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Members' Salaries, Pensions and Allowances

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean) who, along with his fellow members of the Members Estimate Committee and the Commission, puts much time and effort into representing our interests. I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar) for setting out so very clearly the facts regarding hon. Members' salaries in recent years and their context. I support the position outlined by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House. It is certainly right that we should be consistent with what we have asked public sector workers to take by way of salary increases over the past year. I wish Sir John Baker and the MEC well in carrying out their further reviews. They will need to grapple with a number of issues that will no doubt in due course attract well-reasoned representations from hon. Members. I should like to seek clarification from my right hon. and learned Friend on one issue. If we support the proposal to increase the staffing allowance immediately, will the MEC still be able to consider automatic uprating of the salaries of members of our staff? I want to draw particular attention to chart 3 on page 33 of volume 2 of the review, which shows that 19 per cent.—almost one in five—of MPs passed on less than 80 per cent. of their staffing allowance to their staff, and less than half of staff received bonuses. The ceiling on staffing allowances is uprated in April each year by the increase in the average earnings index, but staff pay is not automatically increased. The report notes the evidence given by staff representatives that many MPs do not pass on the annual uprating. The SSRB report concludes that the House authorities should consider issuing a notice to MPs in March to remind them of the opportunity for uprating. I think that a rather weak way of addressing the issue, especially at a time when, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley so ably set out, we are looking for an automatic uprating for ourselves; what is sauce for us is sauce for our members of staff as well. I turn to another staff allowance matter, which will be referred to the MEC. Recommendation 19 is about the ““Staffing Allowance””; it states that it should be renamed ““Staffing Expenditure”” and that the ““Temporary Secretarial Allowance”” be renamed ““Temporary Secretarial Expenditure””. The SSRB says: "““it would help to avoid misunderstanding or misrepresentation if allowances were renamed to make as clear as possible that this is not money which in some way augments MPs' salaries, but indeed is expenditure necessarily incurred to do the job their constituents and the nation expect of them.””" I share the pessimism of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd): changing the names may not change how such matters are covered in the press. However, we should recognise that when the package is described as a gravy train, that is not only a matter of concern to MPs; it is not very nice for the staff to be described as being on the gravy train. They do a fantastic job for us. We have talked about the long hours that we work, but they often put in hours well in excess of what they are contracted to do. We should pay attention to that in the months ahead, as we sort these matters out.