Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones). I think, however, that she misunderstood the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), because if anybody on the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority or the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority had to apply for their own expenses in the way that Members of Parliament are required, they would have a greater understanding of either the problems that IPSA had in setting up a scheme under time pressure or the mistakes that were made when it was set up.

At the risk of boring you, Mr Speaker, I just want to mention the first fact, which is relevant to SCIPSA. When we do our own expenses, we have to get a barcode on a screen. It takes more than the number of fingers on my hand to get it printed out, but everyone has to have it printed out. What most people do not know is that when that gets posted with the receipts to IPSA, the first thing IPSA does is generate another barcode to stick on the bits of paper that we put a barcode on in the first place. I suspect that SCIPSA should be interested in following a claim from a Member’s PA through the Member to IPSA and in asking the IPSA members whether they tried the scheme before they imposed it on people in the House of Commons.

The second point on which I want to disagree with the hon. Lady is that I do not think that those who appoint the members of IPSA should necessarily be paid the same as us. It is quite clear—I say this just to make friends—that there cannot be a serious pay increase for Members of Parliament during this Parliament, but we ought to have a system to ensure that people who are elected after the next general election get a level of pay whereby being a general practitioner in politics is equivalent to being a general practitioner in medicine. If a Member of Parliament is not worth it, we should change the Member of Parliament, not lower the rate of pay.

I believe it is wrong to say that the lay members of SCIPSA should be people who represent a range of jobs throughout the economy. It is far better that they should have had the experience of being the human resources and personnel director of a major company. It is important that they have had some experience, as a civil service commissioner would have had, of seeing what appointments are like. The fact of making appointments matters most and my personal belief is that if the hon. Lady, I or any of the other right hon. and hon. Members in the Chamber had been in charge of appointing members of IPSA, they would have the same kinds of talent as the present members but would not have made the same decisions. IPSA had a virtually impossible job to do to begin with and it did not do it brilliantly. I hope that SCIPSA will say to IPSA, “What do you think you’ve done wrong and how can we ensure that the wrongs get righted and that further wrongs are not created in the future?” The present system, frankly, would be better put in a wastepaper basket and I hope that the members of SCIPSA help to do that.

Question put and agreed to.

Public Accounts Commission

Ordered,

That Dr Stella Creasy, Mr Edward Leigh, Mrs Anne McGuire and John Pugh be appointed, and that Dr William McCrea be discharged as members of the Public Accounts Commission under section 2(2)(c) of the National Audit Act 1983.—(Mr Heath.)