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Senior Tory claims MPs need a pay rise because living on just £82,000 a year can be ‘really grim’
His comments came on the same day the Universal Credit £20 uplift was axed
A senior Conservative politician has claimed that newer MPs are being left in a ‘desperately difficult’ situation because of their ‘grim’ £81,932 pay packet.
Worthing West MP Sir Peter Bottomley, seventy-seven, said he is not sure how new MPs ‘manage’ on their current salary, which is around £50,000-a-year higher than the UK average wage of £31,000.
Speaking to the New Statesman yesterday, Bottomley compared the salary of an MP to that of a General Practitioner, saying: “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.
“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.”
Bottomley, known as the Father of the House for being the longest serving MP in Parliament, then added that he believes the situation is ‘desperately difficult’ for newer MPs, adding: “I don’t know how they manage. It’s really grim.”
To put Bottomley’s stance into perspective; An increase of £18,000 a year to MPs’ salaries would represent a pay rise of almost 22%. The government this year offered NHS staff a rise of just 3%.
People weren’t impressed with the politician’s comments, with many taking to social media to express their outrage. One person wrote: “Oh bless. Sir Peter Bottomley MP should try living on Universal Credit. Yet another example of how out of touch the Conservative and Unionist Party government is.”
Another noted sarcastically: “Can we set up a go fund me page for the poor lambs? They must really be struggling on 82 grand a year plus allowances. Sir Peter Bottomley talking out his bottom I think.”
The politician’s comments came on the same day that the temporary £20 uplift for Universal Credit claimants was axed, setting back over 5.8 million people over £1,000 per month.
The government justified its decision by claiming that, as the economy opens back up after the Covid-19 pandemic, the focus needs to shift to getting people back to work.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng told BBC Breakfast last month that the government had spent a ‘huge’ amount of money during the pandemic to provide ‘massive support’ to the economy and workers, but that ‘there was a debate about how long we could afford this’.