Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), who made a fair and balanced speech. I agree with pretty much everything he said.

I want to make two brief points, the first of which is about time. I have had to cancel meetings with constituents to spend more time dealing with IPSA, and I do not think that that can be right. The IPSA system and website are so cumbersome that they take far too long to operate, which has a direct effect on the time available to look after constituents. That cannot have been Parliament’s intention. When IPSA gets things wrong, as it does, one then has to spend extra time explaining why it has got things wrong.

My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) said that this debate was not about personal inconveniences, and I agree with him—it is about much broader issues. I do not want to dwell on a personal inconvenience, but I wanted to raise one example because I think that it illustrates the nature of the problem. I recently discovered that IPSA has refused to pay my constituency office telephone bill. I have not met anyone who thinks that is right, but I resent having to spend time investigating it and explaining to IPSA that my constituency office telephone bill is an entirely legitimate cost. So far, I have been too busy to do that. I fear that when I eventually find time to do it, IPSA will tell me that my complaint is now outside some arbitrary time limit that it has set. It should not be necessary to waste time explaining how absurd that is, so I shall move on to my second point, which is about value for money.

Immediately after the debate on IPSA in Westminster Hall some months ago, I was approached in the corridor by a representative of a major card payments company. In conversation with him, I said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could have a system whereby if we paid for something such as a toner cartridge for the office printer we knew within 24 hours or so it would be published on the internet so that everyone could see it?” He replied, “It wouldn't take 24 hours. We could do it almost instantly, within a few seconds.” Of course, that would be much cheaper than the current system. That would suit me fine and I think it would suit my constituents, who have a right to know how public money is used. I am in favour of complete transparency about where public money is spent. Indeed, I have spent my entire time in this House—the past nine years—trying to do my best on the Public Accounts Committee to defend the proper use of public money.

Instead of such a simple plan, we have this extraordinary situation where the arrangements are staggeringly expensive—they cost about £10,000 per MP to administrate—yet they offer satisfaction neither to members of the public, who quite rightly want to know how their money is spent, nor to MPs, who are trying to do a job.

This morning, IPSA has protested that it cannot publish receipts because it would be too expensive, but it should be expected to do more—much more—for less money. Publication of all the required information should happen constantly in real time or near real time. It would be cheaper than what IPSA does now and, technically, it would be easy enough to do.

I ran my own business 10 years ago. I sent electronic invoices to my clients and received payment from them electronically, and payment systems have moved on considerably since then. I do not believe that at present IPSA uses public money economically, effectively or efficiently, so I am pleased to support the motion, particularly because I know that the proposals made by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor would save over £4 million per year of public money.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

I would make two points. First, an independent body is now looking at those receipts and making a judgment about whether they come within the purview of the rules, which is very different from what happened before. Secondly, there is a balance to be struck between the cost of publishing receipts—it would be very expensive—and total transparency. Since one of the themes of our debate has been the cost of IPSA as a whole, in offering a view, the House will, in the end, have to say to IPSA, “How do we wish to balance that?”

[Mr Bacon]

The right hon. Gentleman says there is a balance to be struck between cost and transparency, but in fact the reverse could be the case: total transparency through the right kind of card payment-based, web-based instant publishing system could be cheaper as well as more transparent.