House of Lords: Allowances

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the situation that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, suggests will never arise.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I strongly support the Government’s resolutions and the House Committee’s report. The House Committee report puts forward changes to the system of financial support for Members of your Lordships’ House, based on proposals from the Leader of the House. The report rightly describes them as important changes. I agree with these proposed changes. I also agree that the changes proposed by the ad hoc group set up by your Lordships’ House and chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, form a marked move away from the current system of financial support for Members of this House.

The report of the ad hoc group sets out in some detail how we have got to this point. The background to the issues is also summarised in the report from the House Committee, so there is no need for me to repeat that history. This has been a long and complicated matter, and I add my thanks to all those involved who have worked so hard to get to the point where what is on the Order Paper today is, I believe, the right way forward.

First and foremost, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and all the other Members of the House who served on the ad hoc group that was appointed by the House to examine these issues in the wake of the report from the Senior Salaries Review Body.

I also pay tribute to the Leader of the House for the decisive action that he has taken in bringing forward the alternative proposal, set out in the Wakeham report, that forms the resolution and the report before the House today. I know from my time as Leader of the House, and in Government, that these are very difficult issues to address, and I believe that the noble Lord has performed a considerable service for this House and its Members in bringing forward the proposals that are before us today.

In considering these proposals, we need to bear in mind two fundamental points: the nature of this House, and its cost. On the first point, I can do no better than to quote from the introduction to the report of the ad hoc group:

“Membership of this House is not an office nor is it an employment. From their appointment to the House, Members are unsalaried volunteers and they offer their experience, time and commitment freely because of a strong sense of duty and public service. The fact that the House of Lords is an unsalaried House is fundamental to its nature and character; to how and what it does as a House, and to the issue of financial support to enable Members to carry out their Parliamentary duties and to discharge their Parliamentary responsibilities”.

That is exactly right.

The second point concerns the cost of this House. The ad hoc group says that the cost of your Lordships’ House is “relatively low”. Again, that is exactly right. The report points out that not only are the total costs of this House currently less than one-third of the costs of the House of Commons but the cost of the current expenses scheme for Members of this House is, at around £19 million, just 15 per cent of the running costs of this House and a fraction of the comparable cost of £150 million in the Commons. An unsalaried House, a low-cost House—that is where we are.

We all accept that we are in a time of considerable economic difficulty. We may well—indeed, we do—have serious political disagreements with the coalition Government about how best to resolve these matters, but all sides accept that we are in straitened economic times. I welcome, therefore, the efforts made by the SSRB, the Wakeham group and the Leader of the House to reform the old system of expenses in your Lordships’ House, which, as the ad hoc group says,

“grew up in piecemeal fashion over time”,

while keeping costs under control.

Both the full debate in the Chamber on 14 December last year and the responses of Members detailed in the ad hoc group’s report made it clear that many Members of your Lordships’ House had real reservations about the SSRB’s proposals. Many believed that what the SSRB proposed was unnecessarily complicated, cumbersome and bureaucratic. The Wakeham group sought to deal with those issues, but at the same time recognised that the context for them had changed—first, because of the proposals made in March this year by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for changes to the system of allowances in the House of Commons, and secondly because of the changed political context following the outcome of the general election, particularly the proposals from the coalition Government for further reform of your Lordships’ House.

Accordingly, the ad hoc group recognised that the emergence of an alternative proposal would be worth consideration, reducing the level of support currently set aside for overnight accommodation and combining it with the daily allowance as a single allowance claimable by all Members. That is the essence of the proposal before us today in the report from the House Committee and in the Motion from the Leader of the House. As the ad hoc group itself says:

“If this change were to be made, it would be simple, easy to implement, easy to administer and easy to explain to the public”.

I agree.

I am of course aware that not everyone in the House agrees, including on my own Benches. I know that there are real concerns about equity, about the impact on Members travelling to attend the House from far distances and about other points. I understand those concerns; I respect those who feel them, and who either have voiced them to me privately or within our political group or may voice them in the Chamber today. But no system of financial support is perfect. All systems of financial support have to strike a balance between comprehensiveness and simplicity. I believe that the package in front of the House gets that balance right.