Since April 2023, the basic annual salary of an MP is £86,584, putting us within the top 5% of earners in the country. On top of this, some MPs have lucrative second jobs, picking up hundreds of thousands of pounds on the side, often working as consultants for private companies.
I was elected to represent you – not corporate shareholders or the country’s wealthiest. As a representative of working people, it’s important to me that my income is not vastly different to that of other workers. It is for this reason, I choose to take a “worker’s wage” rather than my full MP’s salary.
When I was elected, I committed to take home £35,000 a year (i.e. after deductions automatically taken from my pay for income tax, national insurance contributions, student loan repayments, and the standard MPs’ contributory pension scheme). Any money I receive above that amount, I donate to local causes. This also applies to the wages I received when I returned to care work part time during the first wave of the pandemic, which I donated in full.
So far, my donations include:
– £8,000 to St Ann’s Advice Centre
– £7,000 to POW Nottingham
– £4,000 to the SFiCE Foundation
– £3,000 to the Nottingham and Notts Refugee Forum
– £3,000 to Himmah
– £3,000 to Harmless
– £3,000 to the National Education Union Nottingham District strike fund
– £2,500 to the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Nottingham
– £2,000 to Nottingham Law Centre
– £2,000 to the Greenway Centre
– £2,000 to the Wolfpack Project
– £2,000 to Rosehill School
– £2,000 to Salaam Shalom Kitchen
– £2,000 to Nottingham Muslim Women’s Network
– £2,000 to the Nottingham branch of the App Drivers & Couriers Union
– £2,000 to the Nottingham couriers branch of the IWGB union
– £2,000 to the RMT East Midlands strike fund
– £1,600 to Nottingham Counselling Service
– £468 to the Robin Hood Fund (my earnings when I returned part-time to care work during the pandemic)