Members of Parliament are to debate their salaries for the coming year on Monday.

Legislators are likely to be closely watched during the talks, held on the last day of the exhaustive post-Budget committee of supply meetings.

The earnings of Cabinet Ministers and MPs have been a politically sensitive topic in recent years, and with the latest Budget dominated by spending cuts, the scrutiny continues.

There will be no changes to the Ministers and Members of the Legislature (Salaries and Pensions) Act, under which Michael Dunkley as Premier is paid $151,181 a year.

Bob Richards as Deputy Premier earns $112,942. For Members of the House of Assembly, a year’s wage is $56,023. For Senators, it is $30,367.

Ministers in the House or Senate both take the same annual wage of $100,841.

Neither Mr Dunkley nor Mr Richards takes extra pay for their other jobs as Minister of National Security and Minister of Finance respectively.

However, Mr Richards receives the higher of the two salaries: the Minister of Finance’s yearly wage is $121,010.

After telling Parliament that he would move the salaries resolution at the next meeting of the House, Mr Dunkley pointed out that the salaries for the Premier, Deputy Premier, Minister of Finance, Attorney General and other ministers had been higher in 2012: $168,069, $125.491, $134,455, $163,358 and $112,046 respectively.

That was true up until April 1, 2012: under the former Progressive Labour Party Government, those wages were reduced by 5 per cent, effective for one year.

They had also been reduced a year earlier.

In 2011, then Premier Paula Cox was earning $224,000 annually. The then-Opposition MPs under the United Bermuda Party had been calling for wage cuts since 2010, and in that year the Bermuda Industrial Union’s members took up the call, as civil service workers began to feel the squeeze.

Ms Cox initially turned down union requests for pay cuts, but later said she would take a reduction if other senior civil servants followed her example.

Meanwhile, with the formation of the One Bermuda Alliance, Mr Dunkley — then an Opposition Senator — said he would support pay cuts of up to 20 per cent.

Ultimately, a 5 per cent cut went before the House and was passed.

Those cuts only remained in effect until the general election that December, as stipulated in legislation.

Wages went back up, but were cut once more, this time by 10 per cent, under OBA legislation approved in March 2013. They have remained at this level and are set to stay until March 31, 2016.