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House of Lords: Financial Support for Members

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for interrupting him just now. I am afraid that it is one of the hazards of the dramatic pause or pausing for effect. I usually find that it does not pay to pause for a moment in this place. I had thought that the best way to get in was to interrupt someone who was speaking before you, but it has not worked out quite like that this evening. I sense that we are getting down to the last knockings of this debate, so, without wishing in any way to minimise what others have had to say about the potentially far reaching implications of the SSRB report for the dynamics of this House, I shall be brief and concentrate on just one or two matters of fine-tuning. Before I do that, however, I should like to say that the Leader is in a difficult position this evening. She cannot vary the Motion that is before us at this stage. I suppose that she could decide not to put it when we come to the end of the debate, but, at all events, I hope that she may feel that it would be appropriate for the ad hoc group which is to be set up to take an expansive view of what is not "architecture and principles". If she could make some acknowledgement of that when winding up, she would in that way faithfully reflect the sense of the House as expressed in the debate. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Nickson, and others that we are on a hiding to nothing with this report. I am not absolutely sure that we are damned if we do, but I am certain that we are damned if we don’t. We therefore have to go along with the broad thrust of what the report proposes or, as the House Committee has said, the architecture and principles. I take as my starting point that the daily fee for attendance is hardly princely by the standards of quangoland, but provides a more appropriate and defensible basis for reimbursing Members of this House. At the same time, I recognise that the principles may bear much more harshly on Members who attend from outside London, with potentially undesirable consequences. It may have the effect of making the House much more London-centric, for example. I agree that the recommendations on standard and economy class travel for families are mean-spirited. The incorporation of the office costs allowance into the daily fee seems to make sense, but there are two specific points that I want to make about it. First, I support what others have said about the need to make some provision for non-sitting days. Many Members need to maintain arrangements for secretarial, research and other support throughout the year. There is some recognition of this in the present system, which permits claims in respect of office costs for up to 40 days a year. It would be appropriate for some provision along these lines to be retained. It could be set at half the daily fee if that was thought more appropriate. Secondly, paragraph 3.11 of the SSRB report sets out the provision made by the House in respect of IT facilities, the costs of broadband installation, line rental and calls up to £10 a month, and for postage. The next paragraph simply refers to rolling the office costs allowance in with the daily fee but says nothing about maintaining the provision detailed in the previous paragraph. I hope it can be taken as read that we can continue to rely on this provision. It may seem petty to pick up the report on such points of detail, but we seem to live in an age when precision about such matters of detail and wording is required. Finally, on what may seem another nit-picking point, paragraph 5.17 of the report states that Members of the House who are disabled may currently recover the additional expenses that they incur in attending the House. I hope that the further work that is to be done on fleshing out the detail and implications of the report will confirm the present system whereby disabled Peers may recover the extra expenses that they incur, not only in attending the House but in doing the work that they were sent here to do. The point has also been made to me that disabled Members coming from outside London may have additional expenses in connection with their London accommodation, such as a more expensive hotel. If we are really going to implement this invidious distinction between first and standard or economy class travel, which I very much hope we are not, it should be understood that disabled Peers may very well need an assistant with them in the business class cabin to help them to do their work. All these points need to be recognised.