Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Joan Walley Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Adam Afriyie]

Hear, hear! Absolutely. The system seems almost designed to create a Parliament for the wealthy. If a Member does not have sufficient resources to subsidise themselves, they become ensnared in a vice-like grip designed to bring them into disrepute—they have to produce every single receipt for some sort of personal item. Wealthier Members or those with independent means, of course, can simply not claim. As I look around both sides of the Chamber, I know that probably not a single Member here has claimed everything that they are entitled to claim—first, through fear of the public and the media really having a go, or secondly, because it is too complicated and time-consuming to do so.

We have to ask ourselves whether the public want such a system for their Parliament. The wealthy swan through, buy their way out of the system with no trouble at all and are treated as saints when they are nothing of the sort, and everyone else is stuck in the system.

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the main issues is that IPSA does not seem to have understood that MPs have responsibilities and duties in their constituency and similarly here in Parliament? The current system does not take that into account, so the costs of one or the other have to be subsidised, or can be met by those who have wealth. If MPs do not have that wealth, they are simply unable to meet the costs of operating in two places at once.

[Adam Afriyie]

Exactly that debate was had in 1911. After the Osborne judgment, Labour Members could no longer be funded by the unions, which meant, in effect, that they were destitute. Then, in 1911, a flat rate—a beautifully simple Members’ allowance— was introduced at £400 a year. Members were told: “There you go. This is not a salary, a remuneration, a reimbursement of expenses or a payment in kind for services; it is merely an allowance that recognises that there are costs associated with being here, and Members are trusted to organise their lives in the way that is necessary.”

One cannot second-guess and legislate for the topography of every seat or the lifestyles—the changing lifestyles—of every MP, or for the reproduction rates of MPs: we are now on our fifth. One cannot create a system that takes into account whether the trains are working or whether it is going to snow and being told only at 5 o’clock in the evening. There is no way that the route that IPSA is currently pursuing will satisfy the needs of the public to have a Parliament that functions effectively.