Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I often agree with the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), but I do not agree with him on a number of points today. For example, why should MPs not be responsible on these matters? For most of my time in Parliament, it has been perfectly reasonable for Members of Parliament to say what their pay arrangements should be. The fact that they have not always adopted what I thought was sensible is probably more my fault than that of my colleagues. It is clear to me that MPs' pay arrangements should be set before a new Parliament, should come into effect at the beginning of it and should not change during the Parliament, irrespective of whether it lasts for six months or for five years until the Parliament expires. That would be a far more elegant and sensible arrangement than the current one of wondering whether there should be increases each year or other kinds of conventional things. Even if the arrangement is not conventional, if we know what the terms are when we get elected, that should do us until we again come up for election or deselection. The second thing that the hon. Gentleman said that I would not mind taking him up on was his comment about the gold standard of criminal sanctions. Criminal sanctions ought to be for criminal offences, and the standards that we ought to be meeting are lower than that; we ought to be meeting the reasonable expectations of Members of Parliament, not just expectations relating to "beyond all reasonable doubt". I hope that Martin Bell, with whom I served on the Standards and Privileges Committee, will not mind my saying that that is one of the areas where he and I failed on a number of occasions. If I were to allocate some of the "blame"—that is probably the right word—I would say that the House authorities or past occupants of the Speaker's Chair did not do what they might have done when Elizabeth Filkin was the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. I doubt whether compliance officers, whatever their responsibilities, can carry the same weight as a good Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Therefore, I put it to the Secretary of State that if he were able during the passage of this Bill to find a better expression than "compliance officer" to balance the "Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards", that would be a good thing. We know what is understood by "compliance officer" and what the responsibilities will be, but it is not an elegant title. Plainly we cannot go on having final salary pensions where—this will not apply to me as I have reached 65— any increases in the salary of someone who has been in this House for 25 years and is between 60 and 65 are still multiplied by their years. Any sudden increase of 30 per cent. in the pay of such a person in recognition of various parts of an MP's job would multiply through all their previous years of service, even though their actual pay would have been much lower. Members of Parliament ought to have a way of expressing in public, whether just to IPSA or in this Chamber too, that we think that we ought to move on to an average salary system at best. By all means, let us keep what we have got in the past—I declare that I have the full limit—but we ought to be able to say clearly that we need a reasonable compromise between not putting people off coming into Parliament and not maintaining this kind of gilt-edged, gold-plated standard pension. It may have been good at a time when our pay was very low but if IPSA is to do its job, the pay will not remain very low for very long. I do not see where in the IPSA proposals we can reach the stage where it is possible for IPSA to recommend that part of any significant change in MPs' pay should be non-taxable and non-pensionable.