Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

May I add my disappointment, Mr Deputy Speaker, as another Welshman, over England’s bid and congratulate those who put it forward?

I congratulate the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie), whose speech was measured, informed and worthy of the best traditions of this House of Commons. It is appropriate that we discuss this matter, because it is six or seven months since the general election and since IPSA took over its duties. I am not the only one who thinks it appropriate; IPSA thinks so as well. It has embarked on its own review of how the system has worked over the past six months and how it can be improved. There is no doubt in my mind that no hon. Member thinks that we should go back to the old system or that there should not be an independent body to oversee the system. I agree with the independence of the body and that we should not go back to the discredited system of old.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

As a new Member, I think I am right in saying that one benefit of the old system was that when a newly elected Member took on staff who had previously worked for an MP, it counted as continuous employment. One of my caseworkers previously worked for the former Member of Parliament for Leicester West. He was recently denied statutory paternity pay, which I wanted to grant him because he had worked for the Member of Parliament for Leicester West for two years. He had not changed his job, but his employer had changed. Unfortunately, he was told that he was not eligible. Indeed, somebody in IPSA signed above my name as the employer to say that he was not entitled to statutory paternity pay. Continuous service is one element of the old system that would be of benefit.

[Paul Murphy]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I hope that her comments and those of all hon. Members who take part in the debate are noted seriously by IPSA. I am sure that it is watching proceedings and will read Hansard.

It is important for IPSA to understand what this debate is about. First, it is about ensuring that IPSA’s operation is cost-effective, because we have a duty as the House of Commons to the taxpayers of this country to ensure that it is cost-effective. Secondly, it is about ensuring that the body is working properly. Undoubtedly, there are areas in which it is not doing so. Thirdly, and most significantly to Members of Parliament, it is about ensuring that our constituents are receiving the best possible service from us.

The area of office costs illustrates my point well. My predecessor entered the House of Commons in 1958. I took over in 1987, until which point no Member of Parliament representing the old Pontypool seat had had a constituency office. That was not unusual. Constituency after constituency did not have an office occupied by the Member of Parliament. I have no doubt that if, almost 24 years on, I decided to close down the office, my constituents would disagree violently. People in every constituency expect their Member of Parliament to have a constituency base with a caseworker, where they can go to talk about their problems.

I agree with the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) that there is a considerable difference between an MP who uses the parliamentary estate as his or her main office and one whose main office is in the constituency. The biggest change that we should make is to disentangle office expenses from personal expenses, because an office expense is not a personal one. That matter is causing considerable difficulties for Members and I believe that IPSA is beginning to understand that. It is beginning to change its policy on that. For instance, as Members will know, office rent can now be paid directly by IPSA and we can use the travel or credit card that IPSA supplies to pay certain bills. I do not see for one second why that should not be taken even further. Personally, I do not want to handle any money at all to do with my constituency office, and I believe that my constituents would agree with that policy.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I have to disabuse my right hon. Friend of the idea that IPSA can handle treating personal expenses and office expenses differently. When I asked IPSA to reimburse my expenses for living in London to my personal account and to put my claims for my office into an office cost account, which I have run for the past 18 years, it said that it could not handle two bank accounts at the same time. It could pay all the money into my personal account or all of it into my office account, but it could not separate the payments. The system is terrible and not geared up to deal with the reality of an MP’s life.

[Paul Murphy]

The result, of course, is that the service that we provide our constituents becomes less and less effective. There is no reason in this wide world why the old system of ensuring that personal expenses are separate from office expenses should be taken over by IPSA. Its starting that process seems to me to underline the fact that it has accepted the principle that they are different.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the expenses scandal represented a deep crisis of trust writ large in our political establishment? The establishment of IPSA as an institution is rooted in that distrust and reflects it. As a new Member, I find myself approaching it with trepidation as if it were there to catch me out rather than help.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the system would be cheaper, better and more trust-nurturing if instead of monitoring every single claim, IPSA assumed that MPs were honest and just carried out occasional, random checks without warning, as is done across so many areas of public life? If anyone were found to be cheating, IPSA would punish them, rather than assuming that everybody was cheating and spending millions of pounds of public money on that basis.

[Paul Murphy]

The hon. Gentleman is right in the first instance. There is and was a great need for public trust in our expenses system, as that has obviously been lost in the past year or so. However, that is not in any way contradicted by the need to improve how IPSA works. It is so important that there should be transparency, accountability and proper checking on all the claims. Today’s newspaper revelations about what Members have claimed indicate that people are looking at the details online, and they can examine the hon. Gentleman’s details and mine any day of the week. So there is transparency—of course there is—but the problem comes if a system is so bureaucratic, costly and difficult to administer, and occasionally so unfair, that the people suffering are not necessarily the Members of Parliament, but those whom we represent. That is the basis of today’s debate.

[Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the IPSA issues that is not transparent is the cost that it places on Members’ staff time? There is no mechanism through which the staff time taken up filling in IPSA forms, dealing with IPSA, phoning IPSA, waiting on the phone for IPSA to answer and waiting for IPSA to ring us back is quantified at all. That is a grossly underestimated cost, which is totally untransparent.

[Paul Murphy]

That is a valid point, which many Members have raised in the debate. On days when we have to deal with IPSA issues, we tend to find ourselves spending much more time on those than on constituents’ problems or on preparing for debates in the Chamber of the House of Commons.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Recently, there was an application for a job in my office from a candidate who described herself as “IPSA literate”. The system is so arcane, irrational and impenetrable that to be IPSA literate is equivalent to having about two honours degrees. Many of us have taken the line that to impose the job of dealing with IPSA on an employee would be regarded by any tribunal as cruel and inhuman treatment. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that if a commercial organisation—an internet bank, for example—ran a system such as IPSA’s, it would now be out of business because its system was so client-unfriendly?

[Paul Murphy]

Yes, indeed—my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Given that some years ago the then Prime Minister appointed me as Minister for digital inclusion, I thought that I had some knowledge of how to use computers, but I was defeated in having to deal with these issues. Most Members have to deal with this problem with a highly trained member of staff. I am not surprised that my hon. Friend was looking for someone who had those particular qualifications, although of course he is extremely good with computers and has been for many years.

I want to make two other points. First, the artificial distinction between core expenditure and other expenditure has to go, because it does not take into account the geographical variations from constituency to constituency in office rent, in particular, and other factors too. I hope that IPSA will look into that.

My final point relates to our staff. Not many Members have mentioned the men and women who work for us, either here in the House of Commons directly or, particularly, in our constituencies. They have been seriously disadvantaged over the past number of months, not least by the dramatic change in the pension position. It is now taken directly out of our allowances and not paid from the Commons itself. There is a very strong case that the trade unions and staff associations that represent the staff of Members of Parliament should be properly recognised and should have proper means of negotiating directly with IPSA to ensure that their conditions of service are not disadvantaged. This would not happen in the private sector or in the public sector outside this place, and it should not happen in the House of Commons.

The system must be transparent, accountable and independent, but it must also be cost-effective. Most importantly, it must be a system that allows us to represent our constituents effectively.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—