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Members' Salaries, Pensions and Allowances

My hon. Friend is right. The PWC report misunderstands the situation when it says that problems of work load are to some extent within MPs' own control. There is an element of truth in that, but it underestimates some of the pressures that MPs are under. As I was saying in reply to the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), we should try to disentangle these elements. The Government motion helpfully provides the opportunity to do so. The first such element is the baseline for our calculations. The SSRB says that we are some 10 per cent. behind, although that is if everything is taken into account. Our basic salary is 14 per cent. behind, even on the SSRB's comparators, and we are 15 per cent. behind on total cash. The figure needed to catch up is somewhere between where we are and £66,742. Interestingly, that figure is only a little above what we would have received had we kept pace with average earnings. I must take slight issue with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). He said that some past increases had not been connected with the real world. In fact, those past recommendations were designed to catch up with changes that had already taken place in the real world.