Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Debate between Mark Field and John Stanley

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) has performed a signal service to the House by initiating this debate. I congratulate him on his pertinent and important contribution.

I declare an interest. I am one of the 128 MPs who are no longer able to claim expenses for accommodation in London, even though—my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) rightly alluded to this—my journey time correctly measured from my front door to my House of Commons office door is some two hours, and that is on days when it is not snowing.

I want to make five quick points. First, under section 5 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, IPSA is under clear statutory consultation obligations. I believe that IPSA was in clear breach of those statutory obligations in respect of MPs like myself whose constituencies were not specifically identified either in the Kelly report or in IPSA’s own consultation document as constituencies where the MPs were likely to be deprived of their London accommodation expenses, virtually without notice. I consider that the treatment by IPSA of this group of MPs, particularly those who have rental contracts, has been wholly unacceptable.

The chronology ran as follows. On 29 March this year, IPSA published its MPs expenses scheme, and the MPs concerned learned, out of the blue, that they would no longer obtain reimbursement for their rental contracts. The expenses scheme was brought into statutory effect on the very same date by Mr Speaker laying the expenses scheme before the House. A few days later, on 12 April, Parliament was dissolved, and the MPs concerned therefore lost any ability to contest or to object to the provisions that had been included in the expenses scheme.

Polling day was a few weeks later on 6 May, and the IPSA expenses scheme came into legal effect on the following day, 7 May. Those MPs with rental contracts found themselves unable to claim reimbursement for their rental payments under those contracts with immediate effect. I believe this was a serious breach of IPSA’s statutory consultation obligations. If any employer, whether in the public or the private sector, had treated their people in the same way, they would face serious liability for damages in front of an employment tribunal.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I hope my right hon. Friend will recognise that we are not employees in any sense. We are self-employed. Had he lost his seat on 6 May, there would have been no question of reimbursement from public funds for his rental contract, however much time remained unfilled.

[Sir John Stanley]

There is an important point on the status of MPs, to which I shall come later. If they were self-employed, they would determine their own expenses scheme. They emphatically are not doing so.

The second point is that in its expenses scheme, IPSA produced a schedule of what it described as “fundamental principles”. An important fundamental principle is fundamental principle 2. It reads:

“Members of Parliament have the right to be reimbursed for unavoidable costs where they are incurred wholly, exclusively, and necessarily in the performance of their parliamentary duties, but not otherwise.”

It is an illustration of the sad and regrettable fact that the IPSA board members have not adequately informed themselves about what is involved in the work of an MP that that principle, which IPSA says is fundamental, has not been complied with in a number of cases. I want to explain one such case.

As all of us know, what are deemed to be outer London Members—which includes a huge swathe representing constituencies in the home counties—regularly make day visits to their constituencies wholly for parliamentary purposes, such as to attend a school or a meeting with their health authority, but none of the travel costs for such trips are reimbursable under the IPSA expenses scheme unless the Member goes to his or her constituency office, which might be wholly irrelevant to the purpose of the journey. That is one illustration of IPSA failing to comply with what it describes as a fundamental principle, and I have no doubt that other Members can think of further situations when they have incurred expenses

“wholly, exclusively, and necessarily in the performance of their parliamentary duties”

that have not been reimbursed.

My third point is about a term with which we are all very familiar: maladministration. In the Westminster Hall debate initiated by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), countless examples of maladministration by IPSA were given. It is very regrettable that in putting together the legislation that is the basis for IPSA, the previous Government failed to apply to IPSA as a statutory quango the same right of redress as applies in respect of a host of similar bodies—namely, the right for an individual to make a complaint of maladministration, in this case to the parliamentary ombudsman. It is equally regrettable that the current Government have thus far failed to address that.

I submitted a written parliamentary question on that point to the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, which was answered this week:

“The remit of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (the Parliamentary Ombudsman) is updated annually. As part of this exercise, consideration is given to whether bodies established in year should be brought within the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s remit.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 560W.]

The parliamentary ombudsman’s remit is under constant examination, and I believe IPSA should forthwith be brought within its remit so that Members of Parliament—and possibly others, such as Members’ staff—can make a complaint of maladministration against IPSA to the parliamentary ombudsman.

My fourth point is that in any properly functioning democracy it is, of course, essential that Ministers and Members of Parliament are not in any way above the law, but equally in any properly functioning democracy Members of Parliament should have the same rights in law as are available to other individuals who are engaged in their occupational work. Under IPSA, however, Members of Parliament are uniquely disadvantaged in law. IPSA is effectively performing the functions of the employer: in any walk of life it is the employer who determines what expenses can be claimed for, how they should be claimed for and so forth, and those are exactly IPSA’s functions. In any other walk of life, the employee—the person working—would be able to go to an employment tribunal. Members are not self-employed; we have employed status for tax purposes. IPSA is the employer in that it determines the expenses framework, but Members are, I believe, the only occupational group in this country who have employed status but no right of recourse to an employment tribunal. That should change, and we should have the same rights as every other occupation group, solely, I stress, in relation to IPSA and the performance of its expenses function and emphatically not—I repeat, not—in relation to the electorate.

My fifth and final point is about parliamentary privilege. Of the privileges that we have, one of the most important for the benefit of our constituents is the fundamental privilege of freedom from obstruction in the performance of our parliamentary duties. In our debates about IPSA, Member after Member has referred to the way in which they as Members, or their staff assisting them, have been obstructed by IPSA—by its bureaucratic processes, failure to answer the telephone and the 1,001 things to which Members have referred—in terms of the severe loss of time while dealing with the authority and its procedures. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor, in his House magazine article on 8 November, said of IPSA:

“It actively obstructs Members in their efforts to represent the people who elect them,”

and he was absolutely correct.

I am in no doubt that this issue—the relationship between IPSA and parliamentary privilege—should be brought before the Standards and Privileges Committee. As the House knows, under current procedures, which in my view are outdated and urgently need to be reformed, the only way in which an individual Member can put a complaint about a breach of privilege in front of that Committee is by means of making a precedence motion application to Mr Speaker. Most right hon. and hon. Members know that I have made such an application because there is no doubt whatever in my mind that many Members are being materially obstructed in the performance of their parliamentary duties by IPSA, but my application was, sadly, unsuccessful.

I hope that right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House will not be deterred by the fate of my application; I hope that other Members will consider making an application to Mr Speaker; and I very much hope that their persuasions in relation to Mr Speaker on this issue are superior to my own.