My attention has been drawn to the below table from the House of Commons factsheet on MPs' Pay.
It shows that as the Depression took hold in the 1930s, MPs took a 10% pay cut, seeing their annual salary decrease from £400 to £360 in 1931, in line with a similar cut in the pay of all public sector workers.
I generally take the view that MPs' pay is currently on the low side, given the hours that most of them work. However, if there are savings and economies to be made across the public sector, there is certainly an argument to say that there should be consistency and that MPs' salaries should be included in any across-the-board reviews.
And to any parliamentarians worried about the idea of following this lead, just look at what happened a few years later in 1937: they got a 50% rise in one go!
