Tory MP says living on £81k annual salary 'really grim' and calls for pay rise

A Tory MP has called for MPs to earn the same salary as GPs, arguing his current £81k a year wage packet is “really grim”.

The 77-year-old ‘Father of the House’ - the MP with the longest continuous service - made the comment on the same day Universal Credit was cut for the most vulnerable in the country.

‘Desperately difficult’ standard of living

Sir Peter Bottomley called the current £81,932 MPs receive “desperately difficult” for many of his colleagues to live on, and added that they should earn the equivalent of medical professionals.

“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,” he told the New Statesman.

GPs earn an average salary of £100,700 in England, where the average salary stood at £31,461 as of last year.

Not only did he feel aggrieved by his current salary, he added GPs are also paid too little and MPs require more than the medics in order to maintain an equal “standard of living.”