Parliament (Amendment)

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

As I understand it, I am not able to give way during a ten-minute rule Bill. I am supposed to have 10 minutes, but I keep looking at the clock wondering how many minutes have expired—[Interruption.] Five minutes—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman’s 10 minutes will be up at 5.27 pm.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure that a number of Members will not be able to reach that moment soon enough. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

Let us be clear: Ministers come with a high price tag. Lord Turnbull told the Public Administration Select Committee earlier this year that the average cost of a Minister was £500,000 a year. That is not his salary, but the costs of the private secretary, the office and all the rest that goes with it. Despite being committed to making savage cuts in public expenditure, however, the Government are in denial of the increased costs that the Government have incurred by increasing the number of Ministers.

On 18 October, I asked the Minister for the Cabinet Office if he would

“estimate the annual cost to the public purse of the change in the number of Ministers and Whips drawn from the House of Commons since the dissolution of the previous Parliament.”—[Official Report, 18 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 516W.]

I expected an answer along the lines of, “We reckon there are five extra Ministers, as a result of which, with each costing about £500,000, it works out at about £2.5 million”. In fact—this is on the record—my right hon. Friend did not answer the question at all. He avoided it completely and talked about how Ministers had taken a pay cut. That was not the question I put to him. I use that as evidence that even at the centre of this Government—in the Cabinet Office itself—they do not want to face up to the consequences of their own actions.

Another part of my Bill deals with the number of peers in the House of Lords: currently, there are 777. Since the general election, 56 new appointments have been made, and another 50 are proposed to be recruited imminently, with further additions proposed to comply with the coalition’s commitment to have the same proportion of Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers in the House of Lords as the proportion who voted for those parties in the general election. According to the maths that I have done on the back of an envelope, to get a proportion of 59% of the 777, an extra 186 peers would have to be appointed, bringing the total to 963. If there was no reduction in the number of Labour Members, to produce 59% of the higher figure of 963 we would have to produce the best part of another 100 peers. In the short term, therefore, it seems to be coalition Government policy to increase the number of Members of the House of Lords by no fewer than 250, which is absolute lunacy. Meanwhile, contrary to all the representations made by various Committees of the House, the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries is 32 and rising. Over the years, many people have suggested that there should be no more than one PPS per Department, but the Government have ignored all that.

The Bill is a framework Bill. Similar Bills have been put before the House previously, and I go forward confident in the knowledge that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) and Mr Speaker himself have argued a similar case to that which I advance today. I have 12 supporters for the Bill, and following last night’s debate I could have accommodated more, but the rules of the House prevent me from having more than 12. I am grateful to all my hon. Friends who have offered to support my Bill but who cannot be included in the 12 —the Bill will have many more supporters in due course.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Graham Brady, Mr Richard Shepherd, Mrs Eleanor Laing, Mr Mark Field, Mr Andrew Turner, Mr Robert Syms, Martin Vickers, Mr Philip Hollobone, Graham Stringer, Tristram Hunt and Mr Charles Walker present the Bill.

Mr Christopher Chope accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 March and to be printed (Bill 97).