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Members' Salaries

Except, of course, that the level that Members would be at would not differ from what it would be if we brought in Baker now. It may be a big increase at the time, but that would be precisely because Members had forgone some element of it. My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr. Love) may want to urge me not to give away that amount of money in the meantime—that is a perfectly sustainable argument to make, and I understand it because it is a matter of judgment as to what we face the public with—but it is not legitimate to say that because we would end up at the same point the public ought to judge us harshly. The public ought to judge us well for having shown some restraint in the meantime. I do not necessarily believe that that would be the case, but it ought to be. We would not be getting more; we would be getting less. The catch-up would be all the steeper because it would be catch-up at that point. The central point that I want to put before the House is the fact that we need to get on to the Baker mechanism, although it is a matter of judgment when. We must ensure that the Baker mechanism is what Baker described—the average index of public sector earnings—because anything other than that would see MPs continue to fall behind in the long-term future. We have to recognise the fact that Baker said that we were sufficiently far behind that we needed the catch-up. The judgment for the House today is at what speed we should reach that Baker trajectory.