NORTH Herefordshire’s recently elected Green MP Ellie Chowns is giving away around half of her parliamentary salary.

She wrote on her website the standard MP’s salary of £91,346, amounting to take-home pay of £63,538, is “a really large sum of money – more that I have ever earned before, and certainly more than I need.”

Dr Chowns said she would only keep £2,000 a month after tax from her parliamentary pay, giving £10,000 each to the Green Party, to a charity supporting poor families in Africa, and to a ‘constituency fund’ to tackle inequality locally.

“I feel it’s important for me to live on an average income so that I can remain in touch with what life is like for ordinary people,” she wrote.

Dr Chowns, whose constituency includes the Brampton Abbotts area said that it’s her policy to politely decline gifts.

She will also publish details of all her work meetings, which she said was “standard practice” in her previous role as member of the European Parliament, and “should be for all UK MPs too”.

Her latest entry in the parliamentary register of members’ financial interests declares that she received a final payment of £975 in July for her work as Herefordshire ward councillor, which she has now stepped down from and the sum has been returned.