Graphs at a glance: MPs' salary and allowances and how they raced ahead of inflation

Regardless of their paid hobbies (i.e. all their other paid jobs), which suggest they have more free time than many of them claim, MP’s basic salaries have grown vigorously over the decades. The strategy seems to have been to take the pain, or more accurately the gain, in occasional bucketloads. For most years, salaries go up at around inflation – sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.  But every now and then a major payrise is slipped through. And there is a certain correlation with changes of government – perhaps to cement members’ loyalty, and perhaps to give the losers’ generous final salary pensions a little filip. 

• In 1979, when the Labour government fell, MP’s salaries went up by 37% when the retail price index (RPI) measure of inflation was 13.4%.
• In 1996, the year before the fall of the Tory government, MP’s salaries went up by 29.6% when the RPI was 2.4%