OT minister doesn’t want a pay rise

CNS): Mark Simmonds, the Foreign Office minister with responsibility for the overseas territories, among other duties, does not think that UK members of parliament should receive pay increases. In response to the suggestion by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which proposed that MPs' salary should be raised to £74,000 in 2015 (an increase of 11%), Simmonds told the local newspaper in his constituency of Boston and Skegness that he doesn’t support the plan. The man who holds CIG’s purse strings at present said they should not get more money when the public sector is under such tight restraints.

Simmonds told The Boston Standard that he supports the issue of MPs' pay being handled by an independent body, which was established after the scandal of the extravagance of some MP’s expenses claims, but said he did not think it was appropriate for him and his parliamentary colleagues to get more cash.

“I do not think that MPs' pay should be going up while public sector pay is being constrained. 
“It is important that MPs don’t decide their own pay and the matter is referred to an independent body,” he said.

Simmonds, as parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Foreign Office, receives £97,000 a year in his pay packet but he also received £50,000 a year from Circle Health Care and payments as chair of Mortlock Simmonds Brown chartered surveyors.