MPs have had their salaries frozen, following a backlash over a planned pay rise.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa,) which sets MPs pay, had been due to recommend a £3,300 bump to the current £79,468 wage.
But it announced on Friday this would no longer be happening.
“The unprecedented impact of the Covid pandemic has had an unexpected, but different, effect on public and private sector earnings,” Ipsa’s chair, Richard Lloyd, said.
“It is clear that applying the forthcoming official statistic for public sector earnings growth would result in a salary increase for MPs that would be inconsistent with the wider economic data and would not reflect the reality that many constituents are facing this year.”
It means MPs pay will remain unchanged for the financial year 2021-22. Ipsa was set up in the wake of the 2009 expenses scandal to stop MPs setting their own pay.
But it meant while MPs could no longer give themselves pay rises, they also had no formal power to stop one being handed out.
Boris Johnson was among those who had called for the expected increase to be scrapped.
Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said the planned 4.1% increase for MPs would be wrong.
“This year of all years we shouldn’t have it,” he told LBC.
“That money, if it’s available, should be spent on key workers — those who have been on the frontline through this pandemic.”
More than 50 Conservative MPs also recently wrote to Ipsa to demand the pay rise not go ahead.
It comes after chancellor Rishi Sunak decided to freeze pay, in effect a real terms cut, for some public sector workers.