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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

No, I have got a clue. I have got lots of clues, the first of which is that it will happen during the next Parliament, but I promise the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will deal with that when he handles the next set of amendments. [Interruption.] Oh, here is the answer: 2011-12, and even Homer nodded. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) spoke about MPs' pay and asked why new clause 73 explicitly provides that the first determination would not come into force until 1 April 2012. I want to make it clear that, until then, the decision of the House of July 2008 will apply. There is an automatic regulator of our salaries: the House has said by resolution that any recommendation of the Senior Salaries Review Body will be implemented. An agreement has already been reached for 2010, so the 2011 pay increase will arise from the SSRB and it will come from IPSA thereafter. It is proposed that there will be a first determination, which will be the equivalent of the quinquennial review that the SSRB carries out, for example, in respect of judicial salaries, and the frequency of further determinations will be a matter for IPSA thereafter. The hon. Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley) proposed that a flat salary, fixed at the beginning of a Parliament should apply irrespective of whatever happened thereafter. That has certain attractions and would certainly mean that every Member of Parliament carefully checked the inflation rate. Over a normal Parliament, if the Bank of England's target had been stuck to, one's salary would have been eroded by a compound 10 per cent. He and the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire were sitting in the House—I was a hired hand—in the 1975 period, when inflation rose to 27 per cent., through no fault of the Labour Government. It then rose again to 22 per cent. in 1981, through every fault of the Conservative Government, including the doubling of VAT. Leaving aside the cause, the fact is that inflation was very high under both parties; that was difficult; and a fixed, flat salary would have caused all sorts of problems.