Lok Sabha MP Varun Gandhi on Tuesday questioned the right of parliamentarians to raise their own salaries, saying the repeated demanded for higher pay discredited the “moral compass of the House”, NDTV reported.

“Over the past 10 years, members of Parliament have raised their own salaries by up to 400%,” the Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker told the Lower House. “Have we really earned this massive increment?”

Gandhi also compared the increase to that in the United Kingdom, saying the salaries of parliamentarians in the UK had risen by only 13% in the past decade.

The BJP leader further said that the pay of MPs in India had been increased with “no justifiable performance to support it”. “The crux of the matter is that MPs in our country have complete autonomy in matters relating to their salary,” he told The Indian Express. “The decline in parliamentary sittings remains a complex problem with no easy answer.”

Gandhi has demanded that “a statutory body, independent of any overarching powers from MPs” be set up to decide on the compensation parliamentarians receive.