With MPs, as in life, you only get what you pay for

So Sir Ian Kennedy, chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) found out as he wound his increasingly weary way before the cameras, microphones and Dictaphones to justify the suggested increase in MPs' wages from the £66,396 of today to £74,000 in 2015 At the same time, various allowances are to be cut and generous pension provision scaled back.

When already planned increases are taken into account, the rise amounts to a double digit percentage hike at a time when the public sector is labouring under a 1% cap and many private sector workers are suffering pay freezes.

Obscene. Outrageous. Unthinkable. Lots of other responses too rude to pass on. Such has been the utterly predictable reaction to the Ipsa proposal. When it comes to easy targets, MPs are now up there with barn doors. To even think about defending them is to risk the wrath of the mob of New Puritans who have increasingly come to dominate the public debate on everything from MPs' pay to suitable attire for presenters on Saturday night television. As Sir Ian now knows, it is a tough job to say MPs should be paid more, but someone has to do it because it is the right thing to do. It is not politically expedient, it is not popular, it will not make one the toast of talk radio stations, but it is the proper thing to do, because in selling short those elected to represent us we devalue not only them but democracy itself.

Or to put it another way, to carry on paying relative peanuts is to confirm Westminster's place as a zoo full of monkeys cushioned by wealth (inherited or otherwise), high-paying second jobs, or links to other outside interests. Such a place might provide reasonable entertainment, even pass a few decent laws much as chimps will famously bang out a line of Shakespeare if left long enough. But it would be a Parliament packed with a species that bears little resemblance to the ordinary majority, and a Parliament not up to doing the job to a level the public needs and deserves.

How easy it is, however, to don the old hair shirt at times like these. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister, was the first to dive into the wardrobe, calling it the worst time to advocate such a large increase. He will refuse the rise. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has said the same. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, is against the move but has had to proceed with more delicacy, balancing the risk of a backlash from some of his own party's MPs with that of a public revolt. Downing Street tried to hold the line yesterday by saying the rise was a proposal that was now going out to consultation till October, rather than a done deal. (By the by, MSPs, whose pay of £58,097 is linked at 87.5% of the salary payable to members of the Commons, would, in theory, receive a similar rise if – and it is an "if" the size of the Earth – the Ipsa proposal were adopted.)

Regardless of what Mr Cameron decides to do, it is fair to assume that around the Cameron, Clegg and Miliband kitchen tables they are not sweating too much personally over six grand here or there. Each lives in the kind of property of which most can only dream. They have partners who are in well-paid jobs or have their own money. They have never known, and will never know, what it is to truly struggle on a budget, to bank on wages rising in order to maintain their family's standard of living. When it comes to lectures on paying what people are worth some of us would rather listen to a cat abseiling down a blackboard than well-to-do individuals who have scarcely had a proper job between them.

But what of the other opponents? John Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw, rightly worries about the effect on Westminster's reputation. Yet it was precisely because that reputation had plunged so low after the expenses scandal that the question of pay rises was passed to an independent body. And one of the reasons why the expenses scandal happened was because down the decades MPs' pay had become the worst sort of bodge.

While that in no way excuses the abuses which occurred, most of which were down to sheer greed, dodging the issue of pay for so long contributed to the sort of nudge-nudge, wink-wink culture in which such rotten behaviour could flourish.

By international standards, MPs sit in the middle ground between political representatives in the US and Japan (earning £111,000 and £168,000 respectively) and Spain and France (£45,000 and £52,000). It is a good wage, far above average earnings, but it is still below the pay of senior civil servants and dwarfed by the earnings of other professionals such as lawyers and doctors. Those who believe that MPs simply cannot be compared to those professions have never sat in on an MP's surgery or delved into their postbag.

To be an MP in the UK today is to be part of an unseen, unheralded emergency service. In the course of a surgery or working week, an MP can be called on to be everything from a social worker to an immigration lawyer to just a friendly face. Whatever the fight, however big the battle, MPs will be asked to take up the cause. Of course the postbag includes those who gather causes like others collect teapots, but it also covers, particularly in poorer constituencies, desperate people who are at the end of their tethers and have nowhere else to turn. In that sense, MPs are like A&E doctors and police – only appreciated when the worst happens and someone has to clear up the mess. Would a lawyer or a doctor or a police chief put in the unsocial hours that MPs do, for the same rate of pay? Hardly.

The pay and standing of MPs have now fallen to such a point that only the wealthy, the politically obsessed and the downright barmy now fight to become members of parliament. Anyone who thinks the current intake of MPs are from another planet should consider the kind of space cadets that will follow if parliaments continue to be the preserve of self-nominating elites elected on ever-decreasing turnouts. In MPs, in everything, you get what you pay for. If not, there is always the ultimate job appraisal known as election time.