demands and complexities.’
The 23 members of the citizens forum were recruited to listen to expert speakers and determine what IPSA should consider when deciding how MPs should be paid and funded.
They took part in 18 hours of ‘learning and deliberation’ and proposed a series of recommendations across six areas.
IPSA accepted 13 of these recommendations, with another 11 ‘under consideration for the medium or longer term’, while it rejected one recommendation.
The watchdog said another 16 recommendations were ‘not directly within our remit’ or would be ‘better addressed by another body’.
Those recommendations ignored by IPSA for not being within its remit included a call for MPs’ pay to be tied to minimum performance standards.
In response to this recommendation, IPSA noted the ‘main way in which people hold MPs to account is of course through their vote’.
It also said it was not responsible for capping the number of hours MPs can devote to second jobs, as the forum had also recommended.
IPSA said it was awaiting the outcome of work by the House of Commons’ Modernisation Committee on the topic of outside earnings.
But the watchdog accepted recommendations on extra training for MPs’ staff, saying it had ‘recently consulted on the creation of a separate ringfenced ‘staff development budget’ that could be accessed to support staff learning’.
IPSA rejected a recommendation that ministers should see their baseline MP pay reduced when they are appointed to the Government, to reflect the ‘reduced time’ in their role as an MP.
The watchdog said: ‘IPSA is not responsible for ministerial pay and we do not believe it would be appropriate to introduce a pay structure that interacted in this way with decisions, which are rightly the Government’s, about which MPs should take on ministerial roles.’
