PMQs: Backbenchers eerily silent as bosses discuss their pay

Ed Miliband started off with a soft question to which he already knew the answer at PMQs: ‘Does the PM agree with me that given the crisis ordinary families are facing in their living standards, MPs should not be given a pay rise many times more than inflation in 2015?’ The PM did agree, and offered some further thoughts on the situation. Then Miliband pushed him a bit further. He asked whether the Prime Minister was keen ‘to work with me to find a way on a cross-party basis to make Ipsa think again?’ This whole exchange was carried out to an amusingly eerie silence from backbenchers listening to their bosses denying them a pay rise. But the PM replied that ‘my door is always open’, and then the conciliatory stuff ended and the two men – and their MPs – started scrapping again.