Members’ Salaries

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

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

My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) was right to agree with what our right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) said. It would be impossible for the House to accept a pay increase in these circumstances. The recommendation for people in the national health service who earn below £21,000 a year is that they should receive an extra £250 in a year. For us to take 1% on our pay would not work in these circumstances.

I do not know why people are afraid of setting their own pay, but that is not the system we have decided on. We have decided that it will be done through independent determination by IPSA as we had previously decided that it would be done through independent determination by the SSRB, but that is not the subject of the motion. As has rightly been said, we cannot run both organisations, so which should we drop? Clearly, we have to drop the one that we set up first, which was the SSRB. If it does not do this work, IPSA will, but I do not have confidence that IPSA will get it right. Let me briefly make a recommendation to it: why not set a rate of pay that comes into effect after the next election and have no increase during the Parliament? That would solve an awful lot of problems. We would not have to compare ourselves with anyone else year on year and no one would get an increase during a Parliament.

On allowances, it is wrong that IPSA has left us waiting so long for the money that our staff are going to be earning in a month’s time, but again that is not an issue for today. I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) about freezing all allowances, but he will not mind that. When remarks were made about my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and second homes, I did not recognise the factual basis of what was said. Perhaps it would be possible for the person who made that remark to communicate it to my right hon. Friend and to me and then we will know what that was all about.

Essentially, the way to solve the problem raised by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) about not wanting to vote for or against the motion is not to force a vote and to let the motion go through.