Parliamentary Standards Bill

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) on tabling the amendment. It has considerable merit, being both ingenious and uncontentious. It contains a lot of sense and I hope that the Government will see fit to accept it. The purpose of the Bill is to set up an independent Fees Office designed to administer and set allowances. In its current proposed form, it is designed to administer—that is to say, pay—salaries. In the long term, we want to ensure that everything that is paid to Members of Parliament, be it pensions, salary or allowances, is determined by an outside body rather than by ourselves. As the Bill stands, it goes only some way towards doing that, but the amendment would take us a marginal step further in the direction of having an outside body determine our salary. Crucially—and sensibly, at this awkward time—as well as removing Members from the process, it would prevent the Executive from inevitably attempting to intervene to reject the recommendation of the SSRB or to amend it. As such, it would introduce a measure of automaticity into the way in which our pay is adjusted and prevent the contentious political shenanigans that bedevil this issue. The two resolutions in question are the one that was passed on 3 July last year and the accompanying money resolution. The amendment would entrench the adjudication of any increases that follow. It would link our pay to a package of comparators, including public service workers—in the NHS, school teachers, the armed forces and the civil service, including HMRC—and it would also introduce an annual review. In making that link, it would not only remove many of the contentious arguments about how much we should be paid, but prevent the political intervention that normally follows. We should be realistic and accept that the regime set up by the amendment would be an interim measure. The Bill does not allow for the external assessment and setting of our pay, so the amendment would be in place until the primary legislation was amended. If in future we were to bolt on to this Bill a broader responsibility to consider the entire pay and rations of Members of Parliament, and potentially Ministers, this interim regime would be replaced by giving the IPSA responsibility for setting our pay, allowances and pension. The amendment would set up an effective, depoliticising and interim regime that would do much to improve the basis on which our pay is set, and as such it is entirely in the spirit of the Bill. I urge the Committee to support the amendment.