Letter: MPs' 'pay rise' not can automatic perk

Sir: I fear that the comments of your correspondents Robert Hardy and Peter Connolly (Letters, 18 July) about MPs' '38 per cent increase in salary' can only spring from a wilful desire to mislead.

MPs' secretarial and office allowances are not an automatic 'perk'; they are a reimbursement of actual expenditure - based on a detailed return to the House of Commons Finance Office.

I write as a member who did not vote for the recent increase and who will be unlikely to use the full amount of what Mr Connolly so wrongly calls my 'pay rise'.

Yours faithfully,

JOHN HUNT

MP for Ravensbourne (Con)

House of Commons

London, SW1

18 July