More than 20 MPs have signed a parliamentary motion urging journalists to disclose their income before passing comment on pay levels in the public sector.
Labour’s Gordon Prentice (Pendle) congratulated Guardian commentator Polly Toynbee for revealing to the Public Administration Select Committee that she was paid a salary of £106,000.
In a Commons motion, he urged “journalists, broadcasters, commentators, politicians and others to follow her example before pronouncing on pay levels in the public sector by first disclosing their own income, earned and unearned”.
Toynbee volunteered details of her salary at the committee’s first evidence session on Executive Pay in the Public Sector last month.
Prentice’s motion has so far received cross-party support from 22 MPs. Labour’s Paul Flynn (Newport West) said he looked forward to reading more “frank confessions in the tabloid press”.
Writing on his blog, he said: “Now we are in the world of abject openness, could we hear what our critics on the Mail or Express are getting – and their expenses?
“But they are not paid out of public funds – directly. What about David Dimbleby? He is paid out of public funds.”
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