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Communications Allowance

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Cook, and I join in the tributes paid to Michael Foot. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Keith Hill) on securing the debate. As he said, he is retiring at the next election after 18 years of service. He served most effectively in several ministerial roles and his retirement will be a loss to the House. Communications, which I think is what we are supposed to be talking about, is at the heart of our work in our constituencies. To represent our constituents effectively, we need to communicate with them on the work we do, as many Members have said today, and on local issues. I know from my experience that communications expenditure can be a useful tool, and several examples have been given in the debate. Last year I had to inform a large number of households in my constituency about work that would be going ahead on the M60 motorway. As with the other cases referred to by Members, if I had not told my constituents about that work, they would not have known. We have had some interesting contributions. One could be forgiven for being confused. Although the average communications allowance expenditure is about £8,400 across the House, seven Opposition Members who have intervened in the debate used the communications allowance for 2008-09 to the level of £95,000 between them, and two of those Members spent more than £20,000 and are among only 11 Members who spent as much. It is interesting that they argue against something that they used to a level of more than £20,000.