Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Adam Afriyie]

That is a very good question. I have the figure 44 in my head for the number of responses to the initial January consultation. A quarter to a third of them were completely against the kind of scheme IPSA eventually introduced, while the other three quarters or two thirds raised specific issues that were not directly related to the terms of the consultation. The input from Members of Parliament in a public sense was therefore fairly minimal; only about 11 MPs actually made a contribution. That is a little concerning. I think the reason behind that low figure is that we as Members of Parliament all know that anything we write on expenses that is in the public domain is a hostage to fortune. We have to overcome that reluctance, however, because unless we show confidence and courage and make it absolutely clear that we will not tolerate an unnecessarily expensive system and an unnecessarily burdensome bureaucracy that takes us away from our constituents, we will fall into the same trap we have fallen into in the past. I therefore have a tremendous sense of déjà vu.

The expenses scandal coincided with the run-up to the general election—it was almost part of the general election campaign—so there was a political need to resolve the issue quickly. I think we all recognise that, and I think we all accept that something needed to be done fairly briskly. However, on reflection now, a year later, it seems to me that perhaps in our haste we have lost some time. Even with the best intentions in the world, there have been omissions and errors in the establishment of the current regime, and they need to be tackled.

Ignoring warnings from the Clerk of the House and others, we have created a curious beast. We have handed over control of the work of MPs to an unelected and unaccountable body. IPSA is judge and jury; IPSA is both regulator and the regulated. MPs are rightly accountable to the people who elect them, whereas IPSA is accountable to nobody, yet IPSA can control the way MPs work—it can control the amount of time that MPs have available to them to conduct their duties. That is a curious state of affairs, and if we are honest with ourselves we would never tolerate that set-up in any other walk of life, or in any other part of government or the civil service.

I do not doubt that the chairman and board of IPSA have good intentions, but is it right that the current system continues to frustrate the work of democratically elected MPs? The issue is not about us and our minor inconveniences, but about our constituents and the time that we can spend with them, so we have to be bold in what we do.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

To be completely fair to IPSA, the scheme that it had to implement had already been handed to it by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and if I remember correctly there was a curious collision of timetables, whereby IPSA was set up at the same time as the committee was holding its inquiry. I am afraid that we politicians are responsible collectively for the mess that IPSA inherited from us, and I think that my hon. Friend is appealing for it to take charge, to fulfil its remit and to take full responsibility for the scheme that it now implements.

[Adam Afriyie]

I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. It is quite clear that the Committee on Standards in Public Life had not reported at the time when IPSA was instructed to create a scheme, so we must take responsibility for that. We were in a hurry—with the right intentions—to change the system so that an external body would set the rates of remuneration and pay, but it is widely recognised that in our haste we created something that needs adjustment.

--- Later in debate ---

[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?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for that intervention. I shall now try to make some progress, as I want to leave sufficient time for other hon. Members who wish to get in.

I said that the Prime Minister would be listening closely to this debate. In July, during Prime Minister’s questions, he said that:

“what is necessary is a properly transparent system, a system with proper rules and limits which the public would have confidence in, but what we do not need is an overly bureaucratic and very costly system. I think all those in the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority need to get a grip of what they are doing, and get a grip of it very fast.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 946.]

That is what all Members have said today. They want IPSA’s system to be transparent, straightforward, not bureaucratic and not costly. IPSA should get on with that.

[Mr Jenkin]

Does the Minister agree that, as with the House of Commons, IPSA is unlikely to survive a freedom of information request for evidence of payment to be produced? How can it justify withholding evidence of payment—all the invoices—on grounds of cost? That is part of the cost of the system, and it is going to have to bear it.

[Mr Harper]

That may well be the case, and I think that IPSA has admitted in public that if people apply for receipts through freedom of information requests, it may well have to do that. We will have to see how it gets on. That is the decision that it has made, which the shadow Leader of the House said is a balance between transparency and cost. It may find that the rules of freedom of information affect it as they affected the House.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) was right to point out, as did other Members, what happened in the past and the fact that the House made the decision to have an independent system. That is important, as well as the transparency issue. I listened very carefully, but I do not think that anyone during the debate was urging that we go back on that; in fact, Members made good points about ensuring that we retain both transparency and independence.

Hon. Members gave examples of how they thought the system should move and a number spoke in favour of a flat-rate payment, including my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor. However, a number of Members, including the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale), pointed out that a flat-rate system, which does not take into account the variance in costs across the country, may not be a perfect one and that there needs to be some flexibility. They all suggested ways in which that flexibility may be achieved.

We have heard from several Members about their various experiences. IPSA itself has recognised that in the first few months of running the system it made mistakes; it has been very transparent about that. We know that it made mistakes and that it needs to improve the system. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw and the shadow Leader of the House referred to improvements that have been made in the system. IPSA now makes some direct payments to landlords for constituency office rental, it now pays against invoices, and the travelcard can now be used to pay other bills. Most importantly, it implemented advances to Members to deal with the genuine problem that very many Members do not have significant amounts of money and are not in a position to meet these costs out of their own pocket and then claim money back—costs which, as many Members have said, one would not expect any other person in business, in a position such as ours, to have to pay out of their own pocket, and would reasonably be thought of as proper business expenses.

Having said that, what I have heard does not suggest that the legislation necessarily needs to be reviewed. Under the legislation introduced by this House, the expenses system and the way that it operates is a matter for IPSA. No change in legislation is required to be able to deal with the issues that have been raised in the House. Indeed, in the letter that IPSA recently circulated to Members, it said that it will conduct its annual review of the scheme in the new year and will look at the problems that have been experienced by MPs. It specifically refers to the impact of the scheme on family life, which was raised by Members on both sides of the House, and the impact on Members living in the outer reaches of the London area—indeed, in places that most people in this House probably would not consider were in the London area. IPSA has also said that it will balance its requirements for assurance against the administrative burdens on itself and on Members. That is welcome and shows that it is listening.

Under the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, IPSA is required to consult the Leader of the House as one of its statutory consultees, and the Government are considering how we can use that opportunity to submit evidence to IPSA. As Members will know, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is very familiar with the issues raised with him by many MPs, either privately or on the Floor of the House at business questions.

The Government strongly support the principles of independence and transparency for IPSA, as does the shadow Leader of the House. The review that IPSA is about to undertake is its opportunity to deliver a system that remains transparent, which is probably the best way of determining that Members behave properly, but is also more efficient and less bureaucratic. I am sure that I speak for Members on both sides of the House in urging IPSA to take that opportunity and deliver a system that improves on what we have today.