The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
I beg to move,
That the following provision shall be made with respect to the salaries of Members of this House—
(1) For the period beginning with 1 April 2011 and ending with the relevant day, the rates of—
(a) Members’ salaries, and
(b) additional salaries payable to Members under Resolutions of this House in respect of service as chairs of select or general committees, shall be the same as those salaries as at 31 March 2011.
(2) In paragraph (1) the “relevant day” means—
(a) the day before the day on which the first determination of Members’ salaries by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority comes into effect, or
(b) 31 March 2013,
whichever is the earlier.
(3) Paragraphs (9), (10) and (12)(b) of the Resolution of 3 July 2008 (Members’ Salaries (No. 2) (Money)) cease to have effect on the day this Resolution is passed.
(4) The remaining provisions of that Resolution cease to have effect on 1 April 2011.
We move now to MPs’ pay. [Interruption.] Mr Speaker—
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman. I fully understand that right hon. and hon. Members are not that interested in hearing speeches about their own pay, but I hope that as a courtesy to the Leader of the House those Members who are disinterested and inclined to leave the Chamber will do so quickly and quietly, so that those who wish to hear the Leader of the House can do so.
Sir George Young
The whole House will be keenly aware of the country’s difficult financial situation, and both sides of the House accept that we have a substantial structural deficit, which must be brought down. The Government have had to take difficult decisions throughout the public sector, including imposing a two-year pay freeze on public sector workers earning more than £21,000. Hon. Members must now decide whether their constituents would welcome Parliament exempting itself from that policy and thus insulating itself from decisions that are affecting households throughout the country, or whether, as I believe, the public expect their elected representatives to be in step with what is being required of other public servants. I believe that it is right for us, as Members of Parliament, to forgo the pay increase that the current formula would have produced.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I quite agree that Parliament should not exempt itself, but I was under the impression that we were never going to vote on our pay again.
Sir George Young
I will come in a moment to the point about whether we should overturn the decision that we took in July 2008. Let me briefly set out the background. On 3 July 2008, the House agreed a new formula for uprating Members’ salaries, which is what I think my hon. Friend was referring to. The annual percentage increase would be the median of a basket of public sector comparators, and this percentage would be calculated by the Senior Salaries Review Body and notified to you, Mr Speaker, in a letter from its chairman. That percentage increase would then take effect automatically from 1 April.
That system has considerable advantages. It provides a fixed uprating formula so that we do not determine our own salaries. It is transparent, as the formula and the SSRB’s determination are there for everyone to see. It is also fair in that it provides a link between the salary of a Member of Parliament and the salaries of others in the public sector. Those are the virtues that the Government usually believe should underpin any system for determining our salaries—independence, transparency and fairness. We have therefore not taken lightly the decision to set aside the pay increase and thereby abandon the formula.
As I said, the Government’s decision to invite the House to agree to a pay freeze is the product of the difficult fiscal situation in which we have to find significant cost savings across the public sector. As my predecessor as Leader of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), said in the 2008 debate:
“given that MPs are paid from the public purse, we should show the same discipline in our pay increases as we expect from the public sector.”—[Official Report, 3 July 2008; Vol. 478, c. 1062.]
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman is a decent fellow, but this is not quite the full story. The full story is that no Government have ever resisted the temptation to poke their nose into this business. We have set up mechanisms, to which the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) referred, and said that they should be independent and we should go along with them, and then when it suits the Government of the day—not just this Government but any Government—they change the rules. That completely undermines any claim they make to believe in independent mechanisms. Either we come forward with what the independent review mechanism says, or we do not. This Government, like their predecessors, are poking their nose in where it does not belong.
Sir George Young
I should like to address very directly the hon. Gentleman’s point about the independence of the review that we are overturning. He rightly says that by bringing this motion before the House, a Government are once again asking Members to vote on their own remuneration—something that we believed we had put behind us. He asks the very good question as to why we are asking the House to reject the independent findings of the SSRB and whether the SSRB is unable to take on board issues of the kind that I have been talking about. The short answer is this: the system that was introduced in 2008 provided an objective mechanism for determining our pay, but it was a long way from being independent. The formula was devised by the previous Government and endorsed by the House, and in no sense could it be said to be independent.
For those, like the hon. Gentleman, who say that we are substituting our own judgment on this issue for that of the independent SSRB, I remind the House of what the chairman of the SSRB, Sir Bill Cockburn, said in his letter to you, Mr Speaker, on 19 January. He said:
“I should emphasise that the SSRB has no discretion in making this determination but simply applies the formula set out in the Resolution. We were not consulted when the Resolution was drawn up. The resulting figure is not what the SSRB would have recommended had we been able to have regard to all the circumstances including, this year, the Government’s pay freeze for public sector workers paid more that £21,000 a year.”
In a nutshell, the SSRB is saying that if its hands had not been tied by the House, it would not have recommended the 1% pay increase that came before us in January. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the pay recommendations for other professions published today by the SSRB and the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration, he will see that no uplifts are recommended for those earning more than £21,000.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
The Leader of the House is making a convincing argument that the SSRB, or whichever independent body we choose, should be more independent, not less. What he is doing tonight, of course, is renationalising the terms and conditions of MPs’ salaries, which is going in exactly the wrong direction. Does he accept that this matter will go on and on, and that MPs will be undermined consistently by the media and the public until we have a wholly independent authority that does not come back to this House or to the Government for a final decision?
Sir George Young
I say to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) that that is exactly the process that we are moving towards, although it will disappoint the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). I will now come to what happens next.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
What I do not understand from the Leader of the House is, if this increase is based on an average of public service salaries, are we not simply getting what the rest of the public services are getting?
Sir George Young
If my hon. Friend looks at the comparator, he will see that it includes a number of people who earn less than £21,000 and that, crucially, it includes settlements that were made before the last election. To that extent, it lags behind the public sector pay freeze that we announced in the Budget.
To answer the point raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham North, the 2008 resolution also requires the SSRB to conduct a review of Members’ salaries in the first year of each new Parliament. By rescinding the resolution in its entirety, the motion removes the requirement for the SSRB to conduct such a review this year. The review of Members’ salaries will instead take place following the commencement of section 29 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which will transfer the determination of our salaries to IPSA on a statutory basis. As I said at business questions last week, the Government intend to commence that section shortly. If, in future, the House wants to overturn any recommendations, it will require primary legislation, not a 90-minute debate such as we are having this evening.
Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Given the self-denying ordinance that the Leader of the House is proposing today for salaries, will he give a commitment that he will bring in primary legislation to ensure that there will be no increase in allowances for the next two years under IPSA, or is this the same old story that we have had in the past of holding the salary in a blaze of glory, and turning around and seeing allowances increased?
Sir George Young
There is no intention of doing that.
The Government’s policy is to have a public sector pay freeze for those earning more than £21,000 a year. Members of Parliament clearly earn more than that. I think that it would be unacceptable for those earning just more than £21,000 to have no increase and for Members of Parliament earning three times that sum to get a salary increase of about £650. That is why I think it is right this evening to ask the House to freeze our salaries. I very much hope that the House will approve the motion in my name and that of the Deputy Leader of the House.
Mr Speaker
I have not selected the amendment, so the Question is as on the Order Paper.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
Hear, hear to what the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) said at the end of her speech: I do not think that we want to be in this position again.
I want to pick up on something that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) said about pay review bodies. Yes, it is true that a succession of reports from such bodies has been accepted by the Government. They deal with teachers, the Prison Service and the health service. Every single one of them says that there should be no increase in pay this year for those who earn more than £21,000. Only one pay review body is proposing an increase for people who earn considerably more than £21,000, and that is the one that deals with Members of Parliament. Why is that happening? Because it is not an entirely independent review, as we have already heard from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of Commons, and because it was pre-emptively interfered with by the decision of the previous Government and the previous House in setting the parameters for our pay, which has resulted in the anomalous position of the proposal of a 1% pay increase for MPs while everyone else in the public service gets a pay freeze. That is why we have had to come back to the House today.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
On a point of clarification, there has been a lot of disquiet in the debate about Members of Parliament having to vote on their own pay. Can my hon. Friend confirm whether there will be an annual vote on our pay when IPSA takes over this matter?
Mr Heath
There certainly will not be—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) can scoff, but there will not be. It will be a genuinely independent process.
The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) asked why we had not tabled an amendment. There is no need for an amendment in order to transfer the matter to IPSA, an entirely independent body, because the legislation is already in place. All that we need is a commencement order. He went on to say that he would refuse to vote this evening. Let me tell him, and anyone who is minded to do the same, that if the House refuses to vote for the motion this evening, we will have a 1% pay increase, and those hon. Members will have to justify that pay increase to their constituents at a time of national constraint. I do not believe that that would be easy to do.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
If the Deputy Leader of the House is so keen for an independent body such as IPSA to control MPs’ salaries, why does he not hand that over from 1 April this year?
Mr Heath
We shall do so when IPSA and the House are ready, and it will be done shortly. We have already given that reply, and I repeat it again. Incidentally, may I tell the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) that he will soon receive a reply on pensions, but we have made it clear that MPs’ pensions will be informed by the Hutton review in exactly the same way as pensions in the rest of the public service? It is a matter that the House will soon have the opportunity to discuss.
I was extremely disappointed by part of the contribution from the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) in which he appeared to impugn the integrity of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. That is entirely regrettable and unjustifiable, given his record in opposition and in government, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to withdraw that suggestion.
Mr Mark Field
I was simply trying to inform the House of events that took place two years ago, and was in no way trying to impugn the integrity of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I was just pointing out that in his former guise he had made the case for independent reviews very strongly in amendments that he had tabled, and I hoped that he would do the same again.
May I briefly ask the deputy Leader of the House whether, if there is a salary freeze in the public sector from April 2013 to April 2014, he will do his best, once MPs’ salaries are in IPSA’s hands, to stop IPSA putting up those salaries, despite the fact that, by that stage, IPSA will be the entirely independent body that he believes the SSRB is not?
Mr Heath
I did not hear the hon. Gentleman say what he said that he had said about my right hon. Friend—I heard something quite different—but we shall have to look at the Official Report to be sure.
Once IPSA has control of Members’ salaries, it will be entirely independent and it will not be for me or for anyone else to tell it how to do its job. Independent assessment is right—we all agree about that. In principle, Members of Parliament should not vote on their own pay. But in a House that does not flinch from having an opinion on the remuneration of others, we cannot just ignore the perception or consequences of an increase of our own pay.
Mr Charles Walker
I do not think that a single Member of Parliament wants this wretched 1% pay rise. What we wanted was the chance as Members of Parliament to do the right thing and table our own motion to decline it. What we are getting, I am afraid, in a robust speech from the hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench, is Executive posturing at our expense and it does him no favours at all.
Michael Connarty
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is approaching a response to the point that I made. Has it not come to everyone’s notice recently that there might be a problem with public sector expenditure? It has been parroted in every speech in the House since the election. Why did the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House not introduce something to free the SSRB from the formula in which it was trapped, enabling it to make an independent recommendation on our salaries and on which we would not have to vote? Where has the hon. Gentleman been sleeping?
Mr Heath
There are two answers to that. First, I am not a member of the SSRB, so I did not know what recommendation it was going to make. If we tried to adjust the so-called independent formula, would we not be having precisely the same debate about the Executive interfering with the will of the House, which had decided to give to that independent body the right to set our pay? It would be said that we were coming in with a formula of our own. I can just imagine the speeches that would be made, and they would be very similar to the ones that have been made this evening.
The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about animal intelligence. It occurs to me that if there were a lemmings review body that independently came to the view that a headlong dash into a freezing fjord would be for the best, lemmings ought at least to have an opinion on the matter. What we are providing this evening is an opportunity for Members to consider the consequences before complying with the decision.
In this case, the review body has made it plain that it would not have made the recommendation that it did unless it was constrained to do so. It would have independently come to a view that there should be no increase in our pay this year. I find it difficult to believe that any Member of the House thinks we should be treated differently and significantly better than others working in the public sector.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
I am staggered that I should have to make this comment: no one in the House is suggesting that we should take that 1%.
Mr Heath
In that case I am extremely pleased, as it means that we will quickly move to a conclusion of this difficult matter. The commitment to independent review is retained. The anomalous position this year is recognised. We do to ourselves what others have had done to them. It is not a decision for Government; it is a decision for the House. Members must make up their own minds, but in my view— and I do not think I am alone—it is a no-brainer. I hope all right hon. and hon. Members will support the motion.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the following provision shall be made with respect to the salaries of Members of this House—
(1) For the period beginning with 1 April 2011 and ending with the relevant day, the rates of—
(a) Members’ salaries, and
(b) additional salaries payable to Members under Resolutions of this House in respect of service as chairs of select or general committees, shall be the same as those salaries as at 31 March 2011.
(2) In paragraph (1) the “relevant day” means—
(a) the day before the day on which the first determination of Members’ salaries by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority comes into effect, or
(b) 31 March 2013, whichever is the earlier.
(3) Paragraphs (9), (10) and (12)(b) of the Resolution of 3 July 2008 (Members’ Salaries (No. 2) (Money)) cease to have effect on the day this Resolution is passed.
(4) The remaining provisions of that Resolution cease to have effect on 1 April 2011.