House of Commons (Administration) Bill

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to consider clauses 2 to 6 stand part.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

It is delightful to serve under your guidance, Mr Evans, particularly as I am sure you are going to help us to get the Bill through quite speedily.

Normally at the end of such a Committee the Member in charge of the Bill thanks members of the Committee, the Chair and so on. I will do that now, as this is an opportunity to point out that, with the help of all Members, this Committee stage will be brief. We might break my record for a Committee, which is 23 minutes, if we proceed with great haste. I thank you, Mr Evans, the members of the Committee who have come along, and the Minister, who is in effect standing in for the Treasury. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, who intervened at an appropriate stage of the Bill’s passage. The Committee will see his amendments as we proceed.

This is a little Bill to consolidate and amend provisions for the House of Commons Members’ Fund. I suspect that few Members who are not trustees will be aware of the fund—a number of members of this Committee are trustees, and the chairman of trustees is with us—other than noting a small deduction on their monthly Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority payslip. The fund was established before the second world war, when there was no parliamentary pension to help former Members who had fallen into financial difficulties. The fund has been used to top up pensions for the widows of Members who left the House when widows received a lower entitlement—that is an interesting statement, because of course it should be “spouses” nowadays, but this was before the second world war—and for a few isolated cases of hardship of former Members.

As the Committee will recognise from that description, demands on the fund have dropped as time has passed. In the last financial year, payments worked out at £137,000. As a consequence, the fund has grown over the years to a considerable £7 million. At present, the fund draws from compulsory contributions from Members, earnings from its investments and an annual contribution from the Treasury of approximately £215,000. If the Committee agrees to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, that last contribution will cease. The Bill will also remove the requirement under existing primary legislation for Members to make monthly contributions of £2. In effect, the trustees will be empowered to cease deducting contributions. Given the figures that I have just stated, I suspect that they intend to do so immediately following Royal Assent, as the fund has, to put it simply, a considerable surplus. However, the Bill will also enable them to recommend resumption of contributions, if needed, up to a maximum of 0.2% of pay. The trustees can, if they agree, return any surplus funds to the Treasury, and they have requested that discretion.

The Bill will extend the class of beneficiaries to assist all dependants of former Members who experience severe hardship. It will also remove the requirement for trustees to be current Members. I am sure the Committee agrees that it is sensible for the trustees to ask, for example, the Association of Former Members of Parliament to nominate one trustee. In addition, the Bill will enable the trustees to get over the problem that arises when, at a general election, a number of trustees lose or vacate their seat. The Bill will allow such former MPs to remain as trustees temporarily until they are formally replaced.

This is a little Bill, a sensible Bill and a tidying up Bill, and I hope the Committee will accept clauses 1 to 6.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I will not detain the Committee long. It is worth saying that, although I was not aware of this fund, I recognise that even in the smallest of such bodies, the good work of the trustees who support the work in distributing any funds should not go unrecognised, so I thank them for all their work so far. It is right that we review this matter, and I agree that this is a tidying-up Bill, but I have some questions.

The Bill does not appear to provide for circumstances in which the scheme needs to be wound up entirely. The hon. Member for Mole Valley mentioned that the fund is being called on less and less as the years go by. Would it be sensible now to consider the time when the fund is no longer required, or the scope of the changes? Now, with the contributory pension scheme, it is unlikely to be relied upon in the same way. Is there a requirement for the long-term continuance of the scheme?

I believe the repayment figure stands at about £1 million to be returned to the Treasury, at the discretion of the trustees. I wondered what the projections for the scheme over the next five years are, primarily because I wonder what the purpose could possibly be of retaining such a balance. Would it be preferable to return a greater sum? Is the Treasury the appropriate place to return the money to? Is it necessary for £6 million to remain in the fund?

[Sir Paul Beresford]

Most of what we are doing today enables the trustees to be in the position to answer most of the hon. Lady’s questions when they decide on the conditions. The refund to the Treasury will be in the hands of the trustees, and the chairman of the trustees is here to hear her. The balance at the moment is £6.5 million. It is estimated that we need about £4 million, which means that there could be a refund of £2 million, but that will be down to the trustees. One of the more modern ways of government is to devolve the decisions on these sorts of matters downwards, and I think it is appropriate to give the trustees the ability to do that, including wind-up if they wish.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 2 to 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7

Public money

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 7, page 3, line 32, leave out subsection (1).

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I thank my hon. Friend. We had a very constructive meeting on this, and as a result of his lateral thinking we went to the Government Actuary and got the situation spelled out, as he has just explained. I wish that the next time he speaks and I have to answer that he uses shorter words, because English is my second language, and sometimes barrister’s words are too long for me. I am delighted that he feels we will get gifts and bequests. My profession has a similar back-up system but I do not think that the bequests are quite the same as the legal profession seems to manage. I certainly support his amendments.

Amendment 1 agreed to.

Amendments made: 2, in clause 7, page 3, line 34, leave out subsection (2)

Amendment 3, in clause 7, page 3, line 35, leave out subsection (3)

Amendment 4, in clause 7, page 4, line 1, leave out “under subsection (1)” and insert

“by the Treasury (under an enactment repealed by this Act), and”

Amendment 5, in clause 7, page 4, line 4, leave out subsection (5)

Amendment 6, in clause 7, page 4, line 6, leave out “subsection (4)” and insert “this section”

Amendment 7, in clause 7, page 4, line 7, leave out subsection (7)—(Mr Chope.)

Clause 7, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8

Tax

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

I would like, very briefly, to explore with the Minister why the Government hold the view that the two estimates should remain separate and that the Bill should not even be permissive on the subject of merging the two estimates. One estimate covers a maximum of £22 million of public expenditure in the context of £700 billion of expenditure. The Members estimate, for which the House is responsible, is something of an anomaly now. It is effectively residual following the setting up of IPSA. It is not possible for the sums spent to be increased by a decision, say, of the Commission or of any other House body because the pay and rations for MPs are now dealt with exclusively by IPSA.

Effectively, the Members estimate covers residual things such as Short money, which is wholly conditioned by a resolution of the House and not open to serious adjustment via any other mechanism, as well as the computers and stationery that Members use. I think that is just about it now. It is not an extensive budget head and there is not much scope for it to expand.

In an ideal and virtuous world, we would be looking at ways of merging these necessary expenditures with the main functions of IPSA. Certainly it seems odd that the Government are not even keeping the idea alive. Parliamentary vehicles such as this Bill do not come along very often. I fully accept that the Government are assisting with this one so I will not push my point too far. I wish the Bill well. The hon. Member for Mole Valley, who I will call my hon. Friend, has done well to get the Bill this far, and I appreciate the generally constructive approach that the Government are taking as, indeed, previous Governments did when they tried to get a similar measure through. I just think that the Government may have got it wrong on whether the estimates—not the monies—could be merged at some future point.

Such a merger could not take place before 2017 in any event. The Treasury would have to agree to it, as would the other parties, before anything like that could be done. The idea is that agreeing to it now would somehow commit the Treasury, but it is not as though anybody could do that. The Treasury would still have to consent. It seems to me a bit narrow of the Government—it clearly is the Government—to insist that that not be a route taken at some stage in the future. From a House of Commons point of view, it might be sensible to at least leave the option open and to leave legislative provision, perhaps making it clearer on Report that the Treasury would have to consent before anything such as this could be done.

In an ideal world, that is the approach we would take. There may be some Member resistance because of dissatisfaction with IPSA, but that would be about the functioning of IPSA rather than the merging of the estimates. The Minister was open enough to say that this was opposed, but she did not explain why. I would like to hear that explanation.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I hope we can resolve this issue because, to be quite blunt, this is an opportunist clause put in for an opportune moment, and it looks to me as though—to use a colonial phrase—we were rumbled. I therefore support the Minister’s position, particularly as the clause is not related to the fund itself directly or the management of the fund.

On the assumption that it is appropriate to do so, I will speak briefly to amendment 11, which is to the schedule. This is a belt and braces amendment for the trustees, because it allows them to make arrangements under which a commercial institution could undertake the commitments or liabilities of the fund. That follows the thinking of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.

[Dr Coffey]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he just said. Let me say in response to the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East that there has been considerable consideration of this issue by my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Treasury. The Government believe that merging the Administration and the Members estimates, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, would require relinquishing Government oversight of the Members estimate and therefore reducing the Government’s ability to scrutinise costs. Given the current fiscal environment, the Treasury would like to continue to be able to offer that scrutiny and support to the House of Commons to keep expenditure down. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley mentioned, we are keen for the Bill to go forward, but we are also keen to keep that scrutiny.