Members of parliament, who are already among the world’s best-paid, have voted to increase their salaries to more than 130 times the minimum wage in defiance of government plans to cut their pay as part of spending reforms.

President Uhuru Kenyatta had implored MPs to accept pay cuts and to rein in public sector pay to free up cash to create jobs. Instead, MPs backed a motion to overturn a legal notice slashing their pay, and to increase it to an average of 851,000 shillings (£6,640) a month. The average monthly wage in Kenya is 6,498 shillings and the unemployment rate is 40 per cent.