Labour MP Dennis Skinner has told Parliament’s expenses watchdog to stick a 10 per cent pay rise until working-class people’s wages are unfrozen and full collective bargaining rights restored.

The left-wing veteran told the Star yesterday how he rattled off a sharp two-sentence letter to parliamentary standards agency Ipsa chairman Professor Ian Kennedy after a “wind-up” by the body’s new £120,000-a-year chief executive Marcial Boo on the eve of the Trades Union Congress.

Mr Skinner said the timing of the Ipsa chief’s public statement on MPs’ wages was a deliberate provocation to trade unionists that was designed “to get a reaction.”

The plan for wages to hit £74,000 is opposed by many MPs, including Mr Skinner.

Mr Boo’s restatement of an already announced plan was “like a red rag to a bull,” said the Bolsover MP — “an intended insult” to those gathered at the TUC in Liverpool.

“These are representatives of working people who have carried the burden of the austerity programme — who have seen their collective pay falling at a greater rate than at any time in history.

“I wrote to Kennedy giving instructions not to pay the increase until such time as that burden is removed from their backs.”

That includes the return of collective bargaining rights for all workers, who have seen trade union protection fall to one in five in the private sector amid draconian anti-labour laws.

Mr Skinner added that he has “no intention” of taking the pay increase until this was achieved.