MSPs are to get a £4,500 pay rise from April, the Scottish Parliament has announced.
Holyrood’s finance committee heard this morning that basic salaries would rise 6.7% from £67,772 in 2023/24 to £72,195 in 2024/25.
The rise is worth more than the pay rises in the previous three years.
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Holyrood said recent rises had been “out of sync” with wage hikes in wider society.
The change was confirmed by Tory MSP Jackson Carlaw in his role representing the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, the cross-party group overseeing Holyrood.
Scottish ministers have declined rises to their ministerial pay supplements for more than a decade, but it is not clear if this will continue.
The new MSP salaries are based on increases to average weekly earnings (AWE), after previously relying on the annual survey of hours and earnings (ASHE).
MSP salaries were historically set at seven-eighths of an MP’s salary, but the link was severed in 2016 and increases based on ASHE instead.
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However a spokesperson for the Scottish Parliament said: “In recent years, ASHE has been increasingly out of sync with other wage inflation indices to the point that MSPs received 1.5% last year when general inflation was running at 10%.
“Prior to that, MSPs received 3.4% in 2022-23 and 0% in 2021-22.
“This year, AWE will be applied to MSPs’ pay, meaning a rise of 6.7% and a salary rate of £72,195 from April 1, 2024.”
Official estimates for December indicate wages (excluding bonuses) in Scotland rose by 7.8% last year, compared to 6.6% across the UK as a whole.
A Scottish Government spokesperson added: "In 2023/24 Scottish Ministers froze their pay for the fifteenth year running, recognising the wider economic and fiscal pressures, as well as the restraints placed on public sector pay.
"The voluntary pay freeze will continue in the next financial year.”
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