House of Lords: Allowances

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy for what the noble Lord, Lord Methuen, has said in his amendment, but I wish to address the question of the all-party parliamentary groups, of which I am a great supporter. The country groups—I do not exclude the others but my experience is with the country groups and I declare an interest as an officer of three of them—are great added value for your Lordships' House because they bring us into contact with the Parliaments and Governments of other countries.

However, there seems to be a problem which may be an inconsistency. Perhaps the noble Lord could clear it up. Under “Type of business” in Annex A, it says that the daily allowance would be available for,

“Committee Visits and official business

Members of parliamentary delegations

Travel as a Representative of the House

Lords outreach programme”.

But paragraph 21 says:

“There are three categories of such business as follows”,

for parliamentary business away from Westminster.

Paragraph 21(b) refers to,

“travel in connection with certain authorised business, such as CPA and IPU business”.

Unless that covers the activities of the all-party groups, we have a problem. Will the Leader of the House tell us whether the phrase,

“such as CPA and IPU business”,

would cover all-party groups because so many of them are in relation to the IPU? We need to know that. A lot of Peers would like to go on some of these all-party group visits but are somewhat deterred by the fact that when they are away they are deprived of some of the allowances to which they feel that they are entitled.

[Lord Sewel]

My Lords, a centrepiece of the proposals, which perhaps causes some of us great difficulty, is the abolition of the separate overnight allowance and its wrapping up in a uniform fee of £300 for all Peers. Before I speak on that, I want to speak briefly about the matter of the £150 dealing with committee visits and delegations. For some years now I have been a member of and have chaired various sub-committees and committees of your Lordships' House. I have found an understandable reluctance among some Peers to travel away from Westminster on specific days when the House is sitting. My fear is that the proposals before us today will increase that reluctance. Can we have an assurance from the Leader of the House that if it is evident that it is becoming more difficult for Peers to go on delegations and, for example, committee visits to Brussels on a day basis, that that will be looked at fairly quickly? We get enormous value out of short visits to see the Commission and other European institutions, so it would be a sad thing if those were to attenuate over time.

Let me return to the main issue. On 28 June the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, in referring to the advantages of the £300 uniform fee, said:

“How much Peers spend on each item would be entirely up to them”.

Yes, but that is not the entire story. He also said in summing up that one of the major advantages would be that:

“This will mean a reduction in the amount that some Peers have claimed in the past”.—[Official Report, 28/6/10; cols. 1512-13.]

Again, yes, but that is not the whole story. First, how much real choice do Peers have on how they spend the daily allowance? There is actually not much choice at all if you live a significant distance from London. If you live 300, 400, 500 or 600 miles from London—I should declare an interest as I live in Aberdeenshire, which is just over 500 miles away from Westminster—and come down on a Monday, you are here for the rest of the week. You cannot go backwards and forwards, so you have to have accommodation for an entire week.

I do not think that Peers should be expected to live out of a suitcase. It is quite reasonable that they should be able to rent or obtain a modest one-bedroom flat. The going rent for that, on checking with estate agents and The House magazine, is somewhere in the region of £350 a week, which is £18,200 over a year, plus council tax and utilities. That is approximately £20,000 a year that someone needs to pay out in order to maintain a presence in London, which is an absolute requirement to attend your Lordships’ House. It is not a matter of choice; it is an imperative and a requirement.

Under the proposals, a payment of £300 over 145 sitting days—over a five-year Parliament there are actually fewer than 145 sitting days, but we shall take that figure for the moment—produces support of £43,500 a year. Those living a significant distance from London are locked into a system where almost 50 per cent of their total possible support will be taken up by the housing costs that are a pre-requisite of attending your Lordships’ House. That is not something which is faced by those whose primary residence is in London.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said that some will lose. Yes, that is absolutely true, and we pray in aid austerity to defend it, which is reasonable. We ought to be prepared to make sacrifices in a situation where our fellow citizens are making sacrifices. So let us look at the 24-hour rate. The claimable amount for those whose principal residence is outside London will go down from £335 to £300 a day, which on a weekly basis is a small reduction of £140 a week. For those whose principal residence is in London, it is a move from £161 a day to £300 a day. That does not seem to be a contribution to austerity. How is that figure squared?

I recognise that there were two problems with the overnight allowance: some people did not tell the truth; and some people were confused because we had never defined what was a principal residence. We went through the pain of establishing a robust, common-sense and sensible definition of what is a principal residence. That is now followed-up by a paper trail by which you can clearly demonstrate that your principal residence is outside London. Why do we not use the robust system that we have introduced?

As the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, said, equity does not mean that you treat everyone the same but that you recognise the differences that people have to face in order to perform the same task. That is the essence of the problem. I accept that what is proposed has been brought forward in all honesty, that it is not perfect but deals with a number of problems, that everyone is treated the same and superficially it looks fair and simple and provides rough justice. My problem is that it has within its heart the possibility for great injustice, and that has not been addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara)]

My Lords, before the Leader of the House concludes today’s debate, I wonder whether the House might feel that it is time now for me, on behalf of the House Committee, to attempt to address those points which noble Lords have addressed to the committee’s report rather than to the Leader’s two resolutions. I shall attempt to deal first with the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Methuen. As the noble Lord described, that amendment would extend the £150 allowance for certain types of mandated business in the second category in Annex A of the report while away from Westminster on the days when the House is not sitting.

The House Committee took the clear view that now was not the right time to expand or uprate the entitlements on business away from Westminster. Therefore the range of entitlements is exactly the same as at present. For the types of business in category B, I point out that up until a few years ago, when they were reviewed by the House Committee, there was nothing paid at all. Category B was then included; it includes such things as CPA and IPU business. Members are currently reimbursed the relevant categories of expenses only in respect of days when the House is sitting. This sort of activity has been quite clearly distinguished from travel as an official representative of the House or a committee where Members are acting on our behalf. The noble Lord is asking for the current policy to be expanded, and on the grounds of cost and principle the committee does not support such an expansion at this stage. I emphasise that these categories and rates were reviewed relatively recently by the House Committee and that they will probably be reviewed again in due course.

The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, made an interesting point about all-party groups—particularly on all-party country groups. Those have never been included in any category for allowances. It could be limitless if we were to include that sort of thing and, as I have said, we felt that this was not the right time to expand the entitlements and that we should try to keep them the same.

[Lord Grenfell]

The noble Lord says that this could become limitless, but I am not sure that that is really a fair argument. The question is whether, when Members of this House visit another capital on an exchange visit to other parliaments, the effect of that is the same as if they were going there representing the House. I am not quite sure why the noble Lord feels that this might be a limitless affair. It should be treated the same as when one is going to represent the House of Lords.

[Lord Brabazon of Tara]

If the noble Lord travels as a representative of the House of Lords, he would be able to claim an allowance under the first category in the table, so that is already provided for.

The noble Lord, Lord Sewel, was worried that members of Select Committees might be less willing to travel on committee visits at the rate of £150. I cannot remember exactly what the rate is now, but it is not the full daily rate. It is a reduced rate and is not far different from £150. The new scheme is intended to provide adequate support for Members to contribute to their activities, but if we find that there is a problem with Members being inhibited from travelling on committee visits, we will have to review the system—we are keeping it under review, as I have said. However, it is not the proposal to do so at the moment. In passing, I point out to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, that the cost of his telephone call to his wife on an overseas visit could be taken from his daily subsistence allowance, which he would receive. I turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, which would, evidently, reimburse Members for first-class travel regardless of cost. The noble Baroness referred to the Wakeham group’s report and the difference between the SSRB’s recommendations and those of IPSA. The Wakeham group considered the merits of both sides of the proposals on train travel. It was prepared to accept the SSRB’s recommendations but noted the difficulty of verifying whether a Member was working. Noble Lords will recall the arguments about whether one was going to be working on the train and therefore whether one should travel first or second class. The group expressed a preference for the IPSA proposal, which rightly emphasised value for money over class of travel, and the House Committee agreed.

House of Lords Reform

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord the Leader of the House for introducing this debate. I have to confess that I am somewhat irritated by the fact that we are invited to take note of the case for reform of the House of Lords, as though that were on the coalition’s agenda. It is not. What is on the agenda is the abolition of the House and its replacement with something entirely different. That is quite an innovation but, as Edmund Burke taught us, innovation is not reform.

Of course there is a case for introducing reforms, particularly those that would reduce the size of the House, improve its structures and procedures, and set in place a statutory appointments commission. We have been discussing such reforms for some time now, many of them in the context of the House of Lords Reform Bill, for which there was wide support, and it is on those that the Government should now be focusing.

However, we have got nowhere because the posture of the previous Government, and now, alas, of this Government, has been founded on what I would call a grand illusion. That illusion is that you can invest this House with the legitimacy that we are told it lacks with reforms that do not upset the balance of power between the two Houses. My Lords, you cannot. This Government and the previous Government are and were hell-bent on creating a wholly or predominantly elected Senate whose powers would be neither more nor less than those enjoyed by the House of Lords today. They may succeed in drafting a Bill with that as their objective but they know that in practice it will be shown to fly in the face of all logic. Alas, they seem to be ideologically blinded to reality.

The abolitionists speak airily of “transition” to an elected Chamber, as though it will involve little of more consequence than a rechoreographing of the State Opening and a rewriting of the Companion to the Standing Orders. However, in effect, they will be provoking a constitutional upheaval of colossal import. To paint it as otherwise is, to put it politely, disingenuous and, less politely, pitifully naïve.

What would this hugely costly new creation be asked to do? If it is asked to do what the existing House does, but better and more democratically— whatever that means—I cannot believe that it will succeed. It will fail because it will become, in the splendid description offered by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian,

“a wrinkled second division replica of the Commons”.

What room will that give for the application of expertise and independence of thought, which are the hallmarks of the work of this House? One has to ask: in exchange for giving up most, if not all, of our capacity to scrutinise, advise and propose revisions to legislation to the high standards that we attain here, what on earth will we get in return, all in the name of greater legitimacy?

Those who claim that only a fully elected or predominantly elected upper Chamber will have the legitimacy to do what we do, fail to appreciate, or wilfully ignore the fact, that our true legitimacy lies in what this House achieves. I voted happily for the 1999 Lords reform Bill and I remain convinced that the House has since demonstrated that it can and does play a fundamentally important constitutional role. How? In simplest terms, the House of Lords seeks to meet the electorate’s requirement that the legislation promised by the party that wins office is fashioned to the highest possible standard, consistent with the will of the elected House, whose primacy we unquestionably acknowledge. With few powers to exercise, and rightly so, we Members of the Lords participate in the legislative process by drawing on our experience and applying our expertise to help to ensure that Parliament delivers to the people what it has the right to expect: high quality, implementable Acts of Parliament.

It has yet to be proven to me that the fact that we are an appointed House disqualifies us from performing that crucial democratic function. I am yet to be persuaded—I am confident I never will be—that an elected Senate, riven by party political interests and divisions and locked in a permanent power struggle with the other House, will perform that service to the people better, if at all.

My final point is that we all know the broad outlines of what will emerge from this exclusive, closed drafting committee. That is pre-ordained. In the mean time, Cross-Benchers and Back-Benchers must satisfy themselves by writing letters to it, presumably enclosing a stamped addressed envelope. After today, we shall have to wait for the pre-legislative scrutiny stage before we outsiders can make any real impact. Believe me, those of us who do not share the abolitionist ambitions of the coalition Government and of those likeminded on other Benches, including my own, will, I trust, continue to make their case forcefully, but not just within the confines of Parliament. The people must be made fully aware of what is being proposed in their name.

Properly informed, I believe that they would recognise that their right to high-standard law-making would be put at risk by an ideology-driven move to create an elected Senate, no matter what the unintended consequences. Is this what the people want? The Government may claim that they already have the mandate to reform this House because it was in each party's manifesto, but do the people know what the full constitutional consequence of that is for the structure of Parliament and the balance of power between the two Houses? Of course they do not. It has not been explained to them, and it should be. Then let them tell us what they think about that in a referendum, but, of course, they are not likely to get one. One referendum on AV will, doubtless, be considered enough. Besides, the coalition Government could well lose a referendum on a proposal to restructure Parliament in a way that alters the balance of power between the two Houses and puts at risk the quality of legislation, and they would richly deserve to lose it.