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Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

I cannot give way because I have been told that I have only three or four minutes. Such a flat-rate allowance should be taxable so that the Inland Revenue is not involved. There would be no fraud, no possibility of error and no receipts. Every Member of Parliament would get the same. What we have at the moment is fundamentally anti-family. When my predecessor came to the House, he virtually had to buy his seat, and when he left Newark station, the station master would say to him, ““When will your next annual visit be, sir?”” Over the past 30 or 40 years, we have created a system in which ordinary people with no private means—people such as me, who have been full-time Members of Parliament for all that time—have been able to devote themselves to public affairs. I am sorry to get personal, but for 27 years I have carted my family up and down the A1 for three and a half and hours in either direction. I have created a small family home in Lincolnshire, and a family home in London. Surely we should allow people to preserve that sort of lifestyle. We are all different—some people have big families, others have small families; some have old families, some have young families—but we need a system of allowances, which I think should be set at a flat rate, and pay that allows ordinary people with no private resources to come to the House and to serve the public. That is all we want to do; nobody comes here to make money or to get rich. We just want to serve the public. We love Parliament, but surely we have to be allowed to do our job and stay with our families. This place should not become the preserve of the rich, as it used to be 30 or 40 years ago. So, away with all this complexity! Away with all this bureaucracy! Just give MPs a decent salary. Every member of the public I speak to says the same. They are sick and tired of this debate; let us end it now.