Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Smith of Basildon) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill is a short but important piece of legislation, which has come to us unamended from the other place. It seeks to amend the statutory limit on the number of ministerial salaries available, currently capped at 109, to 120. The proposed change to 120 reflects the average size of Governments since 2010 and would largely end the practice of unpaid Ministers, which I know has been a source of concern for noble Lords in recent years. It will ensure that the Prime Minister of the day has the flexibility needed to appoint enough paid Ministers to meet modern government demands.

For noble Lords who are not familiar with the current position, it might be helpful to shed some light on it and why the change is required. As noble Lords will be aware, under our constitution, the monarch appoints the Prime Minister as the person most able to command the confidence of the other place and all ministerial appointments thereafter are made by the monarch on the sole advice of the Prime Minister. There is a statutory limit on how many ministerial salaries are available, as set out in the Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975. The current limit is 109 salaries. It has not changed since the 1975 Act was introduced over half a century ago.

In addition, there is a separate statutory limit on the number of Ministers who can sit and vote in the other place, whether paid or unpaid, under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975. That limit is 95. There is no equivalent limit on the number of your Lordships who are able to serve as Ministers.

The Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 also sets out salaries that should be paid to eight other officeholders: the Speakers of both Houses, the Leader of the Opposition in both Houses, the Opposition Chief Whip in both Houses and two assistant Opposition Whips in the other place. The Bill does not seek to amend those salaries.

Within the current limit of 109 Ministers, there are 83 salaries that can be allocated at the Secretary of State, Minister of State and Parliamentary Secretary ranks. A further four salaries are allocated to the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General and the Advocate-General for Scotland, and 22 salaries are allocated to Government Whips. I ask noble Lords to bear with me with all these numbers. I just want to give absolute clarity to the House.

The Ministerial and other Salaries Act 1975 sets cumulative limits on the salaries allocated to Secretaries of State, Ministers of State and Parliamentary Secretaries. Within the overall limit of 83, the cumulative limits under the Act are 21 Secretary of State-rank salaries; 50 Secretary of State-rank and Minister of State-rank salaries; and 83 Secretary of State-, Minister of State- and Parliamentary Secretary-rank salaries. These limits were set in 1975, which is over 50 years ago.

As a result of the demands of modern government, all Governments since 2010 have consistently featured a larger ministerial team than the existing Act’s provisions permit to be paid. That has ranged from an average of 108 Ministers in the Cameron and May Governments to 123 in the Sunak Government. There are 122 Ministers in the current Government. This has led to an unsatisfactory position where Governments of all parties have become dependent on Ministers being willing and able to work unpaid. Historically, this has fallen predominantly to Ministers in your Lordships’ House.

I know that this regrettable situation has been a source of frustration for many years. It was also described by one noble Lord as a “humiliation” during the passage of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill. In Committee, Amendment 90 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, and, on Report, Amendments 13 and 13A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord True, sought to address this by preventing unpaid Ministers being eligible for membership of your Lordships’ House. The subsequent government defeat on Report when the mood of the House was tested showed us the strength of the feeling there was on this issue. The Government rejected the amendment at ping-pong as it did not deliver the change needed and it did not increase the overall number of ministerial salaries available. But, as I said at the time, the amendment itself raised an important principle, and the Government are pleased to bring forward legislation today which will largely end the practice of unpaid Ministers. It remains the case that the Prime Minister will decide on the allocation of ministerial salaries.

I am confident that the whole House supports the notion that Ministers in this place and the other place should be paid for the work they do. Ministers in this House work extremely hard, often managing some of the broadest and most demanding portfolios in government. For a significant number of them to serve in the House unpaid cannot be right. In terms of the business of the House, a Minister in this House from either party could be doing the work of three or four Ministers in the other place.

To summarise, the Bill increases the cap on ministerial salaries from 109 to 120. All additional salaries will be allocated at either Secretary of State, Minister of State or Parliamentary Secretary rank at the request of the Prime Minister. As I have said, they will operate cumulatively. This means that salaries not allocated at a senior rank can be used to pay a Minister at a more junior rank within the limits. The Bill will therefore make provision for one additional salary at the Secretary of State rank—that increases to 22; four additional salaries at Secretary of State or Minister of State rank, increasing the overall number to 54 from 50; and 11 additional salaries at either Secretary of State, Minister of State or Parliamentary Secretary level, increasing the overall limit of those from 83 to 94.

If all additional salaries were allocated to the most senior Minister possible, this would result in one extra salary for Secretaries of State, three for Ministers of State and seven for Parliamentary Secretaries. The limits on the Lord Chancellor, Attorney-General, Solicitor-General, Advocate-General for Scotland and Government Whips remain unchanged. The limits on other officeholder salaries also remain unchanged.

As I have said, the increase to 120 salaries reflects the average number of Ministers in each Government since 2010. The change is set out in Clause 1. The existing limit of 95 Ministers who could be Members of the other place under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 will be retained. Therefore, 25 salaries will, in effect, be reserved for Lords Ministers.

It is also important to stress that the Bill does not increase the pay of Ministers. Pay in your Lordships’ House increased in 2019 and has been frozen at that level since then. Ministerial pay for Ministers in the other place has not risen since 2008. In addition to the ministerial salary, Ministers in the other place receive a salary for their role as an MP, which of 1 April this year is £98,599. If noble Lords look at the Explanatory Notes, they will see that it looks as though Lords Ministers are paid at a higher salary than Ministers in the House of Commons, yet Ministers in the House of Commons also receive their MP salary, but for Lords Ministers, that is the only payment they receive. The Prime Minister maintained the ministerial salary freeze on entering office, and the Bill does not change that either.

To conclude, this short Bill has a welcome aim: to ensure that the Prime Minister has the flexibility to appoint enough paid Ministers to meet the demands of modern government. It is also right that anyone in this country can aspire to be a Minister in either House, no matter what their background is, rather than relying on personal wealth in lieu of salary, and the burden of unpaid Ministers has disproportionately fallen on Ministers in this House.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True, who helpfully indicated his support for the Bill during Third Reading of the hereditary Peers Bill. I am grateful for his support and hope the Bill will receive similar support across the House, and I look forward to seeing it on the statute book as soon as possible. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. It has gone rather wide of the subject in many ways, but that has not been unhelpful.

We are fortunate in that we have a number of very experienced Ministers in this House. A number of us had ministerial lives before coming to this place. I can say on a personal level that having experience as a Minister and taking on a different job makes it easier. For Ministers coming in for the first time and taking on a ministerial role, the noble Lords, Lord Redwood and Lord Norton of Louth, and others made valid points about the support available for training. There is no other job like being a Minister.

The work that has to be undertaken in this place is extensive. I thank my noble friend Lady Ramsey for the example that she gave to identify how ministerial brains in the House of Lords have to bounce around so many subjects and absorb so much information. Whether I am sitting on that side of the Chamber or this side, I am consistently impressed by the work that they do.

I will try to address some of the points that have been made. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True. We have discussed this issue over a number of years, not just since we have been in Government, and he is right that it is a long-overdue measure. The noble Lord always talks about ending the freeze on ministerial salaries. That freeze on ministerial salaries is not addressed in this Bill, but, when it was introduced by Gordon Brown and then reduced by David Cameron, people did not think about the House of Lords. A Member of Parliament in the other place on a ministerial salary also gets an index-linked salary. However, I think I am right in saying that I am paid less in cash terms than my noble friend Lady Royall was when she did this job many years ago. Therefore, for Members of this House it has had a disproportionate effect.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said that a number of Members who have made lots of money take on ministerial jobs. However, many who take on unpaid ministerial jobs do not have lots of money, but make a decision and a choice to serve. We should be very grateful to them. As the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, said, it particularly affects those Ministers who have to travel as part of their job. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, and my noble friend Lord Hanson were mentioned. Ministers who are not being paid a ministerial salary can claim the daily allowance if they are in the House. But we expect our Ministers not to be tied to Parliament. We expect them to go out, to engage with people, to see some of the things that they are talking about, to have meetings in other places and to travel overseas, so they have been greatly disadvantaged.

I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Barber of Ainsdale and Lord Barber of Chittlehampton as new Members seeing the work done by Ministers in this House. That was really helpful. My noble friend Lord Barber of Chittlehampton made a comment about it being of greater benefit to the House and the Government. I think having paid Ministers is probably of less advantage to the Government, because the Government must fork out the salaries rather than the House. But it is of enormous value to your Lordships’ House as a whole.

The noble Baroness, Lady Evans, talked about the whiteboard of ministerial shuffles. My first reshuffle was done on pieces of paper stuck on with Blu Tack. It is now interactive. It sometimes seems that Lords Ministers are thought about afterwards when other ministerial positions are taken, yet Members of the House of Commons whom I have spoken to who have seen the work of Lords Ministers and others in the ministerial team all comment on the work that our Ministers do. I think the noble Baroness was right.

I understand the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on whether there are too many Ministers, but this has been the reality of government for some time. He is right to ask whether we get efficient government, but the pace of government and the pace of communication these days is a pressure that we do not always realise. I was reading some political diaries, I think by Duff Cooper, before the Second World War, and Chips Channon. The pace they were working at was significantly different from what we are doing now. If they had to travel somewhere, they were talking about several days to get there—journeys that now take a few hours. The pace of ministerial life and the pace of public life are significantly different.

I thought the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Redwood and Lord Elliott, on ministerial training were interesting. I was thinking back to when I was first a Minister and the support and training that I got. There is some degree of mentoring, but it is more difficult when a new Government comes in after a period in opposition. All Ministers need time to find their feet. Across the House, we see Ministers grow in confidence and ability into their positions. That experience does count, so I do take that on board.

The noble Lord, Lord Elliott, made an interesting suggestion about economic growth and tying ministerial salaries to it. I would be significantly better off if that was the case, after the complete ministerial freeze for many years. It is very unlikely to be in the King’s Speech. I cannot give away any confidences about what might be in it, but MPs’ salaries are determined by IPSA, an independent body, and I wish the noble Lord luck in trying to persuade IPSA of that. The ministerial pay freeze remains in place. However, there is a point about members of the public understanding the formula by which decisions are taken on that, so I am grateful to him for making that point on growth.

The noble Lord, Lord Redwood, made some interesting comments. I was thinking back through my ministerial life as he was speaking. My sense is that most Prime Ministers do not like big reshuffles, but, once you start, one thing happens and then another. There is something about having experience in a department and getting knowledge, but there is also something about bringing a fresh perspective on something. He raised an important point about longevity in office and also the ability to show leadership and decision-making. Those two qualities are hard to learn, but for Ministers they are essential.

I shall tell just one anecdote, so as not delay the House. On one occasion in a new post as Northern Ireland Minister, I was given a cheque and a letter to sign. It was to reimburse a mother whose son had forgotten his bus pass on the way to school. He sent in a form to be reimbursed for his bus fare, and I was being asked to sign the letter and the cheque. I sent it back and said, “I don’t intend to sign this. This is not a matter for me”. I was told, “But our previous Minister did that”. I said, “Yeah, he had one department, I’ve got three, I’m not doing it”. It is up to Ministers to set the boundaries of where they think it is appropriate that there is ministerial intervention. His point on that was really welcome.

This has been a helpful debate. There are a number of points to take note of. The noble Baroness, Lady Penn, mentioned other issues around maternity pay. They are not the subject of this Bill. I take the point she makes about unfairness. I think she was probably the first Member of this House to take maternity leave as a Minister. I remember some very nerve-wracking moments in that July before she gave birth when she was rather large and it was a very hot day and we were all hoping that she would last to the end of the debate before giving birth.

As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, it is probably a sign of how the House of Lords has changed. It was probably never anticipated that Members of the House of Lords would be giving birth and being young mothers. That just shows that society is changing. We are not a House of people who can afford to do the job for nothing. If we want Ministers to be recompensed in terms of the status of the role to recognise the work they do and to be fair in how we treat them, they should be paid. I will take the points away that she has made, and I am grateful for the time she gave me in discussing these things. They are not something that I was familiar with, and I found that extremely helpful.

I am grateful for the comments that have been made. I think this Bill is the right thing to do for this House. I end by saying that across both parties we are grateful for the efforts those in ministerial roles make and the time they take. I think there is significant support for this legislation across the House. There may be demands to go further and to look at other issues, and I understand that, but I am a great believer in incremental change.

Bill read a second time. Committee negatived. Standing Order 44 having been dispensed with, the Bill was read a third time and passed.