Daily allowance in House of Lords set to rise to £323
Above-inflation hike in tax-free payment is triggered automatically by MPs’ rise
Members of the House of Lords look set to receive a tax-free pay rise of an inflation-busting 3.1 per cent in April.
If confirmed, the hike will take peers’ daily allowance up from £313 to £323, meaning an annual tax-free income of more than £48,000 for a member attending for the typical 150 days the Upper House sits each year.
It results from a 2018 decision to link annual increases in allowances automatically to MPs’ salaries, removing any role for peers in setting their own pay.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) will confirm the increase at the start of next month, following any revision to the figures by ONS, which has previously left them unchanged.
To claim their allowances, peers must attend the Palace of Westminster and certify that they have undertaken parliamentary work that day.
Lord McFall, Lord Mackenzie and Duke of Montrose – all on a pay hike.
Peers , such as Lord McFall, the Duke of Montrose and Lord Mackenzie, who live in West Dunbartonshire, and whose main address is outside greater London can also claim the allowance.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance told MailOnline that the rise “looks like a plum deal for the Peers, but a rum deal for the taxpayer”.
But a House of Lords spokesman said: “Between 2010 and 2018 the daily allowance for members of the House of Lords was frozen.
“In April 2018 it was agreed to link increases to the daily allowance to the figure used by Ipsa for increasing the salaries of MPs, which itself is linked to public sector pay awards.
Martin Docherty Hughes in the Commons and Brendan O’Hara.
“In the last decade the House of Lords daily allowance has increased by 4.3 per cent. In that same period the salaries of MPs, including Martin Docherty Hughes, West Dunbartonshire, and Bendan O’Hara, Argyll and Bute, both SNP, went up by more than 20 per cent.
“By linking the daily allowance increase to Ipsa’s method it ensures that any increase is set by an independent body and members are no longer setting their own allowance levels.”
Moving Lords to York ‘could help connect with voters’
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering “radical” plans for the House of Lords that could mean moving it permanently to York, the Conservative Party chairman confirmed yesterday.
James Cleverly said that shifting the upper chamber and its 800 members north would demonstrate determination to connect with voters who felt left behind.
Business leaders in the north, however, questioned the wisdom of sending peers to one of the “best connected cities in the country” only for them to return to London at weekends.
Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, said that the move was a PR gesture, adding: “An outdated institution 200 miles or so north of its current location is still an outdated institution.”