MPs need pay rise as living on £81k can be ‘really grim’, says Tory MP

Sir Peter Bottomley made the eyebrow-raising claim and said MPs should earn as much as GPs, whose average salary in England is more than £100,000

A Tory MP has said MPs need a pay rise because it can be “really grim” living on an annual salary of more than £80,000

Sir Peter Bottomley, who as the oldest MP in the Commons is ‘Father of the House’, made the eyebrow-raising comments in an interview with the New Statesman.

He claimed that parliamentarians, who are paid some £81,932 should earn as much as GPs, whose average salary in England is £100,700 – meaning a pay rise of 22%.

Sir Peter said being an MP was “desperately difficult” for some MPs.

But it comes as the Government is slashing the £20 uplift to Universal Credit and amid a public sector pay freeze in the wake of the pandemic.

“I take the view that being an MP is the greatest honour you could have, but a general practitioner in politics ought to be paid roughly the same as a general practitioner in medicine,” he told the magazine.

“Doctors are paid far too little nowadays. But if they would get roughly £100,000 a year, the equivalent for an MP to get the same standard of living would be £110-£115,000 a year – it’s never the right time, but if your MP isn’t worth the money, it’s better to change the MP than to change the money.”

Turning to some of his colleagues, who he claimed were facing financial struggle on their salaries, he said: “I don’t know how they manage. It’s really grim.”

Sir Peter made his comments as Brits – whose average full-time salary is just over £31,000 – face a cost-of-living crisis this winter with rising energy bills and soaring inflation.

Universal Credit payments will start being cut by £20-a-week in a week’s time. Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey last night belted out “I’ve had the time of my life” at a conference karaoke.

It came as Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a speech to close the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, in which he attempted to explain his flagship policy of “levelling up”.

“The idea in a nutshell is you will find talent, genius, care, imagination and enthusiasm everywhere in this country, all of them evenly distributed – but opportunity is not,” he said.

“Our mission as Conservatives is to promote opportunity with every tool we have.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey, meanwhile, faced heavy criticism for singing ‘The Time Of My Life’ on karaoke at a conference party, just as the Government prepared to slash UC.