SIR – This paper’s surprisingly misleading editorial of September 22 on MPs’ pay should not go unchallenged.

This is because democracy is ill-served when newspapers state as fact things that are untrue.

Contrary to the concluding message of the editorial, MPs simply cannot vote on or in any way determine their salaries or expenses. We have rightly given away the right to set them to an independent body, IPSA. Anyone who wishes to express a view should participate in their current open, public consultation.

It was also untrue for the editorial to imply that MPs have not experienced the same pressure on household budgets as others.

MPs’ salaries have declined in real terms by aboutd 15 per cent over the last 10 years, and over that period their expenses have also been significantly reduced.

Even when the economy was growing and average salaries were rising, MPs’ pay was falling.

Additionally, ministerial salaries were reduced by five per cent in 2010 and then frozen for the five years of the current Parliament.

I emphasise that I neither seek nor expect any sympathy for these facts, but I offer them to counter the widely-held but mistaken view that MPs have enjoyed increasing living standards in recent years.

Finally, all the county’s MPs agree that it is right – and indeed urgent – to cut the cost of politics, something it would have been appropriate to have reflected in the leader.

Peter Luff

MP for Mid Worcestershire