6 things MPs didn't do before taking a 6-week holiday

In the interests of full transparency and journalistic disclosure, I'm going to level with you, readers.

Try though I might (and I did, I swear) to put together a definitive list on what your MPs accomplished this fall, I just couldn't come up with much in the way of concrete (or even ephemeral) parliamentary achievements.

MPs' pay: rejection of Ipsa proposals would be a disaster, watchdog warns

Sir Ian Kennedy, the chair of the independent watchdog on MPs' pay, has warned it would be a disaster if political pressure led to parliament rejecting his package of proposals including an 11% pay rise.

Writing in the Times, he said: "I know there is a tension between the reasoning and the politics, but we were asked to fix the problem for a generation, not for a news cycle. That is what we have done.

MPs' 11% pay rise set to embarrass party leaders

David Cameron and Ed Miliband will face embarrassment this week when it is announced that MPs will be paid an annual salary of £74,000 from 2015 despite their calls for "cheaper politics".

The independent parliamentary standards authority, Ipsa, is to reveal its decision to increase salaries by 11% despite a lack of support from the prime minister and the leader of the Labour party. MPs' salaries will then go up annually in line with national wages.