First the facts and figures; MPs are paid a handsome £66,396 plus another £14,582 if they chair one of the 39 Select Committees. If they number among the 169 MPs who are ministers they also receive extra payments to compensate them for the burdens of the Red Box. If they make it to Cabinet they add an additional £68,827 – more than doubling their MP’s salary to £134,565. In short whereas the basic pay of an MP is more than triple the average £19,000 income of UK workers, almost a third of MPs are earning between 4 and 7 times average earnings. This is of course before any outside earnings are taken into account.

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