By what measure is 65k a small amount of money, from what i remember the average wage in the uk is ~26k, and many full time workers earn much less than this.
So there is a massive disconnect between what members of parliament get paid, and what they would get if they moved into the private sector business world. The issue is that voters as you say, are on average paid a lot less, so they don't understand this point.
Personally, I'd like to see the PM paid £1m or so. MPs maybe £250k. I would expect them to be less corruptable and more focussed.
I don't agree that paying MPs more would create an environment for less corruption, I have so far seen little restraint in human greed, and even those at the very top of the pay scale are not above eking more out of the system.
What would help with corruption, would be a more open lobbying system, restrictions on the jobs MPs can take after leaving parliament and ensuring members of the cabinet cannot be employed when they have obvious biases, a former oil company head being minister for energy for example.
Also as is obviously the case in many industries, Health and Social Care being one, the private sector model does not always make sense.
I'm in no way saying the private model always makes sense. What I'm saying is that the reason we perhaps have poor choice of MPs, is because all the people who would make great MPs are earning a decent wage in the private business world.