Ministerial Severance: Reform
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House calls on the Government to immediately introduce legislation to amend the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991 to ensure that—
(i) departing Ministers who have not attained the age of 65 receive an amount equal to one-quarter of their earnings over the previous 12 months as a Minister, minus any period covered by a previous severance entitlement, where that is lower than an amount equal to one-quarter of the annual salary paid to that Minister before their departure;
(ii) any person who returns to ministerial office after three weeks but within the period equivalent to the number of days of salary that they were paid in severance must return the corresponding amount of their severance payment;
(iii) no person departing ministerial office while under investigation for allegations of gross misconduct or breaching the ministerial code will be entitled to a severance payment unless and until they are cleared of those allegations by the relevant authority; and makes provision as set out in this Order, to take effect unless such a Bill has been introduced by no later than Monday 26 February 2024:
(1) On Tuesday 27 February 2024:
(a) Standing Order No. 14(1) (which provides that government business shall have precedence at every sitting save as provided in that order) shall not apply;
(b) any proceedings governed by this order may be proceeded with until any hour, though opposed, and shall not be interrupted;
(c) the Speaker may not propose the Question on the previous question, and may not put any Question under Standing Order No. 36 (Closure of debate) or Standing Order No. 163 (Motion to sit in private);
(d) at 3.00 pm, the Speaker shall interrupt any business prior to the business governed by this order and, notwithstanding the practice of this House as regards to proceeding on a Bill without notice, call the Rt hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury or another Member on her behalf to move the order of the day that the Ministerial Severance (Reform) Bill be now read a second time;
(e) in respect of that Bill, notices of Amendments, new Clauses and new Schedules to be moved in Committee may be accepted by the Clerks at the Table before the Bill has been read a second time.
(f) any proceedings interrupted or superseded by this order may be resumed or (as the case may be) entered upon and proceeded with after the moment of interruption.
(2) The provisions of paragraphs (3) to (18) of this order shall apply to and in connection with the proceedings on the Ministerial Severance (Reform) Bill in the present Session of Parliament.
Timetable for the Bill on Tuesday 27 February 2024
(3)(a) Proceedings on Second Reading and in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings up to and including Third Reading shall be taken at the sitting on Tuesday 27 February 2024 in accordance with this Order.
(b) Proceedings on Second Reading shall be brought to a conclusion (so far as not previously concluded) at 5.00pm.
(c) Proceedings on any money resolution which may be moved by a Minister of the Crown in relation to the Bill shall be taken without debate immediately after Second Reading.
(d) Proceedings in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings up to and including Third Reading shall be brought to a conclusion (so far as not previously concluded) at 7.00pm.
Timing of proceedings and Questions to be put on Tuesday 27 February 2024
(4) When the Bill has been read a second time:
(a) it shall, notwithstanding Standing Order No. 63 (Committal of bills not subject to a programme order), stand committed to a Committee of the whole House without any Question being put;
(b) the Speaker shall leave the Chair whether or not notice of an Instruction has been given.
(5)(a) On the conclusion of proceedings in Committee of the whole House, the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any Question.
(b) If the Bill is reported with amendments, the House shall proceed to consider the Bill as amended without any Question being put.
(6) For the purpose of bringing any proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph (3), the Chairman or Speaker shall forthwith put the following Questions in the same order as they would fall to be put if this Order did not apply—
(a) any Question already proposed from the Chair;
(b) any Question necessary to bring to a decision a Question so proposed;
(c) the Question on any amendment, new clause or new schedule selected by the Chairman or Speaker for separate decision;
(d) the Question on any amendment moved or Motion made by a designated Member;
(e) any other Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded; and shall not put any other Questions, other than the Question on any motion described in paragraph (15) of this Order.
(7) On a Motion made for a new Clause or a new Schedule, the Chairman or Speaker shall put only the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.
Consideration of Lords Amendments and Messages on a subsequent day
(8) If any Message on the Bill (other than a Message that the House of Lords agrees with the Bill without amendment or agrees with any Message from this House) is expected from the House of Lords on any future sitting day, the House shall not adjourn until that Message has been received and any proceedings under paragraph (9) have been concluded.
(9) On any day on which such a Message is received, if a designated Member indicates to the Speaker an intention to proceed to consider that Message—
(a) notwithstanding Standing Order No. 14(1) (which provides that government business shall have precedence at every sitting save as provided in that order), any Lords Amendments to the Bill or any further Message from the Lords on the Bill may be considered forthwith without any Question being put; and any proceedings interrupted for that purpose shall be suspended accordingly;
(b) proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement; and any proceedings suspended under subparagraph (a) shall thereupon be resumed;
(c) the Speaker may not propose the Question on the previous question, and may not put any Question under Standing Order No. 36 (Closure of debate) or Standing Order No. 163 (Motion to sit in private) in the course of those proceedings.
(10) Paragraphs (2) to (7) of Standing Order No. 83F (Programme orders: conclusion of proceedings on consideration of Lords amendments) apply for the purposes of bringing any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments to a conclusion as if:
(a) any reference to a Minister of the Crown were a reference to a designated Member;
(b) after paragraph (4)(a) there is inserted—
“(aa) the question on any amendment or motion selected by the Speaker for separate decision;”.
(11) Paragraphs (2) to (5) of Standing Order No. 83G (Programme orders: conclusion of proceedings on further Messages from the Lords) apply for the purposes of bringing any proceedings on consideration of a Lords Message to a conclusion as if any reference to a Minister of the Crown were a reference to a designated Member.
Reasons Committee
(12) Paragraphs (2) to (6) of Standing Order No. 83H (Programme orders: reasons committee) apply in relation to any committee to be appointed to draw up reasons after proceedings have been brought to a conclusion in accordance with this Order as if any reference to a Minister of the Crown were a reference to a designated Member.
Miscellaneous
(13) Standing Order No. 82 (Business Committee) shall not apply in relation to any proceedings on the Bill to which this Order applies.
(14)(a) No Motion shall be made, except by a designated Member, to alter the order in which any proceedings on the Bill are taken, to recommit the Bill or to vary or supplement the provisions of this Order.
(b) No notice shall be required of such a Motion.
(c) Such a Motion may be considered forthwith without any Question being put; and any proceedings interrupted for that purpose shall be suspended accordingly.
(d) The Question on such a Motion shall be put forthwith; and any proceedings suspended under sub-paragraph (c) shall thereupon be resumed.
(e) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply to proceedings on such a Motion.
(15)(a) No dilatory Motion shall be made in relation to proceedings on the Bill to which this Order applies except by a designated Member.
(b) The Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.
(16) Proceedings to which this Order applies shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.
(17) No private business may be considered at any sitting to which the provisions of this order apply.
(18)(a) The start of any debate under Standing Order No. 24 (Emergency debates) to be held on a day on which proceedings to which this Order applies are to take place shall be postponed until the conclusion of any proceedings to which this Order applies.
(b) Standing Order 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply in respect of any such debate.
(19) In this Order, “a designated Member” means—
(a) the Rt hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury; and
(b) any other Member acting on behalf of the Rt hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury.
Today we seek the permission of the House to make time for legislation in the weeks ahead to reform the system for ministerial severance payments. Those payments were first introduced exactly 40 years ago for Ministers in the House of Lords, with rules that were almost identical to the ones that now apply to this House as well. Departing Ministers were to receive a quarter of their annual salary, equivalent to three months of pay, provided that they were under the age of 65, that they had been in post for at least two years, and that they did not return to the job within three weeks.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
I have informed the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Sir Brandon Lewis) that I will be referring to him personally in this debate. He is the only Minister of the 97 in question who has claimed two severance payments in 2022-23, totalling almost £33,000. The second payment was worth three months’ pay after just seven weeks in the job as Justice Secretary. Does my right hon. Friend agree that at the height of a cost of living crisis it was nothing short of a disgrace that the right hon. Gentleman felt entitled to claim so much money from the taxpayer when delivering so little in return?
Emily Thornberry
My hon. Friend is spot on. For those on the Government Benches muttering about claiming, it does not really matter whether the money was claimed, or if it was given to someone and not given back—the point is that the money was still pocketed by the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth, and no one was expecting the rules to be used in that way. That is the point of this debate.
The payments were extended to other Ministers in 1991 based on a recommendation by the then Top Salaries Review Board, which commanded broad cross-party support. The only change from the previous rules was to remove the two-year qualifying limit, but it is worth noting that in every debate that preceded the 1991 legislation, MPs remained clear that these payments were intended for the benefit of long-serving Ministers, who were having to make what Geoffrey Howe called
“an abrupt and significant financial adjustment…on relinquishing ministerial office”.—[Official Report, 17 January 1990; Vol. 165, c. 311.]
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
Will the right hon. Lady accept that when our party came to power in 2010, we cut ministerial pay, and we have kept it frozen ever since? In the unlikely event of her side getting into power, would she commit to maintaining that freeze?
Emily Thornberry
If the hon. Lady has a moment to look at the motion before us today, and to consider it in the spirit of fairness and how public money should be spent, I hope that she would agree that the current system has been abused over the past few years by her colleagues in the Chamber and outside it. That is simply not the sort of thing that the public wants. They would be appalled if they knew what was going on with the severance payments we are talking about today.
Emily Thornberry
I will make a bit more progress, and then I will give way.
We are talking about severance payments today. Government Members may wish to speak about red herrings and other issues, but let us talk about the abuse of the severance payments system that we have seen over the past few years, because we should take a clear-eyed look at it. We are not seeking to scrap those payments, nor should we. As Geoffrey Howe said, they were introduced so that Ministers who had given long and dedicated service to their country could adjust to the loss of that salary. I do not think anyone on the Opposition Benches has any quarrel with that. Over the 40 years that those payments have existed, there has never been any previous occasion where it has been open to question that the rules by which those payments were made were wrong. Then, however, we came to 2022-23. It was a year of chaos in our politics, unprecedented in modern times. Sadly, it was a year in which the current severance scheme had its flaws suddenly exposed and its loopholes shamelessly exploited.
Before I address what went wrong with the system in that financial year, I will do something that I find personally unusual, which is to praise some members of Conservative Cabinets. It will be hard for me, and I feel my ancestors starting to shift uneasily in their graves, but I want to give credit where credit is due, and that credit goes to a small collection of Secretaries of State who, for want of a better phrase, did the right thing when it came to severance entitlements during that year of chaos. I praise the current Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), who was sacked as Health Secretary in September 2022, but reinstated by the current Prime Minister seven weeks later. What did he do with his severance payment? He returned it in full when he regained his old job, so he deserves praise for that.
I praise the current Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, the right hon. Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), who resigned after two days as Education Secretary in July 2022, but turned down the £16,000-plus severance payment for which those two days had made her eligible, and she deserves praise for that. I even want to praise the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), the former Chief Whip, the former Defence Secretary and the former Education Secretary. He claimed his £16,000-plus severance in 2019 when he was sacked for leaking top-secret information. He claimed his £16,000-plus severance again in 2021, when he was sacked for all his various school fiascos. However, he finally turned down his severance payment in 2023 after two weeks in the Cabinet Office, because he recognised that it would be inappropriate to accept it while under investigation for bullying. So let us praise him for that—if for nothing else.
What those examples show is that it is entirely possible for individuals to choose to waive their severance payments, or return them, when they feel that accepting them would not be right. Perhaps those individuals even reflected that, at the height of the cost of living crisis—which had been greatly exacerbated by the actions of their Government—it would seem inappropriate to accept thousands of pounds from the taxpayer as a reward for the contribution they had made to the chaos. Perhaps they realised how much like a smack in the face that would feel to their constituents. Either way, those individuals did do the right thing.
However, the hard fact is—numbers bear this out—that, for every one case in the last financial year where a Tory Minister decided that accepting that severance payment would be inappropriate in the circumstances, in at least six or seven other cases the opposite was unfortunately true. That is why we find ourselves here, trying to fix a system of ministerial severance that has been brought into disrepute by dozens of its most recent beneficiaries.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend has mentioned many Secretaries of State. We also had a short-lived Prime Minister, who is entitled to some payments for the rest of her life. Should we not also look at whether it is appropriate for people who leave in disgrace to end up with lifelong pay cheques?
Emily Thornberry
My hon. Friend makes an important point. That is an important argument that will need to be considered.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
The right hon. Lady is arguing that a certain lax culture has grown up under successive Conservative Governments that benefits few but taints us all, and I think it goes beyond severance pay. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) proposed a private Member’s Bill—the Elected Representatives (Prohibition of Deception) Bill, which would have made it an offence for Ministers to knowingly and wilfully lie to the public. Is there any chance that an incoming Labour Government might adopt that?
Emily Thornberry
If we are given the great honour of serving the public as the next Government, our Ministers will not deceive the public. We will be straightforward, and we will do our utmost to serve them to the best of our ability. We will be a Government to be proud of; we just need to have an opportunity.
For the purposes of explaining our motion, I will go through each of the five categories where a flaw in the rules was exposed in 2022-23 and give one example for each of how someone benefited. Mr Deputy Speaker, I have informed each of them that I am going to be raising their case.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
Before the right hon. Lady moves on, will she give way?
Mark Pritchard
I know this is an Opposition day debate, where the Government will get bashed—that is part of the convention and traditions of this House. However, on an important constitutional point, I think the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) alluded to the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). Does the right hon. Lady think that ex-Labour Prime Ministers and ex-Conservative Prime Ministers—thankfully I do not think we will ever have a Lib Dem one; we can agree on that—should have no private office arrangements supported by the state? Those people have been at the highest level as First Lord of the Treasury, having had access to top-secret and classified materials, and will probably be under constant threat for the rest of their lives. Is she honestly saying that a Labour Government would no longer support former Prime Ministers of whatever political party?
Emily Thornberry
I am saying that this is an important issue that needs to be considered. I suggest that perhaps together the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) put in for a debate so that we can air these matters properly. Today, I want to talk about ministerial severance payments.
Emily Thornberry
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, and then I hope that I will not need to give way to him again.
Jerome Mayhew
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. Is not the fact we are getting interesting ideas coming from Labour Members an example of how the motion before the House is so ill thought out? Those ideas are not in the motion. Does she not agree that this is not the way to create legislation?
Emily Thornberry
I am proud to say that my party is full of good ideas, but unfortunately we are unable to put them all into one motion. Let us have a little discipline today by concentrating on the motion at hand and the important issue we are raising. We believe that five particular problems were highlighted by the chaos in 2022-23. I will go through each of them, give an example and explain why the changes we want to put forward will solve those problems, and why we would therefore ask the House as a whole to seriously consider our proposal to ensure that we can pass legislation to change the situation, because it does need to be fixed.
First, let us look at what I call the short stayers problem. More than two dozen individuals occupied Front-Bench roles for just nine weeks at the fag end of the Johnson Government, or just seven weeks during the bedlam of the Truss experiment, all of whom walked away with three months of severance pay. Let us look at the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) as an example. Never a shrinking violet when it comes to calling out others, he served just 49 full days as a Minister in the Department for Education, earning less than £3,000 in wages, yet when he returned to the Back Benches he received almost double that in severance—three months’ severance for 49 days’ work. Perhaps the Minister for common sense will tell us whether that makes sense to her.
Secondly, we have the problem of the short-lived promotions: individuals who found themselves elevated from junior ministerial roles to more senior positions, and whose severance was therefore calculated not based on the salary they had earned for most of the year, but based on the much higher salary they had earned for only a few weeks. Let us think of the example of the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke), who spent a year as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, earning a salary of almost £32,000, but then spent seven weeks as Levelling Up Secretary on a salary of more than double that amount. As a result of those seven weeks alone, the right hon. Gentleman received severance pay of almost £17,000. Again, I look forward to the Minister for common sense explaining where the sense is in that.
Thirdly, we have what I might call the quick returners—more than a dozen Ministers who claimed their three months’ severance pay after quitting the Johnson Government, or being sacked by his successor, but who ended up returning to the Front Bench a matter of weeks later while still enjoying the benefits of their severance payments. Take the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), who not only accepted three months in severance after only two months as Veterans Minister, but told Plymouth Live point-blank that he had not accepted a severance payment, and then had the sheer chutzpah to return to exactly the same job seven weeks later without repaying a single penny. Once again, I hope that the expert on these matters will tell us whether that sounds like common sense.
Fourthly, there is a much smaller category—I have decided it is best not to give them a name at all. We also saw severance payments awarded in 2022-23 to two individuals, Peter Bone and Chris Pincher, who left their Front-Bench jobs while under investigation at the time for acts of gross misconduct. The 1991 rules are silent on this issue, and we can only assume that it was thought that any individual forced to quit in those circumstances would have the basic decency not to accept a handout from the taxpayer. However, I am afraid what the Pincher and Bone cases have shown us is that we cannot rely on the decency of individuals like that.
Finally—perhaps most incredibly—five severance payments in the last financial year were made entirely by mistake because the Government forgot to apply the age limit that says no one over the age of 65 can receive one, which is how Peter Bone and Nadine Dorries received their payments. Before the current incumbents of the Cabinet Office tell themselves that they have brought order to all this chaos, it is worth noting that the largest of those mistaken payments, which was made to a Minister in the Lords, was made not during the chaos of the summer and autumn of 2022, but in what one might call the cold light of day in January 2023.
The proposed changes to the severance rules set out in Labour’s motion would address each of the five issues that I have set out.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that had any of our constituents been face to face with the Department for Work and Pensions in a similar situation to that which she describes, the results might have been different?
Emily Thornberry
Any of our constituents struggling to get to the end of the week on their wage packet, and who see the amount of money being handed out—essentially as payment for failure—would be astonished that it was allowed. That is why we are trying to change the rules today.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
The right hon. Lady, in her meaningless and bitter speech, is missing the essential point that ought to be at the heart of her argument. When people are struggling, it is galling that someone who already earns a salary of £80,000 a year for being a Member of Parliament, and more on top of that for their ministerial duties, is given another payment when, for whatever reason—the Prime Minister does not like them or perhaps they have not done a particularly good job—they get a severance package. Is the truth of the matter not that Labour should be calling for no severance packages for any Minister when they lose their job?
Emily Thornberry
If our motion does not go far enough for the hon. Gentleman, let me propose that he votes with us tonight anyway, because at least we are heading in the right direction. If his colleagues vote simply to keep the status quo, he will have a great deal of difficulty explaining to his constituents how, given his views, he has allowed it to continue.
Let me move on. We want to make changes to deal with the five issues. To deal with short stayers and short-term promotions, Ministers would be paid a quarter of their actual earnings over the previous 12 months, not a quarter of their final salary. To deal with the quick returners, our reforms would require individuals who return to the Front Bench while still enjoying the benefits of their severance payments to repay the corresponding amount. To deal with those who do not deserve any payment, we demand that Ministers who quit while under investigation for gross misconduct or breaching the ministerial code have their severance payment withheld unless or until their name is cleared.
If all those rules had been in place in 2022-23, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North would have received £748 in severance, not almost £6,000. The short-lived Levelling Up Secretary, the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, would have received just over £9,000, not almost £17,000. The right hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View would have received £1,300, not almost £8,000, and the former Members for Tamworth and for Wellingborough would have received exactly what they deserved—nothing at all. In total, if the proposals in our motion had been in place in 2022-23 and the age limit rules had been properly enforced, the total severance bill that year would have been cut by more than 40%—a saving for the taxpayer of almost £380,000. If our rules had been in place, 75 of the 97 Ministers who claimed severance pay in that year would have seen their payments reduced by an average of just over £5,000.
That is why our motion is so important, but Government Members may reasonably ask why it is so urgent. Why is it necessary to reform the rules in this way? Why does Labour need to take control of the Order Paper? Very simply, if they think what happened in the last financial year was a one-off aberration that could not happen again, they have not been paying attention. Do they not know about the plotting of their own colleagues and the plans for yet another palace coup against the current incumbent of Downing Street? Yet again in the coming months we could see mass resignations from the Front Bench, to put pressure on a weak and failed Prime Minister. Yet again we could see a Reform-adjacent radical put in his place, eager to engage in experiments with the British economy. Yet again, we could see it all go horribly wrong, leading to heaven knows what in the aftermath.
Frankly, if that is how the Conservatives want to spend their time between now and the general election, part of me just wants to say, “Well, get on with it then.” But a bigger part of me says that they should not be allowed to gamble again with the future of the British people, and they should certainly not be allowed to profit again from the results of their own failures. Indeed, it would be a shameful indictment of our political system if we were to allow yet another round of excessive and undeserved ministerial severance payments to be made between now and the next election when we have the opportunity today to stop that happening.
I appeal to the Conservative Members I mentioned at the outset of my speech, and the handful of others like them who decided to send back their severance payments in 2002-23, who chose to accept smaller amounts, or who decided to repay part of what they had received. In the circumstances in which they found themselves, and, I hope, in the circumstances they saw their constituents facing, they made a personal choice to do the right thing. I hope that at the end of this debate they will make another personal choice and again decide to do the right thing. They have the opportunity today to restore the rules on severance payments to the purpose for which they were originally intended, and to fix the system that, sadly, their colleagues have broken. If they do not take this opportunity, the conclusion we will have to draw—perhaps the right conclusion after all—is that the only way to get the change we need in this country will be to elect a Labour Government and put on the Benches opposite MPs and Ministers who believe in serving their communities, not just in helping themselves.
Esther McVey
I will carry on for a little while longer. I want to talk about what the Opposition are doing today, which is, as I said at the outset, seizing the business of the day and trying to make this a case for emergency legislation, which it is not. So many emergencies confront the country and the world, and it is striking that of all those emergencies—it could be the middle east, it could be Ukraine, it could be illegal migration—the Opposition deem this to be the most important. We know why that is: it is because they have no plan to deal with any of those big issues of the day. They do not know what to say, they do not have a clue, and they change their minds, flip-flippity-flop, all the time, so they have been reduced to talking about this issue.
Given the importance that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury attaches to the issue—wanting to seize the business of the day, wanting to push through emergency legislation—can she confirm that this will be the first piece of legislation that any new Labour Government would introduce?
Emily Thornberry
No, because we are going to win the vote today. Common sense will prevail, and we will know that this has to be sorted out now. There is no need to wait for a Labour Government; you guys can help us to pass this legislation.
Esther McVey
So it is not going to happen today, but in fact the Opposition are not going to do it if they come into power—which, hopefully, they will not. That is how much of an emergency it is.
However, there is some good news here. The right hon. Lady is putting herself at the vanguard of cutting waste, which must be a first for the Labour party. Will she take this opportunity to apologise for the private finance initiative schemes that her party inflicted on the country and on much of its public services? Will she take this opportunity to apologise for the hundreds of billions of pounds’ worth of waste? I will give way to her if she would like to make an apology for those huge amounts of PFI waste.
Emily Thornberry
Could we perhaps talk about the £10 billion wasted on personal protective equipment? I really think that the Minister ought to consider talking about ministerial severance reform, but that is, of course, a matter for her.
Esther McVey
So the right hon. Lady could not apologise. She could not, or did not want to, stop the waste of hundreds of billions of pounds.
I will say this: the Government accept that the current legislation is now a third of a century old, and that this may be an appropriate time to review it and consider changes, but this is not the right time or place to take action. Proper consideration must be given to new legislation.
As Members will know, severance pay is governed by legislation. The statutory provision for ministerial severance pay is contained in the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991. It has therefore been in place for successive Administrations, and has been paid to Members of all three parties who have made ministerial office during this period. Under the Act, Ministers who leave office are entitled to a payment equivalent to a quarter of the annual salary that they were being paid in respect of the ministerial office that they are leaving. To be eligible for a payment, they must be under a certain age—65—and must not be reappointed to ministerial office within three weeks of leaving their previous office.
I note—and I thank the right hon. Lady for drawing it to my attention—that in 2022 a small number of severance payments were made incorrectly to departing Ministers. I want to make it clear that the Cabinet Office guidance to Departments is that they should seek to recover any mispayment in line with His Majesty’s Treasury’s guidance, “Managing Public Money”. While the incorrect payments were caused by an administrative error and the former Ministers concerned were at no personal fault whatsoever, it is important that the Government seek to recover that money. I am sure I am not the only one who recalls the catastrophic overpayment of tax credits when Labour was last in office, and the fact that many families got into huge difficulties because of that. It is such a shame that the right hon. Lady was not so exercised about that when they were in office.
Esther McVey
No, because we are talking about waste. We are talking about appropriate measures taking place and this faux emergency legislation that the right hon. Lady wants to bring in.
Turning to ministerial severance pay more generally, it is important to note that this is the long-standing policy that successive Governments from both sides of the House have retained. The reason they have retained it that the principle of paying severance remains sound. The Prime Minister, in his constitutional role as a principal adviser to the sovereign, can recommend the appointment and removal of Ministers at any time. This flexibility, necessary as it is within our political system, means that having a reasonable severance pay policy to reflect the uncertain nature of ministerial office has had wide support from across the House since its introduction.
Members will be aware that similar arrangements are in place for Members of Parliament, who also hold the status of officeholder. In certain circumstances, Members of Parliament who lose a seat at a general election are eligible to receive a loss of office payment. The eligibility for the loss of office payment is determined by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which is responsible for setting and regulating MPs’ salaries, pensions, business costs and expenses. Severance payments recognise the unpredictable nature of ministerial office. The fact that a Minister can lose their office with no notice when the Government or a Prime Minister change will inevitably lead to a substantial increase in the money paid out in that financial year—
Esther McVey
From a sedentary position, I get £1 million quoted at me. I remember, although maybe the right hon. Lady does not, that it was over £1 million in 2010 when Labour lost office, and that is quite a long time ago.
It is for these reasons that the Government do not currently intend to reform severance pay for departing Ministers, although I am happy to review it, as I mentioned earlier. The current system respects the essential constitutional principle that Ministers serve at the discretion of the Prime Minister and that it is right to provide some protections associated with the loss of ministerial office. The principle has applied, as I said, to all Governments since the Act was passed in 1991, and we need to be careful not to change policy on the basis of exceptions that will occasionally occur under Governments of all forms.
Esther McVey
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I think that that would be looked at under the review as well, should we review this, but the law that was set out at that time stipulated that age. That is something else that I agree would need to be looked at.
I want to be clear that severance pay cannot be looked at as a stand-alone issue. It is part of an overall picture that governs payments made to Ministers. More broadly, the Government have consistently demonstrated restraint and always sought to minimise the cost of government, at the same time as modernising ministerial office to bring it into the 21st century. This is most clearly demonstrated in the Government’s policy on ministerial pay.
Ministerial salaries today are lower than they were when this Government took office in 2010, which in real terms constitutes a significant pay cut. My noble Friend Lord Cameron introduced a 5% cut to ministerial pay when he came into office in 2010. Since then, Prime Ministers have asked Ministers to waive the increase in their statutory pay entitlement year on year. For example, ministerial salaries are roughly half—that is half—of what they would have been had Lord Cameron not introduced the salary reduction when he became Prime Minister. In April 2010, Ministers of State earned £42,370, which is £63,594 in today’s money, yet a Minister of State today receives £31,680.
I appreciate that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury did not want to reply to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), but will she confirm today that her party would continue with the ongoing cut in ministerial pay?
Emily Thornberry
That is not what the motion is about, so I am afraid that I cannot help the Minister. Is she aware that £2.9 million was spent on severance payments to all the special advisers who lost their job in the same year, 2022-23?
Esther McVey
That is well dodged again by the right hon. Lady. She will not confirm that Labour would keep a tight fiscal grip on ministerial pay. Obviously, one of the key things about today’s motion is waste and expenditure. We will see what happens. As always, money runs away with the Labour party.
This Government passed the transformative Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Act 2021, which for the first time enabled Ministers to take paid maternity leave and be replaced in their Department. Several Members have now benefited from this legislation when in office, and I am sure it will continue to be of immense value. The Government are committed to returning to Parliament in due course to set out proposals on extending the Act.
I conclude by reaffirming the Government’s commitment to recovering the money paid in error to a small number of former Ministers. I reassure the House that departmental processes have been strengthened to ensure that this error does not happen again. For the reasons I have set out, the Government do not think there should be wholesale legislative reform on this matter during this Parliament. We believe that a Government committed to the principle of integrity in public life is the most effective way to control the cost of government to the taxpayer.
In that spirit, we will continue to demonstrate restraint in how we are paid and we will continue to modernise ministerial office to meet the expectations that the public rightly have of us. The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury could not say whether her party would maintain our cuts to ministerial salaries, could not apologise for the last Labour Government wasting money on PFI schemes and could not say whether this Bill, because it is such important emergency legislation, would be the first piece of legislation introduced by a Labour Government, so we can safely conclude that the Labour party does not care about taxpayers’ money.
Emily Thornberry
I am not standing before the House saying that this motion and this legislation will fix every single issue that people can possibly think of in relation to the payment of Members of Parliament in every circumstance, but it will at least deal with the situation whereby someone can work as a Minister for two months, get three months’ severance pay and then seven weeks later go back to exactly the same job and essentially be paid twice. That is what this legislation is here to stop. Surely the hon. Gentleman can support that.
Jerome Mayhew
As I said at the start of my speech, there are elements where there is genuine cause for review, but if we followed the right hon. Lady’s train of thought, we would have thousands upon thousands of one-paragraph Acts clogging up the legislation. We need to do better than that. With responsible government, which is what we on the Government Benches try to focus on, we review appropriately, we use advice from civil servants and then we propose legislation.
Beyond the poverty of Labour’s motion drafting, there is the wider issue of ministerial pay and value for money. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) pointed out in her good speech, when the Conservatives came to power in 2010 as part of the coalition, it was not a case of just accepting what had gone before. The Government, under the leadership of David Cameron, cut ministerial salaries by 5%. More importantly, every single year since then—throughout the coalition period and the Conservative Government period—ministerial salaries have been frozen.
Let us look at value for money and the difference we get between a Labour Administration and a Conservative one. I see the Labour Whip, the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones), is in his place. In 2010, under Labour, he would have benefited from a salary of £40,926. [Hon. Members: “He doesn’t get anything.”] Under the Conservatives, that equivalent position—if he were in government—receives a salary of £17,917.
For Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State, Labour Members paid themselves £48,270 in addition to their parliamentary salaries. Under the Conservatives, that has been reduced, in modern terms, to £22,375. At Minister of State level, under the Conservatives they are paid £31,680; under Labour, they paid themselves the equivalent of £63,594—they would have had no trouble with their mortgage payments. Cabinet Ministers under the Conservatives are paid an additional £67,505; Labour thought it appropriate to pay theirs £122,598. We have heard how the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) said there was no money left, and now I am beginning to understand where it all went.
We come to the position of Prime Minister. This Prime Minister is paid an additional £75,440. Labour Prime Ministers think it appropriate to pay themselves £204,329, in today’s money, on top. When we add the Pensions Increase (Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC) Regulations 2013—the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has his own special pension arrangements from his work as Director of Public Prosecutions, disapplying any lifetime allowance for him, not for anyone else—to £204,329 for being Prime Minister, plus his MP’s salary of £86,584, it is no wonder he votes Labour. He can afford to be a socialist.
The question for Labour is, will it commit today to continue the freeze on ministerial salaries? The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury was asked that by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West, and she was unable to answer it. I gave her the opportunity again to answer it, and she refused. If she does not know the answer, perhaps she can write to me.
Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey).
Queen Elizabeth was just 10 years old when her uncle abdicated and she became heir to the throne. She was just 13 when war broke out, and in the six years that followed we saw the pattern of her whole life to come: standing with her people at home and across the Commonwealth in those dark hours, sharing in their grief when her own uncle fell in service, leading our national celebrations when victory and freedom were finally secured and, throughout the war, setting the perfect example by rolling up her sleeves and doing her bit for the collective effort.
Yet, while the second world war inspired millions to incredible feats and brought out the very best in our country, what we saw in those years from the young Princess Elizabeth was what we would come to understand as her normal. For the next seven decades she continued to set the perfect example of dedicated, selfless, timeless service and to embody the values that unite our people. She continued to share our grief when tragedy struck the nation, whether it was Aberfan or Dunblane or 7/7, when so many people in Islington were killed. She did not buckle when it touched her own family; she continued to stand with us in our darkest and most fearful hours, all the more so when she gave those messages of hope and courage that inspired all of us at the start of the pandemic. She continued to lead our national celebrations right up to the point in recent years when the biggest, most united celebrations of all were to mark her own birthdays and jubilees.
The Queen did all that for us; she lived her life for us. While she may have visited 200 hospitals or 2,000 schools, cut 5,000 ribbons, awarded 20,000 medals and shaken the hands of hundreds of thousands, she never forgot for one moment that although those daily duties were nothing out of the ordinary for her, they were deeply special for everyone she met, and she ensured that each of those individuals would go away with a unique memory of what she had said to them, how she had smiled at them and the interest that she took in their service to the country. For so many people, those encounters with the Queen will be remembered as the greatest moments in their lives.
I know that in Islington at the moment, lists are being compiled of the visits that she made to our borough and stories are being shared of the many times that we had the opportunity to see her and experience a meeting with her. We join today to thank the Queen for nine decades of devoted service, every one of them filled with her setting the right example; filled with giving her people courage, sympathy and joy; filled with making others feel special and doing it all day after day, year after year, right up until the very end. That record of duty would be unfathomable, astonishing and worthy of celebration in this House even if she had been a humble librarian or a long-serving charity volunteer, but to do all that in the pressure of her roles as heir to the throne and Head of State places her public service on a pinnacle that is unmatched in the history of our country and the like of which we will never see again.
On behalf of the Honourable Artillery Company, the Charterhouse and Farringdon Crossrail, all with whom she shared particularly strong links, and on behalf of the people of Islington South and Finsbury, who loved her so dearly, I thank you, ma’am. God save the King.