Background Outline of the current system of salaries for MPs
17.MPs have received a regular salary since 1911. For many years, these salaries were set by the House of Commons by resolution, although since the 1970s the SSRB has advised on the level of these salaries.
18.The origins of the current system lie in the Government’s response to the January 2008 SSRB report Review of Parliamentary Pay, Pensions and Allowances 2007. In response to this review, the Government announced that it considered it “inappropriate that MPs should vote on their own pay and pensions.”(8)
19.Sir John Baker, retiring chairman of the SSRB, was accordingly asked to conduct a review. He was asked to “make recommendations for a mechanism for independently determining the pay and pensions of MPs which does not involve MPs voting on their own pay”.(9) His report, published in June 2008, recommended that MPs’ pay should be uprated annually in line with the Public Sector Average Earnings Index, with a review by the SSRB each Parliament.
20.The current system for MPs’ salaries is set out in the Commons resolutions of 3rd July 2008. The House resolved that MPs’ salaries are to be increased annually through an uprating formula. Rather than using the Public Sector Average Earnings Index, the uprating formula is derived from the increase in a package of salaries for certain public sector workers. The increase in salary is achieved by the SSRB notifying the Speaker of the House of Commons of the percentage increase. The SSRB must also conduct a more general review of MPs’ salaries in the first year of each new Parliament.
21.These salaries are separate from what an MP might additionally receive by virtue of holding ministerial office, as provided for in the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975.