storyboard 16. honourable members

everything you need to know about a story you meant to read

the plot

"MPs award themselves a 26pc pay rise," trumpeted the Telegraph. "MPs vote for full pounds 9,000 pay increase,' exclaimed the Times. "Members tuck into their midnight feast," quipped the Independent. The Guardian came up with a succinct "MPs take the cash", while the Mail told how John Major was "snubbed as MPs vote to take the pay jackpot". the key players The 651 members of the Commons. On Wednesday, MPs voted to accept the pounds 43,000 salary offered by last week's Senior Salaries Review Body report, overwhelmingly rejecting the 3 per cent pay restraint urged on ministers and MPs by all the three party leaders. The House voted for the full deal offered by the review body, which will mean a pounds 9,000 annual pay rise to be backdated to the start of this month for MPs, and ministerial salaries topping pounds 100,000 after the next election. But it did accept the review body's recommendation that their 74.1p mileage rate should be reduced to 47.2p a mile. what the pundits say "We need groups prepared to sacrifice their narrow monetary interests to reassert the legitimacy for the rest of us of acting from higher motives," cried the Guardian, while the Times opined that MPs' earnings "will always be a matter of personal taste and judgment more than objective assessment". Conservative MP John Carlisle claimed that the Government had "emerged with a bloody nose", and that it "must not make the same mistake", but Winston Churchill defended the revolt, asking: "What's the point of having a review body if you put their report in the waste paper basket?" what you should say "Nobody disputes that being an MP is a very demanding job, or that they are worthy of a high salary, but for them to award themselves a rise of nearly 30 per cent while other public servants get only three is at best insensitive and at worst contemptuous."

What you shouldn't say:

"But they're such upright, decent people! Pillars of the community, no less! And so few of the ministers have other income to live on."