HEARD the one about the Tory MP whose constituents are astonished that he survives on an annual salary as puny as £70,000?

Well, that’s exactly what Mark Field claimed, after the explosive recommendation that all MPs should be given a ten per cent post-election pay hike.

But, before you compare your own pay packet to Mr Field’s – and start spitting feathers – I believe he was being refreshingly honest on a subject most MPs prefer to duck.

After all, he is the MP for Cities of London and Westminster, where many people earn Monopoly money…and, no doubt, tell their unlucky MP he’s almost on the breadline.

The same day, Labour MP Gloria De Piero, called her salary hike “totally immoral”, adding: “I honestly could not look at my constituents in the eye if I accepted that pay rise.”

And there, in those two comments, we find encapsulated the unresolvable dilemma of how much we should pay the people who make our laws.

While £74,000 – the new salary – is a pittance in central London, in the slice of struggling Nottinghamshire which Ms de Piero represents it is proof that MPs are greedy so-and-sos.

The instant, and lazy, reaction to the increase is to condemn MPs for having their snouts in the trough. It’s also completely and utterly wrong.

After all, the decision has been made by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), set up after the expenses scandal, and cannot be overturned.

It also has impeccable logic, because MPs’ pay has fallen behind that of other professions when there is no good reason why they should earn less than, say, a secondary school head teacher.

The pay rise will not cost taxpayers a penny more, because MPs will, at the same time, lose generous pension and resettlement payments and their expenses will be tightened further.

Moreover, this is a “one-off adjustment” – after which pay will rise automatically in line with average earnings, so this controversy should never be repeated.

But that doesn’t mean a ten per cent hike will do anything other than further poison the reputation of MPs at a time when so many people are still hurting.

For what it’s worth, one other suggestion – cutting the number of MPs to bring down the overall cost – is a non-starter in my view.

While some MPs, in leafy Hampshire for example, tell me they have little to do, many North-East MPs have troubled constituents queueing out the door. Why should they receive a worse service?

Mr Field’s words laid bare how the pay row is an unavoidable consequence of living in a country as astonishingly unfair and unequal as Britain, a chasm that’s growing of course.

However, perhaps MPs could escape the worst of the firestorm if the hike is delayed until pay freezes are finally over in the public sector – whenever that might be?

“IT is about giving mayors from the Tory party a chance to rule parts of the world that do not want Tory rule,” warned Blaydon Labour MP David Anderson.

Now, there may be good reasons for opposing ‘metro mayors’ in the North-East, but I don’t think the risk of the “wrong” result is the best one!