Business of the House

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I cannot find time for such a debate, because the right hon. Lady would not be able to appear in this Chamber. However, I am sure she will have heard what the right hon. Gentleman has said and will want to respond to it in the appropriate way.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

When I was elected, I tried to do the right thing and save money by using second-class post. I discovered that of the five small envelopes used, three are, illogically, more expensive if second-class post is used rather than first-class post. One of the differences amounts to £2.24 for a 250 batch. According to my back-of-the-envelope maths, including the printing costs for two types of envelopes based on 2009 usage, a saving of £15,500 a year could be made. The print runs are huge; the set-up costs are minimal. The House of Commons uses 2,000,703 first-class envelopes, costing £1,000,646. If 5% were urgent and 95% were sent second class, the postage savings would amount to more than £250,000 of taxpayers’ money. Will the Business Secretary please promote and encourage the use of second-class envelopes by—

[Mr Speaker]

We have got the gist, but I am afraid that the question is too long. We have got the thrust of it, and we are grateful.

Members’ Salaries

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Here we are again. On 3 July 2008, the Speaker did not select my amendment. Last year, the same thing happened. Today, again, the Speaker has not selected my amendment. Democracy has not been the better for it. My amendment in 2008 would have prevented the practice of flipping homes. My amendment tonight would have reaffirmed the principle that we should not determine our own pay.

I will not vote for or against my pay tonight, and I urge others to do the same—not to abstain, but to refuse to vote. The motion removes the principle of our not determining our pay. It is not simply a decision on the SSRB proposals; it revokes the decision on independence without anything more than a vague promise that, at some stage, the Government will get around to tabling amendments to have IPSA set pay. The Government have had plenty of time in recent weeks to table such an amendment, and they have chosen not to do so.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

If everything is to go to IPSA, so be it, but I am in the position, as a new Member, of not knowing what will happen to my staff pay 11 days hence, from 1 April. That is a disgraceful situation in which to be. None of us can work out what will happen to our staff. I have to renew contracts in 11 days, and I do not know what to do.

[John Mann]

That shows the muddle that the Government and Parliament have got into. Instead of resolving those problems, whether one or other of us likes it or not, in a way that is crystal clear, within which we can work and that the public can see, we go round in circles. Here we go again.

Having been through the pain, which is not yet over, of the expenses scandal, and eventually decided that we should not determine our own pay, and having all allegedly agreed the principle, we are suddenly back where we started—deciding our own pay. The issue tonight is not the amount of the pay—that is a small part of the matter. Of course, it will always be important to Members and even more important to the general public. However, to breach the principle so unnecessarily and cack-handedly lays us open to ridicule. The House should get its act together on pay and expenses and say that we will not break the principle of not setting our pay, conditions or expenses, because that is precisely the problem that got us into the scandal in the first place. We must learn the lesson of putting it outside, keeping it there and not interfering with it. Whether it is comfortable or uncomfortable, whatever the level, whether we like it or the general public do not like, it should be determined independently, not by us.

I appeal to Members to refuse to vote either way on the pay, thereby not breaching the principle that it should be determined independently or agreeing that it should be brought back in-house because if we do that, we will rue the day, and pay and expenses will come back again and again to bite us. We should put that behind us.

Business of the House

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Thursday 17th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

It does indeed do good work, and I can confirm that the Government have no plans to abolish that body.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

Will the Leader of the House update us on what has happened on moving private Members’ Bills away from Friday? I have written to him on the subject, especially in light of the Sustainable Livestock Bill, which received great support from members of the public, environment groups and 172 MPs, but received fewer than 100 votes on the day that it was considered in the House. It seems a shame that MPs, particularly those outside London, should have to choose between voting on legislation that is important to their constituents and constituency commitments.

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter, and I think I have written to her on the subject. The Procedure Committee will shortly start an inquiry into the parliamentary calendar, including the problem that she outlines of private Members’ Bills taking place on a Friday, and it will consider other options. We have tried to give the House certainty by agreeing, early in the Session, the dates of the 13 sitting days up to June this year. If a private Member’s Bill has a lot of support, it is still possible to get it through on a Friday.

Parliamentary Reform

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for sparking this debate, which is obviously of great interest to colleagues judging by the attendance.

We should be careful about supposing that we are completely beneath public contempt. The excellent paper produced by the Hansard Society mentions public perception. It states that

“60% believe that Parliament is a worthwhile institution and 75% that a strong Parliament is good for democracy.”

What the public do not like are MPs who fiddle their expenses, and half the public at any one time dislike the decisions taken by Parliament, which may be for political and personal reasons. We will not easily get over those difficulties, and I do not think that the prescription being offered by the hon. Lady necessarily meets the real needs of Parliament today, if we are to improve ourselves as a legislature controlling the Executive.

To contribute to a debate on reform and not endorse every single point made by the initiator of the debate risks being branded a reactionary. I realise that if I allude for one moment to the experience that I have had in this House, I shall equally be condemned as an old fogey. I am taking a risk by even speaking in this debate.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I do not think that anyone thinks that, bearing in mind that the right hon. Gentleman has accepted that we should trial iPads in Committee. I understand that he is an enthusiast on that front, which is absolutely marvellous.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

My hon. Friend is in danger of stealing my thunder, because I was about to say that I regard myself as a reformer. If hon. Members look at the evidence that I have given to the Modernisation Committee over a period of years, they will appreciate that I have fizzed with ideas as to how we might change our procedures and practices. However, I remain a conservative with a small “c” as far as our institutions are concerned. Change should not be rushed—if it is, we tend to recant very quickly, as in the case of the Tuesday sitting hours, when we went one way before going back the other. We have introduced topical debates, but we do not think that they are a particularly great idea, and we have gone for topical questions, which we think are a good idea. We should think things through before we rush into them. The stability of our Parliament, in contrast to many others, is testament to the way in which we have gone about things.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. We will be publishing a broadband strategy document at the beginning of the month which will address this specific issue. There are technical difficulties with achieving that, but if they can be overcome, it should certainly be done.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

11. What support his Department provides for the tourism industry in Wells.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)]

As I said earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), the Government are investing through VisitBritain both by trying to attract more foreign visitors to the UK and by attempting to refocus VisitEngland to make sure that it is promoting English destinations of all kinds, such as those in the constituency of the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), to we Brits.

[Tessa Munt]

In common with many of the tourism and leisure businesses along the Somerset coastline, including the thousands of small bed-and-breakfast businesses, many of which have diversified from farming, I support the suggested trial of double summertime, about which the House will hear more in Friday’s debate on the Daylight Saving Bill. Given the importance of this matter to hon. Members on both sides of the House and to leisure and tourism businesses in Somerset, including north Somerset, will the Minister give assurances that he will work with his colleagues in BIS, that the Bill will not be talked out and that the matter will proceed to a vote?

[John Penrose]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady will have to wait for Friday to see who wants to speak for how long during the debate, but I can assure her that I have already engaged in substantial discussions with my colleagues in BIS on this. My earlier answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, stands: this proposal could be tremendously valuable to the tourism industry as a whole, but that is not the only factor to be considered. There are issues for people who live north of border that need to be taken into account as well.