What should we pay MPs? You won't like the answer | Polly Toynbee

What should we pay MPs? You won't like the answer | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian
Extract :
When asked what motivates MPs, as many think it's "their own personal gain" as "to help people in their local area". But social class DE is twice as likely as ABs to think MPs self-serving. To a DE, an MP's salary of £65,738 is a fortune, two and a half times more than the median. Half the population earns under that £26,000, DEs a lot less – and they vote less. High earners may sympathise more with Hansard's finding that a third of new-intake MPs took a salary cut of £30,000 or more. Earners in the top tenth, on more than £52,400, mistakenly think their pay more ordinary than it is.
Who would you compare an MP with? An average primary head gets less, £52,000, but a secondary head gets more – £73,000. Financial managers average £59,000, personnel managers get £43,000. Some say an MP should earn the same as the average voter. Yet set pay too low and good professionals will be deterred, leaving only the wealthy, such as the Tory front bench, to stand. It was Chartists, not toffs, who demanded MPs be fairly paid. We need MPs from more varied social backgrounds: few now start out from manual jobs, with too many thinktankers and researchers. But would lower pay diversify the intake?