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Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Yes, it is odd. These issues are odd and arbitrary and IPSA must recognise that the system needs reform. It has begun to talk about the reform process so it is reasonable for the House to debate the kind of reform we need. If IPSA is engaged in a process, we should be part of the dialogue about how to move it on, and the experiences we have been hearing about show the direction that IPSA must take. I want to mention one or two other areas where reform is needed. High on the list of priorities for all Members are matters relating to how people move through different lifestyles and ages. Some people will enter the House at a young age, perhaps with young families, while others will be older, but all will have different needs and different requirements. A proper Parliament should be geared up to accommodate Members of different backgrounds and needs at different stages of life. That ought to be automatic, but it is not so now. We need change there. We need change in other areas that make it difficult for us to operate as Members of Parliament. For example, some of the arbitrary rules on the office cost ceiling might make sense in the lowest-cost parts of the country, but make no sense in large parts of London and even in constituencies such as mine. My constituency is actually one of the poorest in Britain, but its benchmark office costs are those for the city of Manchester. IPSA has to take those things seriously if it is to allow Members to do their jobs. The issue of travel is fundamental. In virtually all the years I have been a Member, in all my different roles—whether on the Government Front Bench, the Opposition Front Bench or the Back Benches—it has been accepted that if a Member needs to travel on parliamentary business, their needs will be met, if the travel is legitimate. For Ministers that is automatic, and senior Opposition figures have it provided through short money, but as we move down the political food chain—if that is the right terminology—that now ceases to be the case. You know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that under the present rules, some travel outside a Member's constituency will be paid for, while other things will be refused. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) pointed out to me that, as somebody who has spent the last 27 years in Parliament actively engaged on health matters, were he to travel from his south Yorkshire constituency to, for example, the Christie hospital in south Manchester, he would not necessarily be able to claim it as a legitimate cost, even though anybody with half a view of his work over the years would recognise it as important and fundamental to what he does.