Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Lord Mann Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I am just wondering which category I fall into: the rich or the junior anoraks with no experience of life.

New Members will have read the previous debates. They will have seen that there was a debate not only in January 2009, but in July 2008. They will have studied that debate. One need not read it for too long, however, because one is rehearing it today. I tabled an amendment on 3 July 2008. Unfortunately, my amendment did not manage to persuade the Speaker that it should be selected. So it is today, but there has been some progress, because today I have been called to speak in the debate, unlike in 2008. In that debate, a year before the expenses scandal became a public issue, the same arguments were made. That was exactly a year before—well, not exactly: it was nine months before—The Daily Telegraph got that leaked information, and the rest, as we say, is history. That debate of 3 July 2008 is therefore of significance and relevance. The same Westminster club, with its desire for a special status in society, was eloquently defended then in the same way that we have heard this afternoon. The rich or the junior anoraks with no experience of life? Well, I am not rich: I have no inherited wealth, no wealth siphoned away—

[Nadine Dorries]

And no friends.

[John Mann]

We hear the same kind of abuse that I got following that debate—some of it to my face; some was behind my back. My proposal then—new Members might want to listen carefully to this—was that the House should debar the practice of flipping. If that had been agreed, it is eminently predictable that the issue of mortgages would not have been resurrected in the way that it was the year after. An acceptable solution would have been in place as would a coherent system of mortgages. However, the House was not interested in listening to that, because, despite the fact that my resolution was passed, even though I could not get a seconder—I had read “Erskine May” and I knew the procedures—the powers that be managed to bury its implications. It was not enacted and a high price was paid.

The principle at issue is simple—this is why I back the independence of IPSA: should we cede our ability to determine how the rules on expenses are set and managed to an independent body or not? I can criticise how things are done; indeed, I have and some of my criticisms were listened to but some were not. We can all take a view on what the system should be, but the principle remains: should we cede the authority to determine these matters to IPSA—an independent body—or not? That was the basis on which we legislated, and the motion, which would have been improved by my amendment, which unfortunately has not been selected, breaks that principle.

I oppose and shall vote against the motion because it says that MPs should have the power to determine such matters. That was the fundamental weakness in the previous expenses system. There is a lot of history and reason behind all this, but there is also reason for the state we are in. I remind the House that we are about to go through a series of court cases and that others might follow. The media will be full of that and so will our constituents. We are in that state of play because of the previous expenses system. The fundamental weakness was not just in the detail but in the principle: the public rightly hated the fact that we set our own terms and conditions.

We rightly broke with that principle and it was inevitable that a new system starting from scratch would have a lot of problems—some of us said so at the time and feared it. Whoever set up the system, whether it was this chap Kennedy with his IPSA, Sir Christopher Kelly with his committee and his review or any other body, it would have had significant problems because of the complexity of the arrangements. Arbitrary decisions will be made, as they are in every expenses system. When I ran a business, I set the system for my employees and contractors, and when I was a union representative, I negotiated and tried to improve expenses systems. Of course, there were arbitrary decisions that I thought unfair when I was operating within other systems, but there always will be in any independent system. This all comes back to whether we set the system. That is the breach point; the motion would break that principle and that is why it is fundamentally wrong.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Many new Members on the Government Benches have no issue with the principle of an independent, transparent organisation. As someone who publishes all her expenses on her website, I entirely support the move. The hon. Gentleman talked about creating something from scratch. Rather than going out and buying an off-the-shelf system that could have been provided by numerous companies around the world, we have been compelled to reinvent the wheel and we have ended up with a square wheel that is gold-plated at best. Surely, the hon. Gentleman, with his business experience, will have come across multiple organisations that could have done that for 650 Members. We are not a multi-million pound organisation with hundreds of thousands of employees. We are a small organisation that is struggling to do the best thing by British taxpayers and our constituents. I totally support the motion that my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) has tabled as a way of doing it better.

[John Mann]

If the hon. Lady supports the motion, she supports a break in the fundamental principle on which we legislated. [Hon. Members: “Read it! It doesn’t say that. You can’t read.”] Would hon. Members like to listen? [Hon. Members: “Can’t you read? Read it!”] Hon. Members choose to shout abuse. Yes, I can read, I have read the motion, and I have seen what the principle is. Hon. Members should read the 2008 debate and see the problem with the culture of MPs trying to determine the detail of their own expenses.

I refute the point made by the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie), who moved the motion, that MPs cannot do their job under the new system. I can do my job under the new system as well as I did it in the past. Nothing is restricting me in the range of things I do, or in how I interpret and do my job. I put it to him that mine is not the least busy of offices, and I am not taking on the least onerous amounts of work. In my estimation, IPSA has improved month on month, and will continue to do so. That is the salient point when starting a new system. I can see only a few areas where further improvement would have a significant impact.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and I understand his problem with the motion. As a new Member, I welcome a transparent and publicly accountable expenses system that all can see, and I understand his problem—he thinks that Parliament is attempting to control IPSA in some way. However, he must recognise that this place has a duty of care to the taxpayer. How would he hold IPSA, and its expenses and costs, to account? I believe strongly that it does not provide good value for money. I have no particular beef with how it administers the system—although other hon. Members do—but will he explain how the House, which pays for IPSA with revenue raised from taxation, will hold it to account?

[John Mann]

When the House passed the relevant legislation, it put in place such processes. Similar processes were in place before. Although the Speaker did not select my amendment, he has the ability and power to do that now, and he uses that power to the best of his ability.

Earlier, from a sedentary position, certain hon. Members shouted, “Read it!”. So I will read out the motion, in case anyone else has not done so fully. It concludes that

“if these objectives are not reflected in a new scheme set out by the IPSA in time for operation by 1 April 2011, the Leader of the House should make time available for the amendment of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 to do so.”

That is a fundamental step over the line between the House ceding authority to an independent body and not doing so. It might well be that an independent body establishes and maintains an expenses system that no Members of Parliament are happy with, but the moment the principle is accepted of ceding that authority, as has been done on salaries as well, that principle cannot be breached.

It is reasonable, of course, for me and other Members to raise with IPSA, or indeed any other independent body, criticisms we have and improvements we would make—and I have done so. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) raised the issue of the travel card. I have raised that precise point with IPSA and suggested that its systems on that are far too bureaucratic, too onerous on Members and too expensive. I would consider that a sensible improvement. I have made that point, and I hope that it listens. It is right and proper that the House expresses concerns about the detail. I share the concerns, as I am sure does the hon. Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), about some of the appointments at the top of IPSA. I do not think it needs all these high-falutin’ executives in post and being paid. So I totally agree with him, if that is the point he was alluding to.

[George Hollingbery]

indicated assent.

[John Mann]

I totally and absolutely agree on that point. That is a criticism I would make. However, that should not obscure the principle, and if we roll back the principle with this motion, we will be back to where we were on 3 July 2008, and we will be saying that it is for us to decide our pay and conditions. It is precisely that problem that created the system that led to the disregard in which we are still held by the British people. The fact that they believe we are all at it—all on the make—is not simply a temporary blip. For many of them that description will continue for a long time to characterise their perception of their Members of Parliament, which will bring about a fundamental weakness in our democracy.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) on securing the debate. I am a new Member, one of the 2010 intake. I campaigned against the abuse of expenses, and to this day I am disgusted by it. My concern is very simple: the time that I spend fiddling around with the expenses system is time that I cannot spend helping my constituents. That is my prime concern, and the prime reason why I support the motion.

[John Mann]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the amount of time that my staff and I have to spend on the system is greater than it was before, but I recall the system as it was before. As we have learnt from what has emerged, in those days a signature would do, and the scandals that followed made it clear that that was not sufficient. No organisation in the country that experienced such a level of scandal related to expenses would not have introduced a requirement for every box to be ticked and every receipt to be monitored. We cannot set ourselves a lower standard than we would expect of any corporation, or any other part of the public sector out there.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I would have supported the hon. Gentleman’s amendment had Mr Speaker called it, because I thought its tone admirable. My point concerns the independence of any regulator of a sovereign Parliament. The difficulty is that, although that regulator may be independent in title, what the House of Commons gives by legislation it can take by legislation. Constitutionally, therefore, IPSA cannot be independent of Parliament—and nor should it be, because if it were independent of Parliament, it would be independent of the British people.

[John Mann]

I do not think that that would be an accurate constitutional point if there were a constitution. Parliament has powers to meddle with the courts. Parliament has the power, for example, to meddle with any piece of legislation. The question is whether Parliament should cede authority over the administering of, and the meddling with, such implements.

Parliament could, at some stage, decide to abolish, but my amendment seeks to influence by threatening to abolish, which in some respects is even more invidious than simply moving to abolish. For the House to suggest, six months into a new system, that that system is too onerous to allow Members to do their job properly is absurd. Legitimate criticisms can be made on grounds of both bureaucracy and expense, but we should not reverse the principles of a decision made so recently. I warn the House that if we do, the wrath of our constituents will rightfully fall on us, because we will be saying, “The bad old days were not that bad. We will create the system that we want to fit us.” [Hon. Members: “People are not saying that.”] Actually, people are saying many different things about the expenses system that would suit them and their position best. That is the problem with creating expenses systems: we have different constituencies, and experience different circumstances in different parts of the country.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Mann]

I shall conclude on this: the principles on which we changed—because we were forced to change, because in 2008 and January 2009 we refused to change the system or even to countenance changes to the system—are the same principles today. In pointing that out some of us may have to become a little less popular, but in this case it is not us who are the extremists in the debate. In this case we are the moderates in the debate, suggesting a moderate way forward. I advise the House that in this case moderation would do well.