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Standards and Privileges

As the Leader of the House said, these are always difficult moments for us as a House. That is right, and we should be careful in our response to such matters. I support the motion tabled in the name of the Leader of the House, and I will invite my colleagues to do the same. I join her and the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) in thanking and paying tribute to the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) and his Committee, who do a very difficult job exceptionally well, with discretion, courtesy and the proper propriety. That is important. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, that last week we debated the Senior Salaries Review Body report. Apart from colleagues who served on the Standards and Privileges Committee, none of us had knowledge at that point of what was to be published this week. That demonstrates the proper way in which such matters should be handled. The work was done by the Committee, it was published when the Committee was ready, and only then did it receive publicity. I too give thanks to the previous commissioner for his work, and I welcome his successor. Such jobs are very important, and the procedure works well. There is no criticism of the procedure involved, and if it errs on the side of caution, that is right. It should always presume people to be innocent unless the evidence proves otherwise. In your earlier statement, Mr. Speaker, you reminded us that you had already considered the decisions we took last Thursday. At that time, we put forward three specific matters for a group of colleagues chaired by you to reflect upon, one of which was alluded to by the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). We asked for further consideration to be given to a lower limit on Members' unreceipted expenditure; there was all-party agreement on that. The SSRB proposed that the limit should be £50, and my colleagues and I support that. We urge the Members Estimate Committee and the advisory panel on Members' allowances to agree to that change as soon as possible; I hope that it will be agreed by 1 April so that it can come into force at the beginning of the next financial year. The second matter—this was the one referred to by the hon. Member for Walsall, North—was the SSRB recommendation that the National Audit Office should have the power to audit a selection of Members all the time. In other words, there should be spot checks; any of us would be aware that we might be audited at any time. I support that, and so do my colleagues. I hope that the House authorities can bring back that recommendation for agreement in this House, so that it takes effect from 1 April. Such a move would allow spot checks every year on a random cross-section of colleagues in the House. Thirdly, we asked the authorities to consider recognising partners who are sole beneficiaries as having the same rights for pension purposes as spouses and civil partners. In other words, people who are recognised as partners should have recognised status. Arising from that, I would like to make two points about families. There seems to be a perfectly legitimate case for allowing colleagues who are married or have recognised partners to work with their partners. I speak as someone who is not in that position, so I am not speaking from self-interest. The job that someone does, working with a person to serve their constituents, can often best be done in a similar way to how things operate in a small business, for example. However, if there is to be continuing acceptance of family members working for colleagues, there is not a strong case for more than one member of the family doing that, or for their being paid more than the going rate for the job, as recommended in the rules we set ourselves—within the parameters referred to by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire, such as competence, age and experience. We clearly cannot make current or past arrangements suddenly illegal if people have made a commitment through a contract to a member of their family. Provided that they follow the rules properly, that situation must be allowed to continue. For the future, however, there seems be a case for allowing only one family member to be employed, and at the right rate for the job. Confidentiality for the people whom we employ concerns many hon. Members. Until the previous Parliament, my friend Nigel Jones—now Lord Jones of Cheltenham—sat on the Liberal Democrat Benches in the House of Commons. He suffered a terrible injury and witnessed the death in his constituency office of a person whom he employed, and who was working at the time on constituency matters. I know of other colleagues and their staff who are currently under threat from members of the public, and who are being supported by the police. Indeed, in the past the Leader of the House has been in that position, as have I. We must therefore be careful about separating the proper accountability of Members of Parliament for public money and the way in which it is spent—for example, by declaring that we use our £90,000 to pay the wages of two, three or four members of staff—from putting the names of all those people in the public domain and identifying them as working for us. Doing the latter would mean that their addresses and their families could also be in the public domain. Members' staff are not in the same position as others who are paid from the public purse, because they are especially exposed. I have been in my surgery with people working for me, some paid and some volunteering, who have been put in difficult positions, with angry, aggressive and unstable constituents. Many colleagues from all parties have been in the same position. I support the Committee's careful and considered findings and I believe that the recommendations are right. We all have a duty to ensure that we spend every penny of public money properly. I hope that we can agree to the audit proposals and the lower maximum expense allowance without receipts soon, and that we will be careful when we determine whom we employ, and consider the implications. For all such people other than a spouse or registered partner, we should, in 2008, apply full proper employment practice. We should give people of all backgrounds equal opportunities to work for us. If we do not, we shall be reinforcing the traditional white male-dominated society that pertains here, because there are more white men than other colleagues in this place. I hope that modern employment law will work, and that people whom the taxpayer and Members of Parliament employ will be recruited openly. I also hope that they will be employed in a way that employment law will ensure is entirely justified in future.