Labour MP Dennis Skinner has told Parliament’s expenses watchdog to stick a 10 per cent pay rise until working-class people’s wages are unfrozen and full collective bargaining rights restored.

The left-wing veteran told the Star yesterday how he rattled off a sharp two-sentence letter to parliamentary standards agency Ipsa chairman Professor Ian Kennedy after a “wind-up” by the body’s new £120,000-a-year chief executive Marcial Boo on the eve of the Trades Union Congress.

Mr Skinner said the timing of the Ipsa chief’s public statement on MPs’ wages was a deliberate provocation to trade unionists that was designed “to get a reaction.”