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Financial Provision for Members

My Lords, I am grateful for the broad welcome given by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness the Convenor of the Cross Benches. I understand why the Leader of the Opposition could not be in her place today, and I am glad that the noble Lord stood in for her in such an excellent manner. I think the whole House should thank my noble friend Lord Wakeham and congratulate him on the work that he did. He took on an immensely difficult task after the debate that we had last December. It was not clear to me that anyone would be able to find their way around this particular maze, with so many different groups of people wanting different things and dissatisfied with what was being presented. It is a real credit. He did not manage to find his way through alone, though; he did so with the help of a group of individuals from all sides of the House who no doubt helped and encouraged him in his work. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked some specific questions, particularly about how long I anticipate this process will take and when the new regime will come into force. It is important that we move quickly to the new regime. The House Committee will therefore meet very soon and take a view on resolutions that will be proposed by me. If they are agreed they will be brought to the House. I hope that this will be done in the course of the next few weeks—certainly before the Summer Recess, because I envisage the new regime coming into force on 1 October. The current regime will continue until then. We will need resolutions, in part to allow the authorities of the House to take them into account when they are creating the new system. I do not believe that anything I have said about the new system will give the authorities in the House of Lords any concern at all about being able to administer the scheme effectively, efficiently and more cheaply than was envisaged under the scheme proposed by the SSRB. Turning to the points made by the Convenor of the Cross Benches, I recognise that some will be concerned about a net reduction in the amount of money they receive. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said, this is not a perfect system—nor does it try to be. It tries simply to iron out the worst of the difficulties that we have seen in the current system and the proposed scheme, and it has taken all those things into account. The noble Baroness was right about all the changes that have taken place during the past 12 months. We have a new code of conduct, a new independent Commissioner for Standards, and we are reviewing the attendance allowances. For the House of Lords, it is a positively revolutionary pace. The noble Baroness mentioned taxation. That is not a matter for me; it is up to HMRC and the Treasury. However, if the previous scheme was without tax, there must be compelling arguments for this scheme also to be without tax, given that many of the expenses which Peers have are very similar. The Clerk of the Parliaments has discretion to allow some additional expenses for disabled Members. Nothing in the Wakeham committee report seeks to change that, and there is no reason why it should not continue. The Clerk of the Parliaments has in the past demonstrated an ability and willingness to look favourably on people who need those additional expenses, and I am sure that he will want to continue to do so.