Former derivatives trader Nadeem Walayat, writing for The Market Oracle website, argued that the failure of MP pay to keep track with that of GPs is ‘one of the key reasons why they have resorted to what amounts to legalised theft’.

Mr Walayat argues that GP and MP pay was roughly equal between 1996 and 2002. But when the new GMS contract began in 2004, GP pay surged £110,000 a year by 2006, nearly double the £60,000 that backbench MPs receive.

Mr Walayat said that the contract ‘ignited jealousy’ among MPs. Because they could not award themselves pay rises of 30% a year, they instead began to increase their expense claims, so ‘as to fill the ever widening gap between MPs and NHS GPs’.

GPC negotiator Dr Chaand Nagpaul dismissed the report as ‘absurd’.

‘MPs are paid in a completely different way to GPs. Their availability to constituents is embarrassing in comparison to the access patients have to their practice,’ he said.

Read this week’s GP dated 29 May for the full version of this story

jonn.elledge@haymarket.com

Editors' Blog: Is an MP worth the same as a GP?

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