Sir Keir Starmer: MPs should not get £3,300 pay rise
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said MPs should not receive a newly announced £3,360 pay rise as hundreds of thousands of Britons are set to lose their jobs.
Starmer said today that “this year of all years” MPs do not deserve the planned 4.1 per cent pay rise, about eight-times the amount of yearly inflation up to August, which would bring salaries to £85,291 a year.
The decision was taken days ago by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) to grant the pay rise to all sitting British MPs due to “the huge economic uncertainties arising from the coronavirus pandemic”.
Ipsa links MPs’ salary rises to the average increase in public sector pay.
However, the move has come under fire by many MPs and business groups as being unnecessary and profligate while the country faces the largest recession in almost 100 years.
Starmer told LBC this morning that “we shouldn’t have it”.
“I think this year of all years we shouldn’t have it,” he said.
Before the Open newsletter: Start your day with the City View podcast and key market data
“We shouldn’t have it and this year of all years people can say that money, if available, should be spent on key workers, those who have been on the frontline of this pandemic.”
Parliamentarians do not have the power to challenge the decision, with all salary and expenses decisions given to Ipsa after the 2009 expenses scandal.
When asked if MPs could potentially all forfeit their salaries into a fund for frontline workers, Starmer said: “I think we need to have a discussion across parties, because I suspect there are lots of MPs that feel it just isn’t right that this has happened.”
Conservative MP Dehenna Davison also took to Twitter to say the pay rise shouldn’t happen, calling it a “stupid decision”.
Business minister Nadhim Zahawi said he would donate his pay rise.