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Members' Salaries, Pensions and Allowances

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and this is why. The SSRB has just sent us a detailed report covering all aspects of hon. Members' allowances—I say ““just””, but hon. Members will know what I mean; it actually sent it to us last July. There are some good ideas in that report and the motivation for making many of the recommendations in it was entirely laudable. Regrettably, however, some of them are slightly less practical than they might be, and have all sorts of unintended consequences that cannot possibly have occurred to the authors of the report. For example, having totted up what the changes in the office rental and staffing arrangements would mean for me, I discovered that I would lose £12,400 a year from my allowances. I do not believe that it was the intention that the SSRB would have that impact on anybody's budgeting, but it did. The SSRB brought to have some objectivity and independence; it commissioned people to look at things in markets out there in the real world, and produced a report with some good ideas, but also with some glaring anomalies, which the MEC will be required to consider. If that report is the only one before us when we come back in July, there is every risk of further complications, unintended consequences, inaccuracies, anomalies and other inconsistencies, which will put the House in a difficult position. If that report is the only proposition before us, we will again be presented, on a ““take it or leave it”” basis, with something that we know to be riddled with flaws. It would make far more sense if the MEC, which can see the flaws in the current proposals on allowances, were allowed to put in its tuppenceworth on the subject of a pay system for the future, because when we hold that debate, it would benefit the House to have that alternative before us. I cannot comprehend why there could conceivably be thought to be a problem with that. In general, there were many suggestions in the SSRB report that we can take forward. I have stressed that the MEC is only too willing to try to iron out some of the problems. We have heard from Members on both sides of the House what some of the practical problems are, and we will earnestly use our best endeavours to put them right, and to come back to the House at a later date with a workable set of proposals on which Members can take a view.