Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Debate between Clive Efford and Roger Gale

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I should like to associate myself with all the compliments that have been passed to the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie), who has done us all a great service in initiating this debate.

I thought, tantalisingly, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you were going to call me after the hon. Member for Worthing West (Peter Bottomley). Since I was first selected to stand against him in 1989, we have seldom seen eye to eye on anything, but today I agreed with every word he said. The fact that IPSA has managed to bridge that chasm should be a serious warning to it indeed.

One of the ironies of the debate is that what initiated this process was a desire to deal with MPs who were in some way feathering their nests at public expense, but what we finished up with is the taxpayer paying out more money to solve the problem of people saying, “Woe betide these profligate and self-serving MPs.” We even had the involvement of Sir Thomas Legg, who barely washed his face in the amount of money that he brought back compared with what his investigation cost the House.

What we really want from today’s debate, as everyone has stressed, is for IPSA to listen. When my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd), the Chair of the parliamentary Labour party, and I met Sir Ian Kennedy, we felt that everything we put to him was not sticking, and that he was not listening to anything we said about what is necessary for MPs and how MPs conduct their business. He just dismissed everything—he felt that he had all the answers and that he knew what MPs were about. I wonder whether some of the more Eurosceptic Members recognise that the system is akin to the EU. I am neither Eurosceptic nor Europhile, but there is a complete lack of public accountability and civil servants have been let rip, and we have ended up with a huge edifice. Every solution requires more expenditure and yet another department—someone mentioned that there is a new department for dealing with the media and press. Each problem that IPSA comes across seems to mean that it needs to spend more money, so we have now ended up with a very expensive edifice.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) was absolutely right to warn us about losing the principle of the independence of IPSA and said that we would do so at our peril. We would be wrong to dismiss that as an attempt by him to create headlines and to be obstructive. We have suffered in the past from fiddling and interference from the Government and Opposition Front Benches—over the years, that created the mess that we got into. We should remember that, under the previous system, somebody felt it appropriate to apply for payment for a duck house. The fact that that claim was not paid is often overlooked, but that someone felt it appropriate to apply in the first place shows how far gone and how wrong that system was.

[Mr Gale]

I know of no Member of the House who wants to overturn IPSA’s independence, in which respect the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) was quite wrong. Our problem is that the people conducting the review of IPSA are the people who were responsible for creating the problem in the first place. Would it not be a good idea to have an independent review?

[Clive Efford]

I would not dismiss that suggestion. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, because no one is suggesting that we lose that principle, but my hon. Friend was none the less right to warn us.

IPSA must set the framework within which MPs operate, but it must be sympathetic to what MPs confront in their daily business, which it has not been, even in respect of its computer system. IPSA told us that we must pay for surgery rents under the office rent heading, but there is no heading for surgery rents, so everything comes out of office rents. I suspect that my constituents who examine the system will wonder just how many offices I have. IPSA did not listen to MPs when it set up that system, but it must listen to this debate and the reasonable arguments that MPs have made, and change fundamentally.

I am a London MP and my staff are all based in my constituency. I have had the same staff since I was first elected. The inflationary increase in the staffing allowance was not a living increase, so if I had followed that, those staff would effectively have taken a real-terms pay cut. Instead, I vired money from my incidental expenses account into my staffing account to pay them a bonus at the end of the year, which meant that they got a decent salary increase. There is no viring any more, no spinal column, no incremental increase, and no recognition of the length of service of our staff. I really hope that IPSA takes that on board and rewards our staff.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the shadow Leader of the House, talked about direct payments and we must move to such a system. I know of Members of Parliament who have not spoken in the debate—we should remember that some Members do not wish to pour their hearts out in the Chamber and have the media raking over their personal affairs—who have had to sell their assets to pay their office rent and other costs, and to set up a basic bursary so that they have an account from which they can pay out money before claiming it back. Some Members of Parliament to whom I have spoken have been in tears because of the financial situation in which IPSA has put them. They are not here to speak in this debate, but that fact should not be lost on IPSA.

If IPSA has not been listening to the debate, I hope that it will read it and take on board all the points that hon. Members have made. IPSA should change the system so that Members can serve the public in the way in which we hoped we would when we were elected.