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Members' Salaries, Pensions and Allowances

That is why I have found pay uncomfortable, but never a matter that we should say it was not our responsibility to deal with. If we are a sovereign Parliament, this matter must go somewhere, and it ends up coming to us. That is why constitutional issues are raised when the Leader of House says that, with wide support, she has asked Sir John Baker to examine whether we can have an independent mechanism. Some countries have managed to address those issues. My guess, anticipating the second Baker report, is that he will make it clear that although we can, as it were, make the process independent in future, we will not be able to take away from ourselves the right to retrieve it if we want to. I cannot see that that would be possible or compatible with the constitutional position of the UK Parliament, so the hon. Gentleman—my parliamentary neighbour—is right. My second general point is that whatever the case, people would obviously prefer a system even more independent than the current one—and I support that, too. That means a process that examines what the best comparator should be, and then triggers it automatically. But here lies the rub: if we go down that road, when the report comes from the new body—not the Baker review, but whichever body it suggests setting up—or when the formula is worked out saying that we will be compared to pensioners, the average wage, the average civil servant or whatever, the Government must undertake automatically to implement that. The question that, with respect, I would say that the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House ducked was whether they could guarantee that either the Baker report, when it comes, or any future reports issued as a result of the process that Baker recommends, would come without Government interference. Bluntly, unless we receive that assurance, we will be back where we were. That is why I asked the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) the express question that I did. Unless the report is published to the world on the day it is published to the Government, it will always be open to the Government to hold it to themselves, to spin, to leak and generally to prepare the ground—as they have done this time—before we can see the blessed thing. That is unacceptable, not only from the point of view of Members of Parliament but for all my constituents, and anybody else who takes an interest in public affairs.