Parliamentary Standards Bill

They were claimed under second home allowances and they are embarrassing. Some of those who appeared in the Daily Telegraph were not abusing the system because genuine mistakes were made. I can give one example. A number of Members from all parties claimed every month for council tax, so they claimed £59 or whatever it was each month. They forgot that you pay council tax for only 10 months, not 12. It is an easy mistake to make, and it is a genuine and honest one. As a result they have been pilloried and included in the awful category of having somehow defrauded the taxpayer, which is certainly not the case. We should recognise that some of the alleged crimes that Members of the House of Commons are supposed to have committed are not as bad as they have been painted. There are two reasons why we should not accept these amendments, particularly the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell. First, as the noble Lord, Lord King, said, Christopher Kelly has been asked to look into this. We are getting ourselves into so many fankles—we had an exchange earlier—that we do not even know how many commissioners there are or what they are to do. That has not been settled yet. Just consider the cost of all these commissioners. When I went into the House of Commons, there was one man with a small staff in the Fees Office dealing with an efficient, simple system. Now there are dozens, if not scores, if not hundreds of people, costing millions and millions of pounds, keeping an eye on the expenses, which are probably now less than the cost of keeping an eye on them. It is astonishing. Now we are to set up more commissioners, who will cost more, to keep an eye on a decreasing expenditure. Sir Christopher Kelly has been asked to look at the system and it would be outrageous for us to suggest that we should pre-empt his examination. Even more important, it would be outrageous for this House to dictate to the other House what that system should be. It could also happen the other way round. We are in the middle of looking at our system and I have made recommendations on my own behalf to the Senior Salaries Review Body and it is right that we should put them forward. We should have a decent system of allowances here and it is important that we should argue the case for it. We should recognise that people here give service. I heard an eloquent, powerful argument at a meeting with the Senior Salaries Review Body from a Liberal Democrat Baroness for allowances that make it possible for people to do this job full time and effectively. Other people had different points of view, but we need to put forward our arguments forcibly. We shall make the decision. The House of Commons is not going to tell us what our system is going to be and we should not tell it what its system should be.