Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Cheryl Gillan Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) to the Dispatch Box, and I know he will serve with distinction from our Front Bench. I agree with those on both the Opposition and our own Front Benches about the motion that stands before the House.

I must welcome, provided this motion goes through, Peter Blausten to the Speaker’s Committee for IPSA. I have to declare an interest because I sit on SCIPSA, as it is affectionately known, with—I am going to say this—my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), because we do truly represent a cross-party approach to looking at the budget and the ways in which IPSA operates.

It would be wrong of me to let this motion pass without thanking Bronwen Curtis wholeheartedly for her service to the Committee, the House and every Member of Parliament in this place. She has brought a very challenging commercial voice and, I have to say, often a completely refreshing perspective to the way in which we look at ourselves and the way in which we approach this very important part of parliamentary life. I also think that she has brought—dare I say it?—a woman’s eye to the way in which this place operates when we are looking at estimates and how this should operate.

I also thank Shrinivas Honap—I always get his name wrong, but I am absolutely sure he will forgive me—who is one of our lay members, and Cindy Butts, but particularly Shrin because he has also brought a fresh voice to the Speaker’s Committee for IPSA. It would not bode well if we did not thank them. These lay members are selected by a very stringent process, and there is no doubt that they provide a complementarity to our proceedings that is welcome. However, I do think, as the Speaker’s Committee looks particularly at the estimates, that any new lay member joining the Committee should be aware of some of the problems that face us in SCIPSA.

Just speaking as an individual Member, since the new computer system was brought in, I have experienced some personal problems. Rather than refer to anybody else’s, I would like to leave with the House a few problems, which are being sorted out, but which have caused great anxiety and reflect on the new computer system that has come in. For example, incorrect information was put through in the preparation of my P11D, which was not exactly welcome. Money was paid into the wrong account when reimbursing me for valid expenditure, and a member of my staff received a pay increase higher than I had agreed with that member of staff, and I was not informed until I read those numbers. So anybody coming in as a lay member should know that all in the garden is not entirely rosy—[Interruption.] I am sorry; no pun intended, Madam Deputy Speaker. We would welcome those fresh eyes on our systems and the way in which we operate, because I think they can make a valuable contribution.

These issues affect not just 650 Members of Parliament, but of course the thousands of people who work with us and for us, and that is why it is so important we get this right. We often forget the people who stand behind Members of Parliament, to whom we owe a great debt of thanks, and we must get their payroll right. We must get their remuneration right, and we must ensure that IPSA goes on the right path, so that it can provide what anybody working in the commercial world would accept was normal practice. I do think that, when salaries are adjusted without the boss knowing, that needs putting right.

May I say that the job we do here—I think everybody would agree—is not a normal job? It takes a great deal of understanding. Although Peter Blausten comes to us with a fantastic pedigree, I would like to issue an invitation, which may come from anybody else in the Chamber: I hope he will come and work shadow, perhaps me or somebody else, so that he can gain an understanding of what happens in a Member of Parliament’s office and how we need to be so careful in an area that has caused so much agony in the past for many Members of Parliament. We need to get it right, and we need the public to have confidence in the process. We need our staff and also every Member in this House to have confidence in the process, and I very much hope that Peter Blausten will arrive on the Speaker’s Committee able to make a valuable contribution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I, too, commend the Minister for his latest outing at the Dispatch Box. Many Members of the House think of him as a very nice man, and it is nice to see him here with us today.

I wholly concur with the points that have been made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan)—I return the favour—and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) in relation to Bronwen Curtis. In fact, one of the keenest points that she made repeatedly in SCIPSA was that if IPSA wants a significant increase in capital expenditure to pay for a new IT system, it had better prove it is worth it. If I am honest, I think an awful lot of Members this year would have said, “Well, actually, the way it was introduced, with too few people to answer the telephone—the answers and the conversations you had to have were sometimes so complicated that they went on for 45 or 50 minutes—there are some serious questions about whether public money is being spent properly”.

This goes to the heart of something I think was wrong with the original legislation that was introduced. The Minister said that SCIPSA—the Committee—has two roles, and that is absolutely right, but IPSA itself has two roles as well, and I think they are mutually exclusive. One is to support Members in doing their job of trying to ensure that all those letters from our constituents are responded to quickly and all the rest of it, and that we are able to do our job of representing our constituents well. However, the second part is regulating Members. I think that all too often IPSA relies too much on the regulating element, rather than the supporting element. That, for instance, is why decisions that should have been taken swiftly about providing finance for security measures in Members’ constituency offices and in their homes—where it is not primarily about ourselves, but actually about our families and our staff members, to whom we have a duty of care—have been delayed far, far too long. All too often, it is left to the House authorities to take up the slack. That is a shame and a mistake, and we need to rectify that in the future.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way, but I was hoping to come to an end very soon.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

I was just going to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he was supportive of seeing those two functions split into different bodies at some stage in the future.

[Chris Bryant]

I think I argued at the beginning, when the whole thing was set up, that the two should be in separate organisations. I understand that there is a model of regulation, which we have adopted in many areas now, where the regulator is intimately involved in the industry. I think that that is a mistake. It would be better to separate the two, but that requires primary legislation. It would be a brave Government at the moment who introduced legislation in this particular area—well, introduced any legislation at all. We in SCIPSA need to make sure that we enable IPSA to do a better job to recognise the two halves of its role, supporting and regulating.

I am very confident that Mr Blausten will be a very significant addition to the Committee. We take our job very seriously. I say to hon. Members that, if they have issues that they feel need to be raised with IPSA, all the members of SCIPSA are available. I am sure that Mr Blausten will do a good job. The independent people sometimes say to us, “You know what, MPs? You should be arguing for better support, not the opposite, because you need to be able to do your job properly. If you were in any other industry you would quite simply expect to be able to do your job properly.”