Ministerial Severance: Reform

Debate between Matt Western and Fleur Anderson

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is my birthday today, and I can think of no higher honour on this day than being called to speak in the House of Commons. I consider it an enormous honour to serve as the Member of Parliament for the good and amazing people of Putney, Southfields, Roehampton and Wandsworth town.

I am speaking about 97 Ministers who must have thought all their birthdays had come at once in the summer of chaos, when they were handed additional sums that were excessive and undeserved. We are throwing a light on the ministerial severance pay scandal today.

This debate’s importance has been questioned by Conservative Members, but I say it absolutely is important. Indeed, it goes to the heart of our democracy. When we stand here in the House of Commons—even on our birthday—and when we go out into our constituency to ask what issues we should take back to vote on in this House, it is all based on the trust and confidence of our constituents. Issues such as the additional, excessive and undeserved ministerial severance pay bring this House into disrepute and question the confidence that our constituents have. The latest poll of trust by Ipsos showed that only 9% of voters trust politicians to tell the truth. That is the lowest level since Ipsos started asking that question in 1983, and it is down from a pretty low bar of 12% in 2022. In June last year, research by the Institute for Public Policy Research showed that just 6% of the public have full trust in the current political system. Those are sobering statistics, and it does not have to be this way.

The longer this Government cling on to office, the more out of touch they are and the more people feel that it is one rule for them and another for the rest of us. The complete Tory chaos of the summer of 2022 has had a long-term effect on our economy, with crippling mortgage bills for my constituents. It also resulted in a summer of huge payoffs for Ministers who waltzed in and out of office, having done very little, because they did not have the time and ability to do much. They picked up not only extra pay for that time in office, but then the severance pay.

Let me give a real-world example now. I have been campaigning for a long time for my constituents on the cladding crisis. All through that summer, that issue was, in effect, put on hold because there were only temporary Ministers in place; they knew they would not be in power for very long, so they could not make any decisions. A whole summer was lost on an issue of huge importance to my constituents. So we are not just dealing with an abstract issue about pay and conditions, because that summer of chaos has had real-world consequences.

I thank my right hon. Friend the shadow Attorney General for uncovering the extent of this and the fact that in 2022-23 alone, the total bill for Ministers’ severance pay was an unacceptable £933,000. Many had their jobs for just a few weeks in the dying days of Boris Johnson’s time or during the doomed 45-day premiership of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss)—I informed her I would be mentioning her. They received three months’ severance pay, but one returned to the Cabinet after six weeks, another after two months, another after three and a half months and another after four months. One returned to exactly the same job nine weeks after leaving, but they still received the full 12 weeks’ severance pay.

This Labour motion would stop that and reduce the amount of severance pay for serial Cabinet returnees. The amount should not be three months’ pay regardless of time served. Some Ministers served for just seven weeks and received the full three months’ pay. Fifty-seven Ministers served for less than the three months. Some have returned the money and, as other Members have said, that is to be commended. However, many have not done so, and we do not know the extent of how many have returned it, because, as has been pointed out, we will not receive the departmental accounts for a long time. Five Ministers also received a total of almost £50,000 despite being ineligible because they were over 65. Whether or not being 65 should have any bearing on someone receiving severance pay is an issue for another day, but the fact that this was delivered incompetently, as well as wrongly, is an issue.

I would like to make the comparison with Lord Rooker, who served for 26 years in this House as the Member for Perry Barr and has served with equal distinction in the other place for more than 20 years since. He is a hugely dedicated parliamentarian and public servant. He gave 11 and a half years’ continuous service as a Minister, from May 1997 to October 2008, before he finally stepped down, at the age of 67. Despite that length of service, he received no severance payment, because those were the rules. Yet under the current rules someone can be a Minister for two days and still receive three months’ severance pay. The rules were not intended to apply to the circumstances we saw in the last two years, and they need to be reformed, as the Minister said in her opening remarks. While we would welcome such reforms, we do not believe the Government are willing to undertake them, which is why we have brought forward the motion.

For far too long, Conversative Ministers have been paid off for jumping aboard a sinking ship. That is nothing short of a complete waste of taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and they have brought a system put in place in 1991 into disrepute. Labour is calling for urgent action, because we cannot afford another million-pound bill if the latest Conversative Prime Minister cannot keep his party together.

All this comes at a time when the country has been going through the worst cost of living crisis in generations. The draining of resources is simply disgraceful. I ran a community centre before I became an MP, so I think about the amount we spent on different projects and the good those projects brought to our community, compared to the money that has been wasted. There is a feeling on the doorstep that we are all on the take. The policy on ministerial severance pay adds to that feeling.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, as always. What hits home for me is the fact that the payment of some £33,570 made to the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Sir Brandon Lewis) is almost identical to the mean average salary of a UK citizen, yet that was just a bonus payoff. Does my hon. Friend agree that is an outrage?

[Fleur Anderson]

I agree, as would all our constituents. It does not seem right that in many cases those large sums of money have been paid out for such a short term of service. That is not what the system was designed to do, so the system must be reformed. It is high time that the system, exposed by the Conservative summer of chaos that resulted in nearly £1 million paid out to a conveyor belt of Tory Ministers, is reviewed.

To ensure the public get good value for money from their Government Ministers, Labour is making sensible and reasonable proposals today, which should be supported by all Members of the House. Labour will change the rules so that failed Ministers who have been in post for only a matter of weeks are no longer entitled to a quarter of their final top annual salary. Instead, they will receive a quarter of their actual earnings as a Minister over the previous 12 months, minus any period covered by a previous severance entitlement. If they return to a ministerial position after three weeks but within a period equivalent to the number of days of salary they were paid in severance, they must return the corresponding amount of their severance payment. At the moment, that is up to the good will of a Minister who, out of the goodness of their heart, returns the money. The system should not be left like that—it should be clearcut.

Labour will also ensure that any Minister who has had to leave their job while they are being investigated for misconduct has their severance suspended, and then cancelled altogether if the allegations are upheld. We should not have to put forward this legislation: the reforms should be obvious and should have been introduced as soon as the system was brought into disrepute by former Members. It should not be up to the Opposition to call out the Government on the failure of the system.

Labour will go much further, if we have the honour of becoming the next Government. We will introduce an integrity and ethics commission to clean up our politics, because trust in our politics has plummeted to an all-time low in recent years. It is up to us in the Labour party to clean up politics, to restore trust and to show that it is not one rule for them and another for us. We are putting the Government on notice: if they will not clean up our politics, Labour will.

Trade Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Matt Western and Fleur Anderson

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Q On the TRA, what is your view in terms of what structure it should be—you mentioned the two chairs that we have lost in a fairly short period of time—in terms of the make-up and the origin, and who approves their appointment?

Sam Lowe: Having read the Trade Bill, I think the approach seems broadly sensible. I do not have it in front of me at the moment, but I believe the Secretary of State approves the chair; and then the chair makes a recommendation on the chief executive, subject to sign-off of the Secretary of State, unless the chair is not there, in which case the Secretary of State does it. I understand it is an independent body to the Government, but it obviously needs to have close ties with the Department for International Trade.

[Fleur Anderson]

Q In terms of global best practice on trade agreements, if there was a ranking system, with nought being no parliamentary scrutiny at all and 10 being maximum parliamentary scrutiny plus civil society involvement, what score or ranking would you give the Trade Bill? What are the downsides of not having much parliamentary scrutiny? Can you give us examples of what things can be improved in trade agreements by more parliamentary scrutiny and involvement?

Sam Lowe: Taking into account the current scope of the Bill, which is to achieve continuity, it is slightly unique in that sense. However, I agree with a comment by an earlier witness: if there is not going to be further legislation to lay down the scope for Parliament’s engagement in future trade agreements, it seems to me that it would be possible to expand the remit of the Bill to cover that. I think that is right, in that the Trade Remedies Authority and GPA provisions are forward-looking, so there is no reason why you could not do that as well.

The UK’s general approach to scrutiny is very poor. I think parliamentary scrutiny is very poor. Parliament has very little ability to influence trade negotiations or set the agenda of trade negotiations. To my mind, it has—[Inaudible]—yes/no vote. Just from a democratic point of view that seems slightly out of order to me, in that, when we compare it with the US or the EU, Parliament at the crudest level has a yes/no option on whether to approve a trade agreement or not. As a result it is much more involved with the process. That is something I should like changed. Of course that is not currently in the scope of the Bill, but if the Government are not going to introduce further legislation, I would understand if the scope of the Bill was expanded.

Trade Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Matt Western and Fleur Anderson

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Fleur Anderson]

Q My second question is about the impact on developing countries. What is your assessment of the impact on developing countries of creating the TRA and the new negotiations it will have, and the impact on our poverty reduction commitment as a country? How will you be able to uphold that within the TRA?

Simon Walker: I am not sure that is really in our domain. I am very sympathetic to your point, but I am not sure how much that is in the remit of the TRA as such. Our professional teams will be trying to establish whether there is dumping, for example, from a particular country, and the sale of a product below its cost in that other country. If that is contrary to the economic interests of the UK, the TRA will try to assess that as objectively as possible. It is conceivable—I do not think it likely, but it is conceivable—that that might be from a developing country. There are shields for developing countries against an awful lot of tariffs—that is an element of exports that I hope will help them—and I certainly do not see developing countries being a big part of our focus, but I do not think that our remit is to look specifically at that.

[Matt Western]

Q Mr Walker, some of your opening comments were about just how expensive those sorts of interventions are, because of the amount of legal work involved. What sort of budget will you be working to? Do you think that the scale of the operation needs to be established in terms of the financial basis and the purpose and remit of the organisation? How is that funded and have you looked at relative nations, such as South Korea, to see the scale of their operations and how we compare?

Simon Walker: I have not looked at other nations in that sort of competitive way. I suppose that what I have looked at is, as an organisation of not quite 100 people that might grow to 140 or 150 people—that sort of size—what it will take to run an organisation like that in terms of personnel with professional qualifications. It is not that hard to arrive at a budget for that kind of organisation, because it is not as if we are going to be paying for the submissions that are made to us. We are obviously taxpayer funded and our proposed budget—we are not in existence until the legislation is passed—is laid down by the Department. I think it is pretty much what anyone would expect, within a relatively modest scale, for an arm’s length body. Does that answer your question?