A West Midlands MP has called for House of Commons salaries to be doubled in return for scrapping the controversial second home allowance.
Sir Patrick Cormack (Con, Staffordshire South) said MPs’ salaries should eventually be raised from £64,766 to more than £130,000.
But the allowance used by MPs to buy or rent a second home, and to pay for repairs and furniture, should be abolished, he said.
The idea was immediately rejected by the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, who said MPs should “pull in their belts” like everyone else.
Sir Patrick made the suggestion in a submission to an inquiry looking into reforms of the expenses system.
It was one of a number of ideas put forward by the MP, which also included keeping pay levels the same and giving MPs an allowance to rent, rather than buy, second homes.
Most of the controversial claims made by MPs have involved the Additional Cost Allowance, which they claim to compensate for the cost of working both in their constituency and in Westminster.
Although some MPs already rent a property, most have used the allowance to subsidise the mortgage on a second home.
But although the taxpayer subsidises the cost of buying the home, any profit made when it is sold, as a result of rising property prices, is kept by the MP.
In a submission to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Sir Patrick said: “I have reluctantly become convinced over the last few weeks that the most effective way of restoring public confidence in Parliament is for there to be a significant increase in members’ salaries and an abolition of all allowances, save for the allowance to pay for staff and a constituency office.
“In order to ensure that members could perform their parliamentary and constituency duties effectively, and have where necessary a second home, the salary of members would have to be doubled at least and this might, yet again, be deemed politically unacceptable, and there are, of course, pension implications.”
But Sir Patrick said in a statement that he accepted salaries could not be increased in the near future.
He said: “This is not a propitious time for such a change and so I made a number of detailed proposals on the allowance front which would I believe go a long way to restoring public confidence.
“Foremost among these was that the second home should always be rented and generally in London.”
Mr Darling said: “At a time when everyone else is pulling in their belts, at a time when people are worried about their jobs, some people are going part-time, MPs cannot be treated any differently from anyone else.”
