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Administration Committee

I sought to explain to the House the reason for that. I suggested to the Chairman of Ways and Means that he would have to work fairly hard to persuade me that I should depart from the recommendation of the SSRB, but I emphasised to the House the very strong conviction that he has. He has some responsibility for managing the Chairmen’s Panel and he believes strongly that this is the best way of achieving the objective that he requires. I have accepted his advice and I am not in any way retreating from it. If the right hon. Gentleman reads further in the SSRB report, he will see that the board does not rule out, and indeed would accept, a more tiered arrangement. On the right hon. Gentleman’s first proposition, it is important that in ensuring full respect for the decision of the House, if the House accepts the principle and puts it into practice, that there is a clear connection between the amount of work and time that individuals devote to their duties as part of the Chairmen’s Panel, and the remuneration that they receive. For the moment there are some members of the Panel who, for perfectly proper reasons, I am sure, are not able to devote the appropriate amount of time to the work, in which case it is not inappropriate that they should be more modestly rewarded. I want to demonstrate that the arrangement is designed to ensure a consistency between the amount of time that is devoted to the task and the appropriate reward.