Somehow I doubt that Peter Lilley is the most popular MP in the House of Commons today after suggesting that MPs should get a pay cut as owers are passed to the EU.

If people receive more responsibility, they get higher pay – the same should be true of Parliament…

I don’t have a masochistic desire to see MPs’ pay cut, but still less do I want to see our powers diminished, and the best way to prevent the latter may be to link pay to responsibilities…

I don’t actually know any MP who entered Parliament to become financially better off.

Nonetheless, as the prospect of being hung in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully, so the prospect of finding our pockets a bit emptier at the end of the month and having to justify that to our spouses, may wake up those who have shut their eyes to what’s happening.

If we don’t face up to what is happening, we will find we are progressively relegated to what Bagehot called ‘the dignified part of the constitution’.

Well said that man! MPs should get paid for the responsibility they have over laws – not for the number of them that they pass. Especially since Labour seem to prefer making new laws to enforcing existing ones.

But there is just no way MPs will vote the Members of Parliament (Pay and Responsibilities) Bill into law.