Senior MPs lobby for a pay rise of up to £15,000 following the Kelly report on expenses

Senior MPs are secretly lobbying for a significant pay rise to compensate them for the expenses crackdown ordered by Sir Christopher Kelly.

The long-anticipated report from Kelly's Committee on Standards on Public Life yesterday called for MPs to be banned from claiming for mortgage interest payments and from employing family members.

Just hours after the publication of the report, MPs begun pushing for a pay review that could see their basic salary raised from almost £65,000 a year to more than £80,000.

The Labour MP Sir Stuart Bell called for the allowances system to be scrapped and replaced with a higher salary.

He said: "I do think we should look at pay in relation to allowances and put ourselves in a situation where MPs will live on their pay and not have to claim any allowances at all, other than travel."

Sir George Young, the shadow leader of the house, said that a pay rise for MPs could be accepted by the public. He told the BBC: "Members of the public would look at this suggestion with ridicule. Nothing I have said should be seen as encouragement for that."

But Kelly made his opposition to a pay rise clear. "I think that [a pay rise] would be a totally wrong way of looking at things," he told the Daily Telegraph. "Members of the public would look at this suggestion with ridicule. Nothing I have said should be seen as encouragement for that."

He urged MPs angered by the new system to stand down at the next election. He warned that a failure to accept his recommendations and reform the system would further undermine public trust in Parliament.

"There is a risk that, as the impact of the revulsion caused by the Daily Telegraph revelation fades with time, some may be thinking of distancing themselves from their earlier expressed determination to implement our report in full," Sir Christopher said. "If so, that would, in my view, be an error. The damage that has been done by what has been revealed about past malpractice and about the culture that goes with it has been very considerable.

"I don't believe the trust in those who govern us will be restored unless those in authority show leadership and determination in putting the abuses of the past behind them, however uncomfortable that may be."

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