Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I do not intend to say much in this debate, but I would like to express an incredible amount of thanks to Bronwen Curtis. I have been on the Speaker’s Committee for just over two years now and, like the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan), I found everything she said in those meetings to be incredibly useful and insightful. It was from a position of great knowledge, and also from a position of not being a Member of Parliament, which I think is incredibly useful because she could perhaps see things from outside and take a step back from those of us involved in the minutiae of problems and discussions with IPSA.

I would not like Members in this House to think that SCIPSA is a Committee where we sit quietly. At every meeting that I have had, particularly when IPSA has been represented, we have taken it to task over various issues and problems that have arisen. I would agree entirely about the issues that there have been with the online system. I would also raise the issue that the online system has cost an awful lot more than we expected it would, and SCIPSA has not been backwards in coming forwards on that. We have said to IPSA on many occasions that this is a real problem.

I think Mr Blausten, if the motion is approved, will find the Committee incredibly interesting. I hope that he will go in trying to learn as much as possible about it and, as the right hon. Lady said, perhaps shadow a Member of Parliament, so that he understands exactly how things work in Parliament and how the Member of Parliament’s job works. As I say, the main thing I wanted to do was to thank Bronwen Curtis for all her incredibly hard work and the way in which she treated me, as a new member, when I joined the Committee. I found she was very kind, and she looked out for me a bit when I first joined the Committee, so I am pleased that she was on that Committee.