Cost of Living: Energy and Housing
Hilary Benn Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State be responding to this debate?
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I draw the House’s attention to my indirect interest, as previously recorded in Hansard. We have had a wide-ranging debate that was opened by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who made the Liberal Democrat case for the coalition. Were he here, I would gently point out to him that there has not been a council tax freeze for about 2.2 million people on the very lowest incomes who have been hit by the changes in council tax benefit. The most passionate part of his speech was when he talked about energy bills, but I would remind him that energy bills went down when my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was Energy Secretary, whereas they have gone up during his tenure.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) then made what I think was a forensic speech, making the case for what could have been done in the Gracious Speech to do something about markets that do not work in the interests of consumers, which has dominated this afternoon’s debate. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) gave what I would describe as an hon. and learned master-class—one with which I was not familiar before—on heroic negligence. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government assures me across the Dispatch Box that he will further enlighten us on the subject when he replies.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who chairs the Communities and Local Government Committee, in a typically thoughtful and well-informed speech, made important points about brownfield land, viability, the impact of migration and the importance of devolving power to answer the English question—a point reinforced by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart).
Several Members—led by the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and supported by the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), my hon. Friends the Members for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell)—spoke passionately in support of the Bill to tackle modern-day slavery. There is not a single Member of the House who does not look forward to the day when that Bill reaches the statute book.
We also heard contributions from the hon. Members for Angus (Mr Weir), for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), for Fareham (Mr Hoban), for North Dorset (Mr Walter), for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and for Northampton North (Michael Ellis),
A number of Members, including the Chair of the Select Committee and my hon. Friends the Members for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), raised the problem of the insecurity and expense faced by the 9 million people who now rent from private landlords, including a growing number of families. We know that many of them would like to buy their own homes but cannot afford to do so and that private renting is the most expensive form of tenure. On average, people renting privately spend 41% of their income on housing. For those in the social rented sector the figure is 30%, and for owner-occupiers it is 19%.
We also know that renting privately can mean insecurity—the point made yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. How can parents of children starting school this September, for example, feel confident about a stable future family life when, with 12-month tenancies being the norm—that is a fact—they do not know for sure whether they will still be in their family home a year from now? Landlords can tell their tenants, “Of course I will renew your tenancy, but I want to increase the rent by 10%.” How can a family plan their future finances, and have a sense of future stability, when there is that degree of uncertainty about both their tenancy and their rent?
We also know that very frequent turnover in properties is not very good for landlords, because properties lie empty and they lose out on rent during that period. It is not very good for tenants, as I have just explained. The one group of people it is good for, of course, is the letting agents, who can charge fees every time there is turnover, both to landlords and tenants. I think that the House will agree that the industry has been poorly regulated. Parts of it have developed some very bad habits, including charging hidden fees for having pets and dealing with inventories and references, all of which are on top of the large amounts of money that people have to find for rent in advance and for a deposit. Many people have to borrow to meet that bill in order to get a home, which is why we would stop lettings agents from charging fees to tenants—as is now the case in Scotland. After all, when we buy a house, it is the seller who pays the estate agent, and not the buyer; that is the parallel. I welcome what the Government propose to do in relation to transparency, but it does not tackle the root of the problem.
To be fair to Ministers for a moment—[Interruption.] I shall be fair; I am always fair. They claim to get the problem of insecurity and uncertainty in the private rented sector judging by the “Better tenancies for families in rental homes” document. It talks about longer tenancies to enable greater stability and rent review clauses that are index- linked to inflation, and yet when we recently announced that we would give greater security by offering three-year tenancies as the norm and peace of mind that any subsequent rent increases would not be excessive, what happened? The former Housing Minister, and now the Chairman of the Conservative party, instantly denounced them as Venezuelan-style rent control.
Then somebody in No. 10 Downing street suddenly thought, “Hang on a minute, didn’t we say something vaguely positive about this in that CLG document?” Lo and behold, the Prime Minister came to the Dispatch Box and said that he was in favour of longer-term tenancies. So, Venezuela, having hoved into view, then disappeared off the scene, but the Prime Minister denounced the idea of rent control.
Then something very curious happened. The hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who is a Minister in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, went on the “Daily Politics” show, and said
“on the rents issue, we put forward that policy at our conference last year.”
We have three different Members of the Government and three different positions, at least two of which fully support our policy. I say to the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), if he is still in his place, what is really a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma is tenants wondering what the Government really think on this question of greater security for tenants. The only possible explanation, in the absence of any legislation in the Queen’s Speech to give people that security and greater certainty about rent increases in years two or three of what we have proposed in the three-year tenancies, is that the Government are willing to concede the point, but are unwilling to lift a single legislative finger to give tenants that greater security and peace of mind.
The only conclusion I can draw is that the Government are ideologically averse to the state using its power on behalf of those for whom markets do not work, and it is exactly the same issue in relation to the energy market. I simply say that it is not much use to all those tenants who find themselves in that position. It is the difference between us and the Government. We will give tenants greater security as of right, and the Government will not.
On building the homes that we need, I welcome the proposal in the Gracious Speech for an urban development corporation to support the building of the Ebbsfleet garden city. However, I say to the Secretary of State that the statement from his Planning Minister, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), that he would not require a particular level of affordable housing in Ebbsfleet—he said that in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) in the House recently—is frankly astonishing. Are Ministers saying that in all the garden cities that all of us from all parts of the House want to see built, there will be no requirement for affordable housing? What will that do to the housing benefit bill given that there has been a staggering 60% increase in the number of working people claiming housing benefit since the coalition took office? As my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said, we are talking about 400,000 more people. If that does not reinforce the point that was made yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that for many people in this country work does not seem to pay or reward them, then what does?
My hon. Friends the Members for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) and for Brent North all spoke eloquently in their own way about the effects of insecurity and low pay on people’s sense that they lack liberty and equality, and on how as a result they do not feel a sense of fraternity in our society.
We want to see the details of the housing and planning measures announced in the Gracious Speech, but after four years of announcements and headlines, the truth is that the Government’s record is not much to shout about. Four years in, the number of homes completed has been lower in every single year that the Secretary of State has occupied his post than it was in any of the 13 years of the previous Labour Government. We built more homes than the coalition. The number of social homes completed last year was the lowest for at least 20 years—the Government’s own figures. That is not surprising. Why? The first act of the Secretary of State on housing was to say, “I have a good idea. Let’s cut the capital budget for affordable housing by 60%”—surprise, surprise, the lowest figure for at least 20 years.
Far from having the “self-build revolution” promised by the then Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps)—he said that the Government would double the size of the sector—the number of self-built homes is at its lowest level for 30 years. For people who want to get a foot on the housing ladder, it now takes a lot longer to save for a deposit, but even when they get to that point, they find that house prices are now rising nationally at 8% a year and in London at 17% a year. No wonder that the Governor of the Bank of England recently said that Britain’s housing market has deep structural problems and that the failure to build enough homes and rising house prices are the biggest risks to financial stability.
As I have said before from the Dispatch Box to the Secretary of State, we support help for people to realise their dream of home ownership, especially first-time buyers. But, if the Government simply increase housing demand without increasing housing supply, which they have not, all that happens—and indeed it is happening—is that prices continue to rise out of the reach of people who want to get their foot on the ladder. That is what is missing from the Queen’s Speech—a recognition of the structural problems in the land market and the house building market.
Much of the focus has been on planning, and there is more to come, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) pointed out, there is planning permission for 20,000 homes in her borough, but I think she said that fewer than 1,000 of them—
Hilary Benn
Only 500 of those homes have been built. The problem is not the planning permission, because more than 19,000 houses with planning permission are waiting to be built; they are simply not being built. What is the structural problem? In part, it is because 30 or 40 years ago two thirds of houses in this country were built by small and medium-sized builders, but by 2012 that figure had fallen to a third. That is a profound change in the structure of the house building market. As the number of small builders has declined and as the big firms have grown even bigger, it has become easier for the dominant firms to buy up land. As Kate Barker found in her report 10 years ago—many Members know that this is true—it is not always in the interests of those big builders to build out the sites on which they have got planning permission as quickly as possible or as quickly as the nation needs.
The truth is that to get the number of houses we require to be built, there has to be a change in how the housing market works—something that Ministers have simply failed to acknowledge. We have to get more firms into house building to build homes and to provide competition, because the high cost of housing is driven by the high cost of land. That is why, compared with the rest of Europe, we have really expensive homes with really small rooms in this country. Not enough land has been released for housing development and, by the time land is given planning permission, it is often prohibitively expensive. That creates an incentive to bank land rather than to build on it.
Those who argue that land banking is not a problem forget what the Office of Fair Trading found in 2008. It said that strategic land banks bought with options, which accounted for 83% of land banks, were worth 14.3 years of production, and that that would be enough to build 1.4 million homes, which would be a welcome addition. What is more, under the current system there is very little that local authorities can do about land banking. Compulsory purchase order powers are little used because they are complex, legalistic, difficult and so on, so authorities, on behalf of the communities that they represent, have no effective way of bringing land forward to the market. That is why we would create greater transparency by ensuring that developers register the land they own and have options on—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State is chuntering, but he is in favour of transparency, so will he support that measure?
We want to give councils and communities the power to charge developers escalating fees for sitting on land with planning permission to incentivise them to build and, if they do not, to release the land. The Secretary of State has denounced the idea, but of course it was supported by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford before he was given the job of Planning Minister. As a last resort, we would give local authorities the power compulsorily to purchase land and to assemble land so that we could make progress. The purpose of all those measures is to address the imbalance of power between local communities and developers. I say to Ministers that the land market and the housing market are not working and that is why there is this fundamental problem. There is not enough competition and I do not understand why a Government that includes a party that prides itself on being an apostle for competition is doing nothing about that.
My final point is about how we can get consent and get the houses built in the right place. I congratulate the local authority of the hon. Member for Fareham on the leadership it has shown—he outlined that for the House this afternoon—in recognising that there is a need for more housing and saying where it would like it to go. That is the essence of the deal. We have a much better chance of getting communities to come forward and take responsibility for meeting housing need in their area if they think that the sites they identify are where the housing will go. As we have heard in debates in this House on many occasions over the past two or three years—this is the reason the Planning Minister sometimes gets a tough time—it does not work like that. Developers say that the land is brownfield and too expensive, that they cannot build a lot there and that they want to go for a greenfield site. That has to change.
The fundamental problem with the Gracious Speech is that it does not get why so many people voted the way they did or did not vote at all on 22 May. It does not get the costs and insecurity that many people have to live with, whether they are caused by zero-hours contracts, the bedroom tax, high energy bills, insecure tenancies, unaffordable house prices or having to go to a complete stranger and say, “Can you help me because I can’t feed my family this weekend?” That is the truth. The Government are unwilling to use the power of this House to help people in those circumstances. In the end, the public will judge, but if we want to restore faith in democracy we must use our democracy to help people who find themselves in that position.
Tributes to Tony Benn
Hilary Benn Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
First of all, may I say on behalf of my sister Melissa and my brothers Stephen and Joshua and the whole family just how much the words we have heard today mean to us?
I do not propose to add to what has already been said, and indeed written, about my father’s political legacy—apart from anything else, everyone already seems to have their own opinion, as today’s debate has demonstrated—but I do want to say a few words about what Parliament meant to him, because it was the centre of his very long life. He won 16 elections, proudly representing first Bristol South-East and then Chesterfield. Fifteen of those elections enabled him to walk through those doors and take his place in this Chamber. One of them—the by-election he fought after the death of his father—did not. He was barred from entry to the Chamber on the instructions of the Speaker because, it was alleged, his blood was blue. His blood was never blue; it was the deepest red throughout his life.
That moment taught him that the right of people to choose who will represent them here in this place—the very foundation of our democracy—was never, ever granted by those in power. It had to be fought for. That is why democracy is so precious.
His fight to stay in the Commons had, I think, a marked and profound effect on his life. It was why he was so determined to support others in their struggles: to bring an end to apartheid and the death penalty; in support of the miners, as we have heard; and to campaign for peace, because it was war that had taken from him his beloved elder brother Michael.
It was also why he was so determined to commemorate in Parliament the history of those struggles because, as he would often say, all change comes from below. That is why, as we have heard from many Members today, he went down into the Crypt with his screwdriver and put up that plaque in the broom cupboard. He wanted to teach us: why did that brave suffragette spend the night in the broom cupboard in 1911? The answer is because it was census night. What do you do in a census? You fill in a form, and she wanted to write: “Name: Emily Wilding Davison. Address: Houses of Parliament.” Why? Because she believed that a woman’s place was in the House—the House of Commons.
He was very fond of challenging those in authority, assisted by “Erskine May”. He once even moved a motion of no confidence in the Speaker. But he also had a great sense of fun. On one occasion, he was part of a group of Labour MPs who had decided to delay a Division in the Lobby because they wanted to make trouble for the Government. The Serjeant at Arms was dispatched in order to investigate and told them that if they did not move he would have to take their names. My father looked at him and, as his diary records, said, “But that would be completely contrary to Mr Speaker’s ruling of 1622.” After the Serjeant at Arms had departed from the fray, Dad turned to his fellow conspirators and, with that mischievous twinkle in his eye, admitted that he had just made that all up but it seemed to have done the trick.
He loved this place, the people who built it and those who help us in our work. He loved the debate and the argument. But he did not idealise Parliament. He saw it as the means to an end: to be a voice for the movements outside these walls that seek to change the world for the better, as well as being a voice for the people who send us here and whom we all have the privilege to represent.
That was the essence of his character. Yes, it was shaped, as we have heard, by events and experiences but also, as for many of us, by his childhood. He was, at heart, not just a socialist; he was a non-conformist dissenter. His mother taught him to believe in the prophets rather than the kings, and his father would recite these words from the Salvation Army hymn, which I think best explain what he sought to do in Parliament:
“Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone,
Dare to have a purpose firm,
Dare to make it known.”
If we are not here to do that, what are we here for? Well, he was. He knew what he thought. He was not afraid to say it. He showed constancy and courage in the face of adversity. Whatever the scribes and the Pharisees may have to say about his life, it is from the words and kindnesses of those whose lives he touched that we—those who loved him most—take the greatest strength.
After all, any life that inspires and encourages so many others is a life that was well lived. [Applause.]
Tributes to Nelson Mandela
Hilary Benn Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
There are rare moments in life when the death of one person brings the world together and touches many hearts, and the passing of Nelson Mandela is such a moment. In truth, the words we reach for to try and describe his achievements seem not to match the scale of the task or do justice to what he achieved, the feelings we hold for him and the memories we have of both.
In Leeds, we have our memory of that day in April 2001 when he came to our city to receive its freedom—the highest honour we were able to bestow. We cheered his arrival in a packed Millennium square as he climbed the stage and, in his characteristic way, paused to greet every person who was on it, including the children who had been singing: everyone mattered and everyone was included. He then addressed us, and he began with these immortal words: “It is wonderful to be here in Liverpool.” There are other occasions on which uttering those words in Leeds could get you into some difficulty, but did we care? No, we did not: we cheered him all the more, because it was a privilege to be there in that throng to see a man who had made history.
Whether in public or in private, Nelson Mandela was that same man: he was calm, he was dignified, he was resolute, he was unfailingly courteous. It is no wonder that he was an inspiration to so many people, because, with grace, he showed that belief makes everything possible.
However, as we have heard today, it did not always seem so, and so as we remember one man’s extraordinary life, each of us recalls—including in the contributions we have heard, many of them extremely moving—how our lives were intertwined with his. Although the House speaks with one voice today, it was not always so. As we have heard from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, those who marched to Trafalgar square or stood on the pavement outside South Africa house were not treated as heroes—indeed, some regarded us, them and him as dangerous extremists. My right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) gave us a reminder by reading out those petty, demeaning rules on how much food the prisoners on Robben Island could get. When I visited and saw those things written on the signs, my jaw dropped, because there was represented a perpetuation of racist difference instead of what Mandela stood for, which was to embrace our common humanity. It is therefore right that we should pay tribute to all those people, including those still in this House, who showed such courage to stand up for him, for his ideals and for the ANC at a time when it was neither fashionable nor popular to do so.
Mandela’s passing also reminds us that many of the great changes we have now come to take for granted—and, oh, don’t we take them for granted—came not through the consensus we have heard expressed here today, but in and through struggle and through politics. My right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) was absolutely right to make the point about the power of politics to utterly transform our world and people’s lives.
Out of all the words that have been used to describe Nelson Mandela two stand out for me: magnanimity and reconciliation. After those long years of imprisonment, he showed magnanimity at the very moment when he had forced the apartheid regime to grant him his freedom by refusing to yield, and he preached reconciliation. Why? It was because he knew it was the only way he could achieve his vision of a non-racist and democratic South Africa—it was his leadership that made that possible.
I simply say that one of the best ways in which we can honour Mandela’s memory is to let his example stand—the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) made this point—as a lesson to the leaders in other conflicts in the world today, because, like Nelson Mandela, they face two simple choices. The easy path is to remain a victim. The more courageous path is to say to those they lead and to the world, “This is what we must now do in the interests of peace.” Nelson Mandela once said:
“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love.”
May he be granted in death the peace for which he campaigned so hard in life.
Review of Parliamentary Standards Act 2009
Hilary Benn Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I welcome the opportunity that the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) has given us—I, like others, think he made a very thoughtful speech—to assess what progress has been made in addressing the concerns that were last debated here in December.
Like the hon. Gentleman, I strongly support an independent and a transparent system, because publication is the best safeguard and there can be no going back on that at all. I know that that view is shared across the House, but I do share the feeling of Members that, despite the outcome of the recent review and the progress that we have made, which I want to touch on, dealing with IPSA takes up far too much time. Time, whether of Members or our staff, has an opportunity cost, and that means we have less time to do our job.
First, we ought to recognise that setting up IPSA was a very big task. Parliament asked for it to be done in a very short space of time, and Professor Sir Ian Kennedy and his senior colleagues, who have been unfailingly generous in the time they have given to listen to us, himself acknowledges that IPSA did not get everything right. I agree with the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who said that IPSA staff continue to be unfailingly courteous and as helpful as they possibly can be in trying to assist us, but the concerns that bring us back here today are not about them but the system itself.
I said in December that if we asked Members, “Is IPSA helping you to do your job?”, we would find that the answer was overwhelmingly no. That was certainly reflected in the survey of parliamentary Labour party members that we undertook in submitting evidence to the review, and frankly that ought to be the test. We should not be spending any more time than is necessary on discussing the matter, particularly when it ought to be a relatively simple task.
The issue is about making sure that we as Members have the means that we need to do the job. “Expenses” is a terrible misnomer, because it is about the means to do the job. They include staff, loyal and incredibly hard-working, who support us in our work and without whom we could not manage; an office; paying the telephone, electricity and stationery bills; the travel costs between Westminster and our constituencies; and, as the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) rightly said, the cost of having to live and to work in two places, which is in the nature of the job of being a Member of Parliament.
On the review, we should acknowledge the progress that was made on, for example, support for MPs with family responsibilities—in relation both to travel and to accommodation; a start-up budget for new MPs, learning from the experience that our new colleagues faced a year ago; the definition of London; and the merging of the budgets for constituency office rental and for general office costs.
There has been an increase in the staffing budget, although it still does not take account of the costs of the pension contribution that was passed on to MPs’ budgets a year ago, or of the additional work load that dealing with IPSA places on Members and on their staff. That situation will leave a number of MPs having to go back to the contingency fund again this year in order to continue to employ the staff they already have and need, and that really does strike me as unsatisfactory.
There is now greater use of the payment card, but that is not an unalloyed blessing: it is still not available for all costs—as I understand it, it can be used for business rates but not for office rent, and for stationery but not for photocopiers; and reconciliation is still far too time-consuming. I can say from personal experience that accounting for train travel takes much longer than under the old system, when I have to take account of finding the tickets, going on to the IPSA website, typing in destinations repeatedly, copying everything and then posting off the form having made the details available online.
What would really help and, I think, deal with a lot of frustration is either if more details could be obtained from the credit card company to satisfy IPSA, if IPSA could just agree with the House of Commons travel office that buying a ticket through the office would provide the assurance that it was we who bought it, and that it was a ticket between Westminster and our constituency or back. I use that as an example, because it should be a relatively simple thing to do, and I think it would take away a lot of the frustration that has been expressed in today’s debate and before.
The second issue I wish to raise is about what is allowed and what will be approved, because IPSA has realised sensibly that there is a balance to be struck in relation to increasingly prescriptive rules. IPSA has come face to face with the way in which we do our job, with Members saying, “What if? This is what I do. Is it okay?”, and it has thought about the issue and realised sensibly that we can either have an increasingly long rule book, with an increasingly lengthy “frequently asked questions” page on the website, or let Members exercise their judgment, in the context of the rules as they are laid down and subject to the sunlight of publication.
The review has moved more in the direction of the latter, but may I offer some advice to the Committee that we are going to establish on the work that it is going do? There is still a process in-between through which a Member may choose to exercise their discretion and IPSA may second-guess that when deciding whether to approve a claim. We are betwixt and between a more sensible approach.
Thirdly, we have heard today about how Members feel the system treats them in individual cases and on case work, and I hope that the review will dig into the detail and draw on the experience of the liaison committee, so that the issues which the hon. Member for Gainsborough raised might be looked at.
Fourthly, there is the question of value for money, something that the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is looking at. Indeed, as Members will know, the National Audit Office is carrying out a value-for-money review.
Finally, I say to the hon. Member for Windsor that I welcome the transformation in the motion before us from that which was on the Order Paper yesterday. If we have learned one lesson, it is that legislating in haste on this matter can create difficulties.
I support the motion because it seems to be a very sensible way forward. We should take the opportunity to review the effectiveness of the system that Parliament established, and we should assess progress as well as identifying what more needs to be done. I, for one, look forward to the result of the Committee’s work.
Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority
Hilary Benn Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I welcome the opportunity provided by the Backbench Business Committee to debate the operation of IPSA, courtesy of the effort shown by the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie). I do not propose to rehearse how we got here, as other hon. Members have done so, except to say that parts of the previous system did not bear close examination, nor did they command public support when they were unveiled to public view. The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) summed it up well when he said that things went badly wrong.
Things had to change, and the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 was the means by which the system was changed. As the House has learned, transparency was the best way of dealing with the problems of the past and is the best way of doing things. Members know that all the expenditure that they incur will be seen and scrutinised by the public. When the public, our voters, see the cost of the phone calls, the office rent, the stationery, the train travel and the accommodation, which is published today by IPSA, they too will realise that this is about nothing more and nothing less than the tools that MPs need to do their job.
The first point that I want to make is that in debating changes to the system as a prelude to the review that IPSA is undertaking—changes that are definitely needed—we must preserve the principle of transparency, a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and many others, and we must uphold the principle of independent oversight. I gently say to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) that nobody wants to overturn that, and nor should we.
Mr Jenkin
Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the fact that IPSA has said it is not going to publish invoices and evidence of payment? Does he agree that it is slightly illogical to have a system based on transparency and evidence of payment if we do not then publish the evidence of payment, and that that recalls how we got into this mess in the first place?
Hilary Benn
I would make two points. First, an independent body is now looking at those receipts and making a judgment about whether they come within the purview of the rules, which is very different from what happened before. Secondly, there is a balance to be struck between the cost of publishing receipts—it would be very expensive—and total transparency. Since one of the themes of our debate has been the cost of IPSA as a whole, in offering a view, the House will, in the end, have to say to IPSA, “How do we wish to balance that?”
Mr Bacon
The right hon. Gentleman says there is a balance to be struck between cost and transparency, but in fact the reverse could be the case: total transparency through the right kind of card payment-based, web-based instant publishing system could be cheaper as well as more transparent.
Hilary Benn
I think there is a lot in what the hon. Gentleman says. This debate has produced many ideas and suggestions, and I hope IPSA will take them on board in deciding how the system might be changed.
We must also take into account that setting up IPSA was a very big task. We all acknowledge that there were bound to be teething problems, and hon. Members should recognise that a lot of hard work in a very short space of time has gone into establishing the organisation. I, for one, would simply want to say that in my experience all the IPSA staff I have met—I have visited the offices—and all the IPSA staff to whom I have spoken on the phone have been unfailingly helpful in trying to assist. The problem that brings us here today is clearly not the staff; it is the system itself—how it was designed and the ways in which it does not work.
If we ask Members, “Do you think IPSA is helping you to do your job,” which ought to be the real test, the clear answer we get—we have heard it today—is, “No, it is not.” It also seems that Members are not entirely sure that IPSA fully understands the work we do as Members of Parliament.
Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)
Members such as the saintly hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) have allowed the impression to be put about that expenses are, somehow, some sort of perk. In fact they are what we need in order to do our job. Before I entered the House, I worked for months, or years, with “Newsnight”, “World in Action”, “Panorama”, The Sunday Times and ITN, and what amazed me on arriving here was how many things that I needed to do my job had to be paid for from my own pocket, which was never the case when I worked in the media. I cannot think of any organisation that regularly expects one subset of its members to spend seven or eight hours at home every night on this issue. It is extraordinary.
Hilary Benn
The salaries of the staff who support us in our work are not by any reasonable definition an expense. In fairness to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, I do not think he was making that argument; that is an interpretation that others have sought to put on what has been said.
A number of issues have been identified both in this afternoon’s debate and elsewhere. The first is the expense of the whole system because of its complexity, the multiple checking, and the transaction cost to IPSA and Members of Parliament in trying to make it work. The second is the sheer amount of time it takes, in part because compared with the old system a lot of the inputting of data has been outsourced to Members of Parliament and their staff. The time taken in collecting, checking, clarifying, going online, copying and posting and so forth means MPs and their staff are spending too much time doing accounts, rather than holding the Government of the day—of whatever party—to account, which is what we are elected to this House to do. We know that some MPs do not claim back legitimate expenses because they are afraid of getting it wrong or because of the time it will take. Some also say they get contradictory advice, in that a claim might be accepted one week but not the next.
The third problem was the assumption at the beginning—we must all acknowledge that this is changing—that all MPs had a bottomless private pocket out of which they could pay bills before claiming the money back. They do not. Some people are still owed money, others have been overdrawn, and we should recognise that the situation is particularly difficult for new Members, who have additional costs because they are establishing offices for the first time.
Every one of us dislikes intensely the fact that the money is forced to go through our personal bank accounts. It should not, and that is another reason why the system has to change. The point has been made forcefully that we know of no other workplace where one would tell an employee—although we are not employees—to pay the rent or the photocopier bill out of their own resources, and then pay them back. That is why direct payment has to be the way forward.
The fourth problem is that the budgets set do not reflect in all cases the commitments that MPs already have, the work loads in their offices or the higher cost of renting offices in some parts of the country, some cities and some towns. One practical and simple step to help MPs would be to allow virement between the staffing, office rent and office costs budgets, because that would allow Members to make that judgment. The overall budget level needs to be looked at, because adding the 10% pension contribution has created a real problem. The argument was, “We have taken some other expenses out,” but I do not know many Members who claim them.
MPs who have been worried that they cannot meet their commitments to staff—the number of hours and so on—have been told that they can approach the contingencies fund. I hope that IPSA will in all cases, therefore, meet those costs out of contingencies, because that problem needs to be addressed.
We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) about the difficulties of trying to obtain paternity leave, and I know of problems with maternity leave, too. I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) said about consulting staff and the unions. We should recognise the enormous contribution that our staff make in supporting us and in doing a job on behalf of our constituents.
Fifthly, we have heard about the impact on family life. The fundamental truth is that MPs have to live and work in two separate places, and we should not make it difficult for MPs, their partners or their children to do so. On the problem that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) raised, the current rules are utterly inconsistent, because they only partly acknowledge family life, paying for some things but not others.
Sixthly, there are the problems that arise because of the definition of London. We have already heard some of those cases, including the commuting distance at unsocial hours because of the unpredictability of House business. That needs looking at.
There is also the problem of what is known as extended travel, including by Opposition Front Benchers, which is an issue for us now, given the outcome of the election. The Opposition get Short money to help meet the costs of research and support, as the current majority governing party got over the previous 13 years. In addition, the Fees Office used to pay extended travel for Opposition Front Benchers and others, but when IPSA arrived it said, “No, we’re not going to pay that any more.” That prevents Opposition Front Benchers from doing their job, travelling the country to talk to people, listen and bring that experience and voice back to the House.
Another point, which affects all hon. Members, is that if we look at the IPSA rules on extended travel, we get the impression that it sees us only as constituency MPs. That is incredibly important, because we are also parliamentarians, and, if a matter in which we have an interest comes before the House, the ability to travel to gain knowledge and understanding—to listen, which is what we need to do as Members—is important. It is important that IPSA changes that interpretation. I have written to the chief executive to make that point.
I shall make three other points in conclusion. First, one difficulty we are grappling with is that each MP is different, a point that has been forcefully made. The way in which we work is different, and a system that does not reflect that is a system that is not working. Secondly, all that has an impact on people who have become MPs or might be thinking of doing so, a point that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) made more eloquently than I can.
A battle was fought—the Osborne judgment has been referred to—and winning that £400 a year payment was a big step forward, so we should not go backwards now. We should remember that 19 years earlier Keir Hardie arrived in the House. As hon. Members will know, when he was spied and people looked at his clothes, they said, “Are you working on the roof?”, and he replied, “No, I’m working on the Floor.” We must not go back to the time when how much money we had determined whether we could undertake this job.
Thirdly, to be perfectly honest, I wish that we did not have to spend time debating what should be straightforward in any job, which is having the means to do the job. The fact that we are tells us that there is a problem that needs to be sorted out. That is why the review that IPSA is undertaking is an opportunity, just as this debate has been an opportunity for hon. Members to send a clear message.
I end by welcoming the fact that the chief executive, Andrew McDonald, has shown a willingness to engage in discussion about how things can change. I am confident that we can get change, but it needs to be the right change and it needs to happen soon.