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Standards and Privileges

I rise to speak in support of the motion. I am a member of the Standards and Privileges Committee, which is so ably chaired by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young). I wish to make only two or three small points. First, transparency, however painful, is an essential ingredient of a modern democracy, and we should not enter into arrangements in the employment of staff, or in any other respect, that cannot be defended publicly. Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman referred to timing, and I believe that the Committee was right to resist calls for delay. Action was urgently required in the wake of recent events. We in this House have to get ahead of public opinion, and not be continually dragged along behind it. Thirdly, and perhaps slightly more controversially, we have only ourselves to blame for the situation in which we find ourselves with regard to public opinion. It is true that much of the media reporting on our allowances is mendacious, but for far too long we have tolerated arrangements that do not exist anywhere else in the public or private sector. I recall that on one day in 2001 we voted down the Senior Salaries Review Body's recommendations on pensions and additional costs and substituted more generous arrangements. Sooner or later there was bound to be a public backlash.