LAST night's vote by MPs to award themselves an inflation-busting 26 per cent pay rise will outrage many people in East Lancashire and the country as a whole.

Three local Labour MPs: Blackburn's Jack Straw, Rossendale and Darwen's Janet Anderson and Burnley's Peter Pike voted to give themselves an extra £9,000 a year.

Ribble Valley Tory Nigel Evans, Hyndburn Labour MP Greg Pope and his Pendle colleague Gordon Prentice, voted for an increase of three per cent which was thrown out.

If Labour win the next election and Jack Straw becomes a Cabinet minister, his salary will rocket by £33,000 to £103,000.

And yet these MPs represent some of the poorest constituents in Britain.

What then, will the public make of this pay increase?

Judging from our straw poll of shoppers today the answer is obvious.

The public will see this as MPs once more shoving their noses in the trough.

The common excuse used by Jack Straw, Janet Anderson and Peter Pike is that the recommendation was by an independent body and MPs have fallen behind other professionals' wages over the years.

There was also the excuse that MPs are going to lose out on generous mileage allowances for their big-engined cars, despite the fact that many use subsidised rail travel to and from their constituencies.

The fact that the pay review was decided by an independent body does not allow MPs to wash their hands of the matter.

They still have to reconcile their huge pay increase with the paltry rises being offered to millions of workers up and down the land.

How can they now urge pay restraint on those workers who look to them for an example? Won't this just encourage the big unions, already flexing their industrial muscle, to fight for yet bigger rises for their members?

When Jack Straw, Janet Anderson and Peter Pike come to the hustings at the next general election what are they going to say to those of their constituents who struggle to get by on £5 an hour or less?

Perhaps the message - as so often seems to be the case from many MPs - will be "do as I say, not as I do".

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.