POLICING minister Kit Malthouse has complained that the rising cost of living will be “tricky” for his household — despite his salary of £115,824 and a recent pay rise for all MPs of £2,212.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which sets MPs’ pay, announced last month that MPs’ salaries would rise by 2.7 per cent to £84,144.
Richard Lloyd, Ipsa’s chair, said it was “right that MPs are “paid fairly.”
But it comes on the same day that the biggest jump in domestic energy bills in living memory has come into effect, and days before National Insurance contributions will increase by 1.25 percentage points.
Charities have warned that 2.5 million more households are set to struggle as the 54 per cent increase hits bills.
The Resolution Foundation think tank said the number of English households in “fuel stress” — those spending at least 10 per cent of their total budgets on energy bills — was set to double overnight from 2.5 to five million.
Citizens Advice chief executive Dame Clare Moriarty said: “The energy price cap rise will be potentially ruinous for millions of people across the country.
“With the long-anticipated price rises now hitting, many more people will face the kind of heartrending choices that our front-line advisers already see all too often.”
Mr Malthouse, who as a minister of state earns an extra £31,680, said: “Obviously the day-to-day is quite tricky.
“As you know, I’ve got children. They need to be fed and that cost is rising.
“My fuel prices are rising quite significantly.”
Though branding the Tories’ response to the cost-of-living crisis as pathetic, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer contended that “people don’t want a revolution.
“They do want to know ‘how am I going to pay my energy bill, which has just gone up today by hundreds of pounds’,” he said.
Communist Party general secretary Rob Griffiths said his party “is in favour of a society where people are not getting exploited and ripped off by ruthless fat cats.”
Claudia Webbe, the MP for Leicester East, said we are seeing “a rampant virulent cost-of-greed crisis. The profit makers are out of control.”
