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Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy talks to BBC Radio 5 Live's Victoria Derbyshire: ''We've got to end this running sore of British political life''
MPs' pay should be increased by £6,000 to £74,000 a year from 2015, the Commons expenses watchdog has said.
But the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) also recommends cuts to perks such as meal allowances and taxis and a less generous pension scheme.
And "golden goodbyes" paid to retiring MPs could also be trimmed.
The plan has been condemned by party leaders and some MPs who say Ipsa should go back to the drawing board.
The watchdog is to consult on the rise but MPs can not block it because they handed control of the decision to the independent body in the wake of the 2009 expenses scandal.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "The cost of politics should go down not up. And MPs' pay shouldn't go up while public sector pay is, rightly, being constrained."
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who has said he will not take the increase, said it was "about the worst time to advocate a double digit pay increase for MPs," adding that the public would find it "incomprehensible".
'Fixes and fudges'Labour leader Ed Miliband said he did not believe the rise should go ahead - and confirmed he would not take it if it did, but he said he was confident Ipsa would change its recommendation after a public backlash.
"I don't think MPs should be getting a 10% pay rise when nurses and teachers are facing either pay freezes or very low increases and people in the private sector are facing similar circumstances," said Mr Miliband.
Prime Minister David Cameron has criticised the proposed increase but a No 10 source declined to comment on whether he would be taking it. Pressed on the question, the PM's spokesman said: "it's not a pay rise, it's a proposal".
He pointed out the IPSA package was still to go out to consultation and Downing Street would be submitting its own response.
The Ipsa proposals include:
- A salary of £74,000 in 2015, with rises after that linked to average earnings across the whole economy
- A new pension on a par with other parts of the public sector, moving from a final salary to career average scheme, which Ipsa says will save taxpayers nearly £2.5m a year
- Scrapping "resettlement payments", which were worth up to £64,766 for long-serving MPs still of a working age, the first £30,000 of which was tax-free. and introducing "more modest" redundancy packages, available only to those who contest their seat and lose
- A "tighter regime" of business costs and expenses - including an end to the £15 a night meal allowance and taxis home after late sittings
Ipsa chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said: "The history of MPs' pay and pensions is a catalogue of fixes, fudges and failures to act. The package we put forward today represents the end of the era of MPs' remuneration being settled by MPs themselves.
"For the first time, an independent body will decide what MPs should receive. We will do so in full view, and after consultation with the public."
'Obscene'Sir Ian told BBC Radio 5 Live MPs should be treated like "modern professionals" and part of the package was a "radical proposal" to introduce an annual "report card" to show the public what MPs did for their money.
"Start Quote
End QuoteMy favourite idea would be to create a new parliamentary charity to which MPs could donate their pay rise"
He said the pay rise proposal was "fair" because MPs' pay had "fallen back" over the years and they needed to properly rewarded for the job they did, adding that the expenses scandal had been the result of too much pay restraint.
He said there was never a good time to increase MPs' pay, but said the changes were designed to "last a generation rather than just respond to the latest political issue", and taken together with the expenses reforms would save taxpayers money.
"When you look at the package as a whole it is fair to the taxpayer and fair to MPs," he told callers to the Victoria Derbyshire phone-in programme.
He said he would over the next two months listen to the views of the public who had taken part in the consultation on the Ipsa website, but he believed the package was not over-generous and was in line with previous recommendations by the senior salaries review board and other bodies.
A stream of callers to the Victoria Derbyshire phone-in attacked the proposed pay rise, with one describing it as "obscene" and another asking Sir Ian: "What planet are you on?", although a handful of callers supported the package.
Sir Ian is paid £700 a day and works on average two days a week, which he said added up to an annual salary of between £60,00 and the "high 70s".
MPs' pay around the world (2012) | |
|---|---|
| Source: Ipsa | |
| Spain | £44,618 |
| France | £52,028 |
| UK (Westminster) | £65,738 |
| Germany | £72,294 |
| United States | £111,251 |
| Japan | £167,784 |
MPs are currently paid £66,396, but that is due to rise to £67,060 in April 2014 and rise by a further 1% the following year.
The recommendation amounts to a rise of around £6,300 a year, or 9.3%, on what MPs would be getting in 2015.
Some MPs have attacked the proposals, saying Ipsa should have taken greater account of the state of the wider economy and the pay freeze across the public and private sector.
Education Secretary Michael Gove said: "MPs are incredibly well paid anyway," adding: "IPSA - it's a bit of a silly organisation really and pay rise? They can stick it."
Margaret Hodge, Labour chairwoman of the influential Public Accounts Committee, said it was "inappropriate at a time when every public sector worker is being asked to take a 1% rise" that MPs should be out of line.
Labour MP John Mann said: "It really gives us all a bad reputation, a bad name. It's been bad enough after the expenses scandal and, frankly, if this was to go through it would be catastrophic for the reputation of Parliament."
MPs will not get a vote on the pay decision but Mr Mann said he hoped to force one in the Commons before the next election in 2015, which he said Ipsa could not ignore.
Conservative MP Douglas Carswell, writing on his Daily Telegraph blog, said MPs should reject the pay proposal and scrap Ipsa, linking MPs pay to civil service rates and introducing a daily allowance for expenses instead.
But economist Will Hutton, who led a government review of public sector pay two years ago, said there was a good case for a rise.
"A colonel, a headmaster, a police superintendent, that's probably, give or take, where we expect MPs to be paid, and what this watchdog has done," he told BBC News,
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