---

Members' Salaries, Pensions and Allowances

That is certainly my hon. Friend's interpretation of the remit that has been given to the review body. I ask him to wait and see what proposals the review puts forward on the mechanism that is to be set up. My aim, and that of the Leader of the House, the Government, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, and, I hope, other Members of this House is to find some mechanism that avoids Members of Parliament being asked to vote on their pay and which enables MPs' pay to be determined separately from the political environment within the House of Commons. I should like to comment on a couple of the principles that the SSRB report sets out on MPs' pay, on which I hope that everybody would agree. It says:"““Pay should not be so low as to deter suitable candidates, or so high as to make pay the primary attraction of the job””." I hope that we can all agree that that should indeed be the aim, whatever the mechanism. None of us wants people from different walks of life—nowadays, that includes people working in public sector jobs such as the head teacher of a secondary school—to be deterred from becoming a Member of Parliament because of the pay differential. Similarly, the SSRB makes several references to the fact that although there are of course always large numbers of people wanting to become Members of Parliament, pay should not be set at a level at which it attracts people to the job. People should want to do this job for other reasons than simply the pay level.