'I never expected to be watching the pennies at my age and yet this is what I have to' - meet the Tory minister whose £67k salary wasn't enough
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Version 0 of 1. For one Conservative minister, being paid £67,060 just wasn't enough. So when the House of Commons expenses watchdog approved a 10 per cent pay rise today, he must have taken a huge sigh of relief - he'll be dragged above the breadline now he and his 649 fellow MPs have received a £7,000 pay rise. Tobias Ellwood, a foreign office minister, was one of the few MPs to write to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) urging it to go ahead with the 10 per cent pay hike MPs, despite the fact that George Osborne has imposed a 1 per cent pay freeze on all other workers in the public sector for the next four years. "I know I speak for the silent majority (who are not millionaires) to say this increase is well overdue," he wrote in his submission to Ipsa's public consultation. "I never expected to be watching the pennies at my age and yet this is what I now have to do." He went on to explain that he would be earning "far more than I am now," if he was still in the Armed Forces. The letter Tobias Ellwood wrote to Ipsa backing the 10 per cent pay rise for MPs Luckily for Mr Ellwood, he is paid an extra £20,375 because he's a junior minister. Let's just hope he has a big enough calculator to count the £96,435 pennies he'll now be receiving every single year. |