Plaid Cymru's challenger for the Alyn and Deeside Parliamentary seat has pledged to only take a workers' wage if elected.
Maurice Jones, a former steelworker and life-long trade unionist, made the pledge to take the average skilled workers' wage if elected as an MP after being selected by Plaid Cymru members in the seat. The rest of the money will be ploughed into community projects in the constituency.
Mr Jones said that it was about time that Alyn and Deeside had an MP that put the local voters before business interests in the Home Counties.
He said:
“All the big London-based parties are financed by the same bankers and business men that got us in this mess in the first place, they all holiday on the same yachts and they all have their snouts in the same gold-plated trough.
“I ask you to send me to Parliament not to join those politicians corrupted by an institution where an army of flunkies opens doors for the privileged few, where the taxpayer is just someone to be squeezed to pay for everything from a loo brush to a luxury Kensington flat."
Mr Jones, a father of two, added:
"The expenses scandal showed that many of our MPs have no idea what it's like to live in the real world. Their basic salary is larger than the budgets of some community councils. For this reason, if elected, I will take only the average skilled worker's wage and use the rest of my wages to set up a community fund that will support community projects all over Alyn and Deeside.
“I will enter Parliament to help end the influence of this corrupt system on the people of Alyn and Deeside. I will battle for our own Welsh parliament to bring democracy home where it belongs, in the hands of our people, in our own country."
