Tory MP slammed for claiming MPs need pay rise as living on £81k can be ‘really grim’

A Tory MP has been slammed for claiming that MPs need a pay rise because living on £81k can be “really grim”.

Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, said the “crass” comments by Sir Peter Bottomley show how “out of touch the Westminster elite really are”.

In an interview with the New Statesman Bottomley suggested that MPs, who are paid £81,932 a year, should earn as much as GPs, whose average salary in England is £100,700, which would mean a pay rise of 22%.

The remarks by Sir Peter, who as the oldest MP in the Commons is ‘Father of the House’, come as the UK Government is slashing the £20 uplift to Universal Credit and amid a public sector pay freeze in the wake of the pandemic.

Bottomley told the New Statesman: “I take the view that being an MP is the greatest honour you could have, but a general practitioner in politics ought to be paid roughly the same as a general practitioner in medicine.”

‘Paid far too little’ 

“Doctors are paid far too little nowadays. But if they would get roughly £100,000 a year, the equivalent for an MP to get the same standard of living would be £110-£115,000 a year – it’s never the right time, but if your MP isn’t worth the money, it’s better to change the MP than to change the money.”

He claimed colleagues financial struggle on their salaries, he said: “I don’t know how they manage. It’s really grim.”

Liz Saville Roberts said: “On the day the UK Government cut the annual household budgets of 275,000 families in Wales by over £1000, this crass remark reveals just how out of touch the Westminster elite really are.

“Plaid Cymru has always argued that MPs should have no say whatsoever in how much they’re paid.”