Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) that it essential for us to put these matters on to a statutory footing, and I welcome the Government's determination for that to be done. As my right hon. Friend said, nothing would be more damaging to the reputation of parliamentary democracy in this country than for the allowances scandal to permeate the next Parliament as it has permeated this one. These issues require urgent and definitive resolution, and, as a number of other Members have said, we owe it to the many people who will serve for the first time in the next Parliament to put the House in order, however belatedly. I want to speak briefly on two of the new clauses. I am mildly unhappy about the proposal in new clause 73 that IPSA will not take on fully fledged responsibility for the setting of MPs' salaries until potentially as late as 1 April 2012. I appreciate that the Secretary of State said that that was of IPSA's own doing, but we need to recall that this whole allowances scandal started because successive Executives over about the past 30 years refused or failed to implement Senior Salaries Review Body recommendations for salary increases. We heard a lot of grandstanding by party leaders over that period—and I acknowledge that leaders of Conservative, as well as Labour, Governments have been guilty of that. We therefore allowed a system to develop under which there was, effectively, a salary supplement through the allowances system, which grew like Topsy, especially after the resolution of the House in July 2001—without an SSRB recommendation—for a hefty 40 per cent. increase in the second-home allowance. I fear that failure to get this system on to a proper footing, and therefore reliance on the interim measure that has been in place since January 2008, will result in further grandstanding by party leaders over the next two years, which risks a further injustice being done. What happens if the formula that was set in place in January conflicts with, for instance, a pay pause in the public sector? If we choose the path of least resistance, how can we suggest that MPs are not once again setting their own salary—the problem that started much of this episode, which has been so corrosive to parliamentary democracy in the past nine months? I would prefer IPSA to be given the authority at once. I accept that it will need to be in touch with the SSRB, and this may well take as long as a year, so we might not be able to do anything until April 2011. However, giving a long-stop date that is, effectively, two years in the future will bring forth the potential for there to be lots of problems, which will mean that this issue will not go away in the next Parliament, as all of us would wish. I also wish to say a few words about new clause 71 on the membership of the Speaker's Committee. I would have liked that Committee to have been abolished. We have a notional safeguard in place, as it is proposed that three lay persons should be appointed by resolution of the House of Commons, but we have to face facts. The Members Estimate Committee—the body that preceded the Speaker's Committee—conducted itself, at the margins at least, in a disgraceful way. There was deliberate manipulation by party managers of all parties to ensure that, as far as possible, the public were kept in the dark. Why else did that body go to such unbelievable trouble to prevent publication of all the parliamentary expenses? We had a protracted High Court case that did great discredit to this House. I personally feel that the MEC—now the Speaker's Committee—does not speak for me; I do not share the notion that it represents the interests of Members of Parliament. Rather, its behaviour has been one of the biggest problems. In view of what we are trying to achieve with IPSA, I would have liked all these matters to have been taken out of the hands of any such committee, and, indeed, out of the hands of the Speaker of the House of Commons. These are relatively minor matters, and I appreciate that we now have to move forward with the recommendations before us. I therefore hope the Committee will be able to agree on most of the issues tonight. We have discussed the new clause in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire and my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara). I hope that the Secretary of State will give some consideration to the concerns in this regard. We should have a pre-clearance system, in order to avoid the terrible, and nonsensical, situation whereby open and transparent claims are entirely reversed some years further down the line. If we are going to have the IPSA machinery and a compliance officer in place, it is not beyond the wit of man to ensure that we also have such a system in place for the protection not only of Members of this House, but the taxpayer.