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House Committee: Third Report

My Lords, I am a Londoner, and I have had the good fortune, in my many years in this House, of going at night to my own home, to my own bed, to my own books, to my own family, to my own kitchen and to my friends in the neighbourhood in which I live. I am astonished at the self-sacrifice of those who cannot do that because they live outside London and have to spend their week time, when they are working in this House, away from their home, their families and their friends. Any criticism that underestimates the sacrifice that is made by those who live outside London is totally inappropriate. The talk in the press last year about barracks for MPs, and presumably for Peers as well, was outrageous, and I defend to the end the right of non-Londoners to have a decent life when they are here in London on duty. Having said that, we misunderstand the reaction of the people of this country to what has been happening in Parliament in the past year or so if we think that it relates to only a small number of rogues. It is much more serious than that. I follow my noble friend Lord Soley when I say that people simply do not understand that we of all people should be able to set our own terms and conditions of service without any reference to an independent outside body. Of course there are things in the SSRB report that show a lack of understanding, and I will say nothing that implies that I am not in favour of the work which the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, is doing to bring greater realism to those areas of the SSRB report, but in the end people want the House of Commons and this House to say that we are not the masters of our own fate when it comes either to our code of conduct or to what our remuneration or allowances—whatever it is proper to call them here—should be. The House Committee appointed the SSRB, but it did so not because it was not right that the initiative should come to this House but because it would have been intolerable if we had not gone to an outside body to make recommendations to us. Therefore, I, like my noble friend Lord Soley, think that the principle behind all our interventions on this matter must be that we run this House through this or another outside body—through the parliamentary commissioner, in due course—and it should not be open to us to set our own conditions.