Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill

Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell (Con)]

My Lords, I have been struck by the cross-party tone of this debate. I continue this tone with a short intervention on the closely related matter of how ministerial pay is determined.

In January, Peter Kyle, the Business Secretary, proposed a change to IPSA’s pay setting, with which I heartily agree; I think it very worthy of consideration. He told the Financial Times that he

“would really love for IPSA to peg MPs and ministerial pay to our growth rates as a country, as opposed to what it is at the moment, which is a slightly byzantine formula”.

His thinking was that such a move would help the Government, and other parties in Parliament, to prioritise economic growth at every level. I am pleased to say that the Business Secretary’s excellent proposal was received positively by other MPs.

There are few MPs more on the pulse of public opinion than Chris Curtis, the Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North and co-chair of the Labour Growth Group. As the former head of political polling at Opinium, Curtis has a strong handle on what the public are thinking. He argued:

“It’s the right thing to restore trust in politics for the public to see MPs linking their pay to the improvements in the economy we are aiming to deliver”.


The Business Secretary’s proposal to peg the pay of MPs and Ministers to economic growth has international precedent. Singapore has used various forms of this model for the past 20 years. Between 2000 and 2011, Ministers and MPs in Singapore received a “GDP bonus”, which was explicitly tied to economic growth. No bonus was awarded if real GDP growth was under 2%, with the potential for an extra eight months of pay if it exceeded 10%. In 2012, the scheme developed into a slightly more flexible “national bonus”, which bundled four elements together, giving each equal weighting: the real GDP growth rate, the real median income growth rate, the unemployment rate and the real growth rate for the bottom 20% of Singaporean citizens. This seems a very sensible approach as it makes the link far more explicitly to GDP per capita rather than GDP—a far closer reflection of people’s everyday living standards. It should be noted that, in the years since the scheme was introduced, the average growth rate in Singapore has been 4.6% as opposed to the average growth rate in the UK of 1.7%. These growth figures suggest that the scheme is a useful tool to boost economic growth.

I therefore hope that we can unite around the Business Secretary’s very practical suggestion to link the pay of Ministers and MPs to our national prosperity, properly incentivising and rewarding them for growing the economy and people’s standard of living. I for one would be delighted for our elected representatives and Lords Ministers to receive a bonus of eight months’ pay if economic growth hit 10%. Frankly, I would be happy to award them the eight-month bonus if growth hit 3%—something it has not done since 2000. This would incentivise all parties to make growth their number one priority.

I very much hope the Government will include a Bill on Peter Kyle’s excellent proposal in the King’s Speech. I do not expect the Lord Privy Seal to reveal the contents of the King’s Speech in her winding up, but perhaps she might tell us whether the Business Secretary’s proposal is under consideration by the Government. At a time when politicians often struggle to agree and the country is divided, I hope this is a sensible proposal that the whole House and the whole country can unite around.