MP pay rise

MPs' are about to get a 10k pay rise!

David Cameron will have more difficulty defending MPs' pay rises than anything else he has had to deal with recently. Sir Ian Kennedy, head of IPSA [Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority], is due to deliver his report to parliament this week suggesting MPs on £66,396 [[excluding those dodgy expenses such as mortgage support]] are vastly underpaid, and should earn £85,000 if the Commons is to attract more talent. Realising a £20,000 pay rise would cause such a public outcry that it could turn Parliament Square into Tahrir Square, Kennedy is widely expected to offer a compromise figure of about £10,000.

But even a £10,000 rise would make a mockery of David Cameron's claim that in Austerity Britain 'we are all in it together'. Chancellor George Osborne last week announced an end to automatic pay rises for civil servants and is facing union anger over his insistence that public-sector workers stick to pay rises of 1 per cent.

The former Tory leadership challenger, David Davis, reflected the mood at the top of his party when he said it was "completely inconceivable" that his or any other party could be seen to be even considering such a pay rise just as the government was telling the country to tough out a few more years of austerity. "I don't see how we could ever again even think of uttering the words 'all in it together' if we accepted this. Snowballs in hell and cows jumping over the moon come to mind. It can't happen."

However, David Cameron is not in a position where he can either stop or alter this process as it is independent!