SCHEDULE

HC Deb 20 December 1971 vol 828 cc1132-247

Barons Court; Battersea, North; Battersea, South; Bermondsey; Bethnal Green; Camberwell, Dulwich; Camberwell, Peckham; Chelsea; Cities of London and Westminster; Deptford; Fulham; Greenwich; Hackney, Central; Hammersmith, North; Hampstead; Holborn and St. Pancras, South; Islington, East; Islington, North; Islington, South-West; Kensington, North; Kensington, South; Lambeth, Brixton; Lambeth, Norwood; Lambeth, Vauxhall; Lewisham, North; Lewisham, South; Lewisham, West: Paddington, North; Paddington, South; Popular; St. Marylebone; St. Pancras, North; Shoreditch and Finsbury; Southwark; Stepney; Stoke Newington and Hackney, North; Wandsworth, Central; Wandsworth, Clapham; Wandsworth, Putney; Wandsworth. Streatham; Woolwich, East; Woolwich, West.

Mr. James Wellbeloved (Erith and Crayford)

If we take all the four items now on the Order Paper, Mr. Speaker, I take it that there will be an opportunity to divide separately on each issue, so that those of us who believe that Ministerial pay increases are unjustified can express that view.

Mr. Speaker

Certainly there will be an opportunity for a separate Division on each point. Otherwise, may I take it that we will discuss these matters together?

Sir Robert Cary (Manchester, Withington)

Do I take it, Mr. Speaker, that any discussion of pensions will be completely out of order today and will come later in this Session? Although there is a slight reference in line 13 of the second Resolution to ensuring that the cover of £150 a year deducted from salaries will be continued, is any broad discussion of pensions out of order?

Mr. Speaker

I had better wait and listen to what is said before I rule it out of order. It may be possible that oblique and indirect references would be in order, but I would rather hear them before ruling on them. Mr. Whitelaw.

4.7 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. William Whitelaw)

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This Bill and these Resolutions give effect to the recommendations in the First Report of the Review Body on Top Salaries in respect of Ministers of the Crown and Members of Parliament in so far as those recommendations relate to salaries and allowances. As for the new proposals on pensions, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) referred, there are, as I explained on 6th December, a number of problems and technical details which require to be worked out if we are to ensure that the necessary legislation which we shall bring before the House fully covers the requirements.

As I told the House on 6th December, the Government accepted the proposals embodied in the report, subject to further consideration regarding the detailed arrangements which would apply in regard to the proposed new allowances. This has now largely taken place, and the Resolution on parliamentary expenses represents the outcome. However, we still have to consider the recommendations in paragraph 42(b) of the report regarding travel for information purposes. I propose to discuss this through the usual channels.

The Bill provides a statutory authority for the new levels of remuneration recommended by the Review Body for Ministers, including the Lord Chancellor, the Law Officers, the Speaker, the Government Whips and Opposition Leaders and Whips. As is clear from its report, the Review Body conducted a very thorough investigation of the reasonable needs of the holders of these offices. As has already been said a number of times, Lord Boyle and his colleagues are owed a debt of gratitude for their work.

The Government have accepted the conclusions reached by the Review Body and consider that the justification for the individual increases lies in what is said in the report. In particular, I should like to remind the House of what the Review Body said in paragraph 121, from which I quoted in my statement on 6th December: We have been conscious of the declared intention of the present Government to implement our proposals unless there are clear and compelling reasons for not doing so. We have regarded this as placing on us an added responsibility to keen our recommendations for increases and improvements to the absolute minimum which we consider to be necessary. It is in our view of the highest importance that these recommendations, both as they affect salaries and allowances, should now be implemented as a whole and in full." Provision is also made in the Bill to enable future changes in the salaries which are covered by this Measure to be effected by Order in Council. This change implies a more convenient arrangement. Since the Order in Council will be subject to the affirmative Resolution procedure, the opportunity for this House to discuss the salary matters will not be prejudiced by this move away from primary legislation.

The Bill has one other purpose which is not connected with the Review Body's report. It simplifies and brings up to date some of the rules governing the number of Ministers who can be appointed in different grades. The Boyle Committee recognised that, in practice, there are these days four grades of Minister. Since the reconstruction of October, 1970, the Ministerial heads of Department, with one exception, are in the Cabinet. As the White Paper on the reorganisation of central Government made clear at the time, this is one of the advantages of the new larger Departments.

With the disappearance in April of this year of the temporary Ministry of Aviation Supply, only the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications remains unrepresented in the Cabinet. Moreover, within the Cabinet, and with the exception only of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, all heads of Department are now of Secretary of State rank or occupy one of the old traditional offices such as my own. It therefore seemed sensible to remove the limits which used to apply to Secretaries of State and to replace it with a new overall limit on the numbers of Ministers who may be paid at the level appropriate to a member of the Cabinet—that is, those Ministers listed in Part I of Schedule 1 to the Bill.

The next level of Ministerial responsibility is that which we have come to recognise as the Ministers "for". This somewhat inelegant expression denotes the Ministers in charge of the functional wings of large Departments, who act as deputies to their Secretaries of State in all day-to-day business. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries may stand as examples of this group of Ministers.

These Ministers are technically "Ministers of State"—that is, members of the Government not placed in charge of a Department of State—and for convenience this category also includes my right hon. Friend the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, whose Department is not of a size large enough to justify separate representation in the Cabinet.

Below this comes another level of Minister of State, this time occupied by Ministers who assist their Secretaries of State politically and in taking charge of operations within the Department but who are nevertheless not in day-to-day charge of complete blocks of work in the same sense as the Ministers "for".

This is the sort of post for which, in practice, we tend loosely to use the title of "Minister of State"—for example, my hon. Friend the Minister of State at the Treasury. Both this category and the category of Ministers "for" are, to allow a certain flexibility, bracketed together in a salary range, both in the Boyle Report and in the Bill. These Ministers, together with the Paymaster-General, Chief Secretary, Parliamentary Secretary and Financial Secretary to the Treasury, make up the Ministers now covered in Part II of Schedule 1.

The law officers, of course, stand by themselves, in Part III. The final category, in Part IV, includes the Whips, other than the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, under their various titles, and the Parliamentary Secretaries. The House will note that it will in future be possible to appoint a Parliamentary Secretary to any Department of State or to a Minister not assigned any departmental duties, thus once again permitting a greater degree of flexibility than hitherto.

So much for the Bill and Ministerial salaries. There are two Motions before the House, the first of which is concerned with the salaries of hon. Members of this House and the second of which deals with allowances, facilities and other payments to hon. Members. I will deal first with the Motion on hon. Members' remuneration.

The Review Body's proposal is that the level of hon. Members' remuneration should be assessed on a full-time basis and should be determined independently of an hon. Member's expenses which should be generally covered by allowances. The Government accept this new approach to the problem of dealing with the considerable expense in which many hon. Members are involved in the performance of their parliamentary duties both in attending sittings of this House and in their constituencies.

As for hon. Members' basic salary, the Review Body's proposals represent not only an appropriate measure of updating to reflect the lapse of seven years since hon. Members' pay was last increased, but also a degree of revaluation which takes into account the growing volume and changing nature of the work of this House. It is the considered judgment of Lord Boyle and his Committee that in all the circumstances, including the concern of the Government to contain wage and salary increases, the salary of hon. Members of this House should be £4,500 per annum. The Motion provides for this increased rate to be effective from 1st January, 1972.

The proportion of this salary which should be paid to Ministers and other paid office-holders who are hon. Members of this House was assessed by the Review Body at £3,000 per year. The Government accept its judgment in this respect, and the Motion so provides.

In turning to the second Motion, I wish at the outset to explain to the House that its terms, as far as they refer to the additional cost of living away from home when engaged on parliamentary duties, while reflecting the intention of the Review Body's report, do not correspond in detail to the actual recommendations.

The Review Body recognised that the proposals outlined in Appendix F of its report would require further detailed scrutiny. The Government have looked at this aspect of the report in great detail and in collaboration with the House of Commons authorities and have come to the conclusion that the payment of a fixed daily rate of subsistence allowance would be unduly complex, extremely difficult and unsatisfactory to operate and, in some cases, too restrictive.

In this one respect, therefore, the indications were that we should seek an alternative scheme which would secure the maximum degree of simplicity in its practical application. We have devised a scheme which is based, like the arrangements for the secretarial allowance, which have worked tolerably well, on the reimbursement within an annual limit of hon. Members' additional living costs.

The Government have fixed this annual allowance limit at £750. which represents an amount slightly in excess of four nights per week spent in London over 34 weeks, calculated at the rate recommended by the Boyle Committee, and the period of 34 weeks corresponds roughly to the period in which the House sits in one year. The Government believe that this represents a fair reflection of the average additional costs incurred by hon. Members when living away from home in carrying out their essential parliamentary duties. The details are given in the Motions, but it might be convenient if I were to summarise them.

Where an hon. Member for a provincial constituency has his main home in London, he will be entitled to claim an alowance of up to £750 a year in respect of additional expenses necessarily incurred in staying away from home overnight for the purpose of carrying out parliamentary duties in the constituency.

Where a provincial hon. Member's home is in the constituency he will be eligible to claim the additional costs he incurs in staying overnight in London for parliamentary duties. If an hon. Member's home is neither in London nor in the constituency, he is free to choose. as at present, whether to claim for the additional cost of living either in London or in his constituency, but not in both.

An hon. Member for a London constituency is, of course, in a different position from his provincial colleagues in this respect, and it would not be appropriate for him to be covered by these arrangements. He will, however, be entitled to the proposed payment of London supplement of £175 a year, subject to tax. Where an hon. Member incurs expenditure in excess of £750 in any one year on the additional cost of living away from home, it will, of course, be open to him to make a tax claim in exactly the same way as at present, but the tax deduction for expenses will take account of the amount which could be reimbursed by the Fees Office under these arrangements.

Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West)

Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves the question of provincial compared with London hon. Members, may I ask if there is not some ambiguity in the Boyle Report which is also in the Bill? We understand the position of the 43 London hon. Members as delineated by the 43 constituencies. We also understand how a provincial hon. Member can represent, as I do, Leeds, West, or a similar seat. I understand that the London weighting applies only to the old I.L.E.A. area, whereas the London weighting in local government service is recognised as the greater London area. I calculate that a considerable number of hon. Members will be placed at a disadvantage because, according to the right hon. Gentleman's remarks, they will be classed as neither provincial nor London hon. Members.

Mr. Whitelaw

I appreciate the point which the right hon. Gentleman raises. It is a question of where it is appropriate to draw this particular line. This was a matter of considerable difficulty, and the decision that was taken was that it would be right to leave the line exactly where it had been over the years in all cases for hon. Members' tax considerations. This is the line recognised by the Fees Office and the Schedule as it stands, because, as I say, it was felt right to stick rigidly to the line where it had been before. But I am certainly prepared to consider how this proposal works out as time goes on.

Mr. Raymond Gower (Barry)

Not being a London Member and having no interest to declare, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he considers that the amount he has quoted for London, and which is given in the report, is not rather small? Is it not rather inadequate particularly as it is subject to tax?

Mr. Whitelaw

The problem with which we are undoubtedly faced is that, as far as is at all possible, and subject only to an administrative arrangement, it is right and in our interests in this House to accept the figures set out by Lord Boyle in his report and not to seek to change and modify them ourselves. Once we sought to change what Lord Boyle has said, particularly ourselves, over a period of time we should get into ever-increasing difficulties. Frankly, that is the reason why this figure was fixed. It was because it was what Lord Boyle said.

The Fees Office is preparing guidance on these proposals, which will be made available to all hon. Members early in the New Year. I can say simply—I hope in answer to the point made by the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell)—that this particular proposal in the Boyle Report breaks new ground concerning parliamentary expense allowances. If, therefore, after some experience of its working it is shown that changes are desirable, I assure the House that I will be prepared immediately to consider them.

Mr. Wellbeloved

Many of us are affected adversely by the particular proposition to which the right hon. Gentleman has just referred. If it is found that this needs adjusting, would he be prepared to make it retrospective in respect of the £135 London supplement? The proposal in the Bill means that some outer London Members will not be in receipt of the London supplement or the overnight supplement.

Mr. Whitelaw

I see the hon. Gentleman's point. The problem that this raises is that the subsistence allowance is basically proposed for people who have to stay away from home, either on their duties in Parliament or on their duies in their constituency. It cannot, by its necessity, cover people who do not stay away from home. Nevertheless, I note the point about the London supplement. It would be wrong to commit myself further than to say that I am prepared to consider how the proposals work out in practice.

Hon. Members will, I am sure, welcome the proposal that the secretarial allowance should be increased to £1,000 and its scope extended, within that limit, to include office expenses and up to £300 per year of the costs incurred by hon. Members in employing a research assistant. The arrangements for meeting claims under this head will be the same as those which have operated since 1969. The period of the account has been changed simply to make it more convenient for hon. Members and the tax authorities. To safeguard hon. Members' interests in the matter of the taxation treatment to be accorded to expenditure on research assistance, I am arranging for hon. Members to be given guidance on the types of expenditure which can be covered by this particular allowance and which the Inland Revenue will be able to regard as non-taxable.

Mr. Joel Barnett (Heywood and Royton)

On the matter of a research assistant, it would be extremely unlikely that any hon. Member would have the services of a research assistant for himself alone with £300 per year. Now that Lord Boyle has recognised that it is necessary, or, at least, of some value, for Members to have such assistance, would the excess over the £300 allowance be considered as non-taxable expenses?

Mr. Whitelaw

I had better say only that I will look very carefully into that matter. The area of secretarial allowances and research assistance is extremely complicated from an Inland Revenue point of view. Therefore, I have used in my speech, frankly, words with which I have advisedly been provided in order to make sure, as I hope the House will appreciate, that hon. Members are put in a proper tax position in the future, and it is very important that I should use them and should not deviate from them.

Mr. James Tinn (Cleveland)

Do I understand that secretaries will still have to wait for three months for their pay and be paid part of it three months in arrears? It is all very well for my hon. Friends to say that we pay them. Some of us will pay our secretaries the additional allowance which we shall now be receiving. I cannot afford to pay it out of my pocket and receive that addition at the end of each quarter. Could it not be paid monthly?

Mr. Whitelaw

On the general point, the question of when secretaries are paid is obviously a matter between the hon. Member and the secretary concerned. But as to the perfectly proper point that the hon. Gentleman raises, perhaps I may look into this matter with the Fees Office. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service Department will seek to reply to that point later.

We have provided also in the Motion for the extension of the travelling facilities, both by Members and by their wives or husbands, which the Review Body recommended. I am sure that the House will welcome the additional facilities, which should prove helpful to them in the discharge of their parliamentary responsibilities, particularly—I say this feelingly—to those who have constituencies in the North of England, in Scotland and in other places far from London.

Lastly, we have taken note of the views expressed by the Review Body in its report at paragraphs 48 to 52 regarding the position of Members of the House at the end of a Parliament. The second Motion meets the Review Body's view that an hon. Member should continue to receive his parliamentary salary during the period of dissolution and that an hon. Member who loses his seat in particular circumstances should receive a grant equal to three months' salary. The circumstances in which this grant would be paid are set out in paragraph 9 of the Motion. Again, this proposal involves breaking new ground, and if right hon. and hon. Gentlemen think that there is a better way of dealing with this very real problem which the Review Body recognised, I am certainly prepared to consider it. I am hoping to be able to arrange for the terminal grant to be paid free of income tax.

Mr. Andrew Faulds (Smethwick)

On that point, as a point of principle it seems quite extraordinary that people who are no longer Members of Parliament during a General Election should receive some remuneration for services which they are not giving. This is very questionable.

Mr. Whitelaw

I must simply say that that may be the hon. Gentleman's view, and there may be other people who hold that view, but it was not the view of the Review Body under Lord Boyle, and I am seeking in all things, as far as possible, simply to implement the proposals of the Review Body under Lord Boyle. That was one of the proposals, and I have put it forward. I must add to the hon. Gentleman that if he knew some of the facts that I have come to know during my period in various capacities in the House, he might take a somewhat different view.

Mr. Faulds

With respect, I would be one of those hon. Members who would be in grave difficulties were I ever—which is extremely unlikely—to lose my seat. We take on this job knowing the dangers of doing so, and I do not see that this House, the country or the Treasury should be expected to make it easy for us, knowingly taking on the job that we do.

Mr. Pannell

May I, through the right hon. Gentleman, make it clear that this view about payment during the dissolution was part of the evidence offered by the all-party Trustees of the Members' Superannuation Fund of this House, who have a closer knowledge of the distress of hon. Members in the past than has my hon. Friend.

Mr. Faulds

My hon. Friend does not know my bank balance.

Mr. Whitelaw

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Leeds, West for making it clear that the evidence was put forward by the Trustees of the Members' Fund and by a considerable number of other right hon. and hon. Members to the Review Body.

Mrs. Jill Knight (Birmingham, Edgbaston)

Am I right in my understanding that those hon. Members who do not wish to avail themselves of this money need not take it?

Mr. Whitelaw

That is the position with all the proposals I am putting forward. It is a perfectly proper arrangement. There have been right hon. and hon. Members who have decided in the past not to take their salaries. This has always been recognised as being a wholly private matter between themselves and the Fees Office.

Mr. Wellbeloved

Are the Government really satisfied that it is justifiable to pay one section of the community who happen to be parliamentary candidates at an election and not other candidates?

Mr. Whitelaw

The Review Body considered that it was, and the report having been accepted in full, it is reasonable for the Government and the House to accept that recommendation as well.

I end on a personal reflection. My comparatively short time as Leader of the House and my six years as Opposition Chief Whip have taught me a good deal about the problems which face right hon. and hon. Members in the changed conditions of parliamentary life as they have developed over the last ten years. As a result, I am utterly convinced that the proposals put forward in the Review Body rightly recognise the realities of the situation. I pay my tribute to the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), whose Private Member's Bill just over a year ago set this regular review procedure in motion, and I commend the Bill and the Motions to the House.

4.32 p.m.

Mr. Fred Peart (Workington)

We are having a free vote on this matter. It is an issue which affects every individual Member of Parliament. Each individual will be able to make his own decision. As has been pointed out, if these Motions are approved, and I hope they will be, any hon. Member who disagrees knows what he ought to do. It is up to the individual to decide.

I echo the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House in paying tribute to Lord Boyle and his colleagues who worked so hard to produce this very important report. Even during the recess some of us gave oral evidence to the Review Body, and we recognise that it was no mean feat to have the report completed by 9th November, 1971. I also congratulate the Leader of the House. I believe that he has acted properly. I know all the hard work he has put in on this issue and that he has treated it with great sympathy. It is only right and proper that right hon. and hon. Members who, for the best of reasons, are anxious to implement the report should pay the right tributes.

The Government have responded to a strong expression of view by the Review Body by accepting the proposals, and I think that the House must accept them in toto Here and there one may be able to raise points of detail, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds. West (Mr. C. Pannell) and others have done. Before I proceed further with my speech, I would like to raise one matter with the right hon. Gentleman. It has just been put to me. What is the position of the Chairman and Deputy Chairmen of Ways and Means, who are not mentioned either in the Bill or in the Motions?

Mr. Whitelaw

I will look into this. I understood that they were covered in the Bill but I will check.

Mr. Peart

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I have a feeling that they are not covered. It may be that they are indeed included in the Bill but I am informed that that is not so.

I regard the report as a major step forward and as a suitable advance towards improving the conditions of Members and Ministers. Moreover, this is not a party matter. There is to be a free vote. Perhaps I, too, may introduce a personal note.

I entered the House in 1945 and inevitably, with all other hon. Members, became involved in discussion about the future rôle of Parliament—how could our procedures and practices meet the needs of our changing post-war society? Hon. Members who were here then will remember those discussions. Today, the impact of technology, for better or worse, on our national life has been dramatic, and no less dramatic have been its effects upon our parliamentary system and institutions. But whatever new patterns emerge and whatever new practices and procedures are accepted by the House—and what I have to say is no reflection on the Select Committee on Procedure and others whose minds are concentrated on the minutiae of Standing Orders—the key to it all is the individual private Member.

It is not the time today to argue about the future rôle of the House and of individual Members. No doubt a modern Bagehot will emerge and with distinctive eloquence produce another great classic on our Constitution. I will only assert again that more than ever do we need a strong House of Commons, and need to check and probe the Executive, to expose the bumblings of bureaucracy, to participate more in legislative functions, to remedy grievances, and above all, to express the desires and ideals of the British people.

As Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons, I, too, in a humble way sought to do certain things. I had to consolidate reforms initiated by my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), on the advice of the Select Committee on Procedure. Some of these reforms worked, but some did not. Inevitably, common sense pointed a compromise. I always believed, however, that the dry mechanics of procedural reform did not provide the answer and that we should concentrate on how the individual Member could do his job more efficiently, especially in view of the increasing pressure of work upon all hon. Members. As is clear from the report, from the surveys and from the evidence, no one can deny that the work of an ordinary Member of Parliament has increased considerably and that he is, therefore, subjected to considerable pressures.

So, helped by the all-party Services Committee, I sought to initiate improvements in the postal and telephone facilities. I also introduced for the first time an annual secretarial allowance. But I never thought that this was sufficient, and I know that my colleagues on the Services Committee agreed with me because we sought to achieve remuneration for a full-time secretary. That position even now has not been reached. But we made a beginning.

As the right hon. Gentleman knows from his experience, so do I from mine that Members on both sides of the House face considerable financial difficulties. The simple fact is that the harder a Member works the more he has to spend out of his own salary. This is a crazy system which members of the public do not fully appreciate. I am glad that the report says that if the public are informed specifically about Members' salaries and expenses and the work they do, they will have a better understanding of the rate for the job. I hope that the public will not react in a narrow or negative way to what we are doing today. As the introduction to the report says, improvements were intended at that time to be of an interim nature. The Labour Government stated their intention to refer the whole question of Members' salaries to the National Board for Prices and Incomes during the next Parliament. Indeed, a special panel of the proposed commission was suggested in order regularly to review Members' and Ministers' salaries. When the new Parliament was elected in 1970, the pressures for a review continued.

The Secretary of State for Employment, as is pointed out in the Boyle Report, announced the new Government's decision to establish three review bodies, one to deal with the top salaries in the public sector, and later, on 1st December, 1970, the Leader of the House announced that the question of the salaries of Members and Ministers would be referred to that body. I, too, pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), who brought forward a Private Member's Bill on the subject. We have now to decide whether we broadly accept the Boyle Report. I hope that my hon. Friends will. We are dealing with the House of Commons as a whole and I think that it is right to accept increases for Ministers. I cannot disagree with the classifications suggested by the Lord President. Inevitably, classifications will alter with different Administrations and from time to time Prime Ministers will make changes in Administrations, even within this framework, but the broad classification is right and I do not dissent from the details.

I should like to concentrate on the position of Members. Paragraph 6 of the report says: The extent, therefore, to which Members of Parliament pay expenses of their work out of their salary is much higher than is generally the case in other occupations; indeed most salaried employees expect all their reasonable expenses to be met in full by the employer and not merely treated as deductible for tax…after meeting all necessary expenses but before tax, is a little under £2,000 per year. The report says that of course there are deviations, but it emphasises: We are clear from evidence we have received, both written and oral, that there are individual M.P.s with considerable family responsibilities who are suffering financial hardship at the present time. Paragraph 11 refers to how the electorate expects a much greater degree of application and professionalism from parliamentarians than ever before, something which I mentioned earlier.

In this context we have to consider accommodation. We all recognise the difficulties: there are just under 150 single rooms for individual Members of Parliament. This difficulty will be righted when the new building in Bridge Street is completed, but that will not be for some time. Throughout this section of the report, the Boyle Committee stresses that the salary should be adequate, on the criterion of a full-time occupation in other words, that a Member's salary should be assessed on the basis that he is working in a full-time occupation.

For that reason the Boyle Committee decided on a figure of £4,500. It said that it would have increased the salary if it had not included secretarial expenses and other matters. I take the view that even £4,500, with all that is given in the way of expenses, will still not solve the fundamental problem of giving a Member of Parliament in his own right a salary comparable with those paid in other professions and other positions in our society.

I believe that these proposals are an advance and I therefore support them, but let no one assume that just because we are to have this extra money to allow Members to do their jobs efficiently, a Member will have the salary which he ought to have for his own livelihood, for his family, and for his leisure. It will not be a high salary. It will be subject to tax and in no way comparable with some salaries paid in other walks of life. I would have gone for a higher figure, but I was not a member of the Boyle Committee. In my evidence, I recommended a much higher individual salary, and the report says that £4,500 is the minimum figure.

Mr. William Molloy (Ealing, North)

Would my right hon. Friend add that. even when the report is implemented. British Members of Parliament will still be at the bottom of the league for remuneration and secretarial provisions?

Mr. Faulds

So what?

Mr. Peart

No doubt my hon. Friend will make his own speech. The report says that the level of remuneration should be assessed on a full-time basis. Linked with the increase in salary we have the allowances and facilities mentioned. Today we cannot go too deeply into details about pensions, but, as we may not have an opportunity for a full debate on this subject, I should like to say in passing that improvements in this respect would have been welcomed. I know that my colleagues on the Members' Pension Fund made approaches about improved provisions for widows, asking for pensions of two-thirds of salary instead of half salary for Members.

Mr. Whitelaw

I am perfectly prepared to discuss pension arrangements generally with the Members' Pension Fund. I think that that would be the best way in which to proceed.

Mr. Peart

I am most grateful. I am sure that my hon. Friends who are on the Members' Pension Fund will be happy with that arrangement.

I welcome the salary increases and the allowances and facilities, whatever the arguments may be about certain Members being in different categories—London Members, provincial Members, provincial Members who live in London, and the other options. The Bill is a step forward and a recognition that Members should not be harshly affected by working in London or in their constituencies when they have to incur considerable expenses which they meet out of their own personal salaries, even though they are incurred in the pursuit of their parliamentary duties. The £1,000 a year to meet both secretarial and general office expenses, of which up to £300 is to be permitted for meeting costs incurred in employing research assistance, is another welcome move. I hope that those of my hon. Friends who have discussed this matter with me will be satisfied that the Lord President of the Council has done his best in the circumstances and that we should proceed to adopt these proposals.

We could argue at great length about the details, and there are many problems on which hon. Members will wish to consult their accountants and the Fees Office, matters which could not be cleared up in the cut and thrust of debate. Great changes have taken place during the history of the payment of Members. The first chapter of Erskine May, dealing with constituent parts of Parliament, records that constituents were liable from earliest times for the expense of maintaining Members during their attendance on Parliament. I gather that that liability was fixed in 1323–4s. a day for knights of the shire and 2s. for citizens and burgesses. That continued for a long time, right up to the 17th century. I think that the last Member of Parliament to receive any payment of that kind was the poet, Andrew Marvell, who represented Kingston-upon-Hull.

Mr. James Johnson (Kingston upon Hull, West)

And there is still a need.

Mr. Peart

Andrew Marvell wrote letters to the mayor and alderman of Hull informing them of the life of Parliament and the life of London society in general. No doubt my hon. Friend writes to his mayor about the problems of fish, so the positions have been reversed. During the period of the 19th century and until 1911 when payments of £400 were first made after a Resolution moved by Lloyd George the same arguments prevailed. That great Liberal argued that the growth of legislation and the general increase in parliamentary work meant that there should be an increase. Incidentally, that £400 increase in monetary terms today represents approximately £2,600. Lloyd George said: When we offer £400 a year as payment of Members of Parliament it is not a recognition of the magnitude of the service, it is not a remuneration, it is not a recompense, it is not even a salary. It is just an allowance, and I think the minimum allowance, to enable men to come here, men who would render incalculable service to the State and whom it is an incalculable loss to the State not to have here, but who cannot be here because their means do not allow it. It is purely an allowance to enable us to open the door to great and honourable public service to these men ".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th August, 1911; Vol. XXIX, c. 1383.] Since then successive Governments of various political complexions have sought to widen representation in this House by increasing payments to Members. This is an honourable process. I hope—

Mr. Faulds

My right hon. Friend knows that I have the warmest personal regard for him. He is one of the people for whom I have the closest affection in this House. [Interruption.] It happens to be true. If he is talking simply about remuneration, I go along with him, but there are aspects of this report which I cannot go along with. There are two. Does—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris)

Order. The hon. Gentleman is perhaps being a litle unfair to his right hon. Friend. Interjections should be fairly brief.

Mr. Faulds

Can my right hon. Friend quote any other occupation in which these two things arise: first, that a chap gets three months' redundancy payments in a job that he knows is subject to such risks—[Interruption.]—and, secondly, that if the poor chap is unfortunate enough to kick it, his wife gets a full year's salary?

Mr. Peart

The answer is, "Yes". I am not here to compare our position with outside professions. The time has come when professionalism in the best sense is here to stay and hon. Members should have the right to a reasonable salary to do their job properly and the right to the essential services to do that job. This is what Boyle is doing, this is what the Government are doing, this is what I am supporting and I hope my hon. Friends will support it. This is a step forward to improve the efficiency of Parliament, and in the long term it is good for the nation.

4.55 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Wolverhampton, South-West)

Of the matters before the House I wish to refer to the Motions relating to Members of Parliament and not to the Bill concerned with Ministers of the Crown. I recognise that there is a certain and necessary connection between the two topics, because it would be difficult, if not impossible, for too large a gap to be opened up between the financial position of hon. Members in and out of office. However, I do not wish to refer to, or dissent from, the recommendations embodied in the Bill about Ministers of the Crown.

I gave evidence both in writing and in person to the Boyle Committee. My evidence was against any increase in remuneration or any increase in allowances of any kind and to the effect that the facilities available to Members were already larger than conduced to the best possible discharge of their duties. Having offered that evidence to the Review Body, it seemed to me right that I should state that view here. I would think it unfortunate, were there even only one hon. Member who viewed, as I do, with repugnance and dismay what we are to do in these Motions if he did not declare it in his place and it was not thus placed upon the record.

These Motions will contribute to bring about a marked alteration in the status of hon. Members of this House. I have deliberately chosen the expression "contribute to bring about", for when there is a trend or tendency it is rarely possible to point to any one event and say "That event, that decision, was decisive; everything after it was different from everything that came before." Nevertheless, I believe the alteration in status of Members of Parliament which is going on, an alteration of which the tendency is to turn them into paid, salaried and pensioned employees, is carried a large and perhaps decisive step further by the Motions before the House.

Reimbursement as now to be provided on a substantial scale by these Motions, is not entirely new. We have had the principle of reimbursement with regard to secretarial expenses. Reimbursement is the mark of the employee; it is the mark of the paid servant, whose employer, of course, pays him back whatever he is out of pocket in performing what is necessary to that employment—or rather, I would add, what his employer regards as necessary to that employment. The status of a person whose expenses are reimbursed is different from that of a person whose expenses may be allowable for tax, because they fall within the ambit of his income which is taxed, but are expenses which he incurs on his own judgment and, excepting that they are tax free, out of his own pocket. Until very recently it was within the discretion of an hon. Member—for some purposes we are still treated, as I believe we should be in every sense, as self-employed—to incur what expenses he thought fit for the purpose of his work as a Member. It was his judgment, it was a matter between himself and his constituents, it was a matter on which he formed his own judgment as to the way in which he could best do his duty and contribute to this House.

The more expenses and the more—I was about to say "generously", but I recoiled from the word; nor will I say "lavishly"—the more "largely" expenses are reimbursed, the less will an hon. Member be a person exercising his status at his own discretion and on his own responsibility.

The effect of these Motions goes further. The right hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) was quite candid about this. They designate our status not merely as that of employees but as that of full-time employees, employees to be remunerated as full-time employees on a scale which is to be comparable in financial attractiveness to that offered to those in the other professions—or perhaps we should say "in the professions". The right hon. Member for Workington even used the term "the rate for the job", implying as it does—and I am not criticising the expression; it was a very apt summary of much of the thinking of the Boyle Report—that one hits off a figure, or at least a totality of remuneration, which attracts and retains the employees desired, in the numbers and quality desired. That is what is meant by "the rate for the job", and the approach to remuneration in the Motion is exactly that.

But the right hon. Member for Workington left out something when he spoke about "the rate for the job" and said that we should have a salary comparable to that in other professions, and that is the uniqueness of our status and the fact that there is no other status, except under the Crown, to which a subject of the Crown may so honourably aspire. It is a status which many of those who are remunerated not twice or five times but 20 times as much in other professions would gladly, if they could, have in exchange, because of the honour in which it is still clad.

Mr. Molloy

When the right hon. Gentleman talks about honour, of which we are all proud, he may not realise that some of us do not hold directorships and that we are not blue-eyed boys of the B.B.C. so that we are constantly on television running down our other Christian colleagues who have different skin pigmentations. When he talks about practitioners, he cannot speak for every Member of the House unless lie knows all that we are doing. Our endeavour usually is of an emotional kind because we think that we have to do certain things. I do not believe that any hon. Member, with one possible exception, says, "Before I embark on this endeavour, I must work out what it will cost me financially"—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson)

Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not make too long an intervention.

Mr. Molloy

Some of us—and I think that this applies to hon. Members on both sides of the House—know that in endeavouring to carry out our responsibilities as Members we often impose a burden on our families and children. The right hon. Gentleman should understand that as well.

Mr. Powell

If the hon. Gentleman makes a speech in the debate, it will need to be better than his intervention in order to be worth listening to. We are all speaking for ourselves and on our own responsibility, and the hon. Member will have the same opportunity as I have had to put forward his views.

Mr. Whitelaw

My right hon. Friend is advancing a very important point of view, and I accept that at once. He has mentioned the question of honour. Possibly what he is saying is that it is a question, not of the rate for the job, but of the rate to do the job. On the basis of my right hon. Friend's view, a constituency which decided that it wanted more service from its Member would undoubtedly choose a rich Member. Would not that, in modern parliamentary terms, be a very dangerous trend for this Parliament and the nation to embark upon?

Mr. Powell

It is for all of us to put our own interpretation on the status of hon. Members and what is conducive to it and what is or could be damaging to it. My case is, not that this is a matter 100 per cent. in one direction and 0 per cent. in the other, but that there is a dangerous point of balance, a balance which, in my view, we are tipping in the wrong direction by these Motions.

As my right hon. Friend the Lord President has referred to what is necessary in the eyes of constituents for the performance of the job, may I say that I think that there are grossly exaggerated ideas abroad about the volume of work, particularly of clerical work, which is necessary for most hon. Members to do everything which could possibly be required of them on behalf of their constituents. [An HON. MEMBER: "The right hon. Gentleman is speaking for himself."] Of course I am speaking for myself. Who else does the hon. Gentleman think I am speaking for?

Mr. Michael Fidler (Bury and Radcliffe)

My right hon. Friend says that he is speaking for himself, which I entirely accept. He said that there is an idea abroad concerning hon. Members. Does he mean all hon. Members?

Mr. Powell

I am expressing my personal opinion that an exaggerated view is held and is diffused—

Mr. Molloy

By whom?

Mr. Powell

Very well, it has got into circulation—about the volume of work, particularly of clerical work, which is necessary for the proper and full performance, at any rate in the vast majority of constituencies, of every service which could reasonably be required of a Member by his constituents. Furthermore, the notion that Members require widespread facilities for the acquisition of information, for research and for briefing in order properly to perform their duties is largely a misconception, and the multiplication of these facilities can as easily reduce the value of hon. Members, in debate and in Committee, as it can increase it. In response to my right hon. Friend the Lord President, may I say that I have not left out of consideration the point which is often urged about the expenditures which it is said to be undertaken by us so that we may do our duty by our constituents?

However—and this has already been said in the debate—not only is our position to be regarded as that of fully remunerated employees on a full-time basis; it is to be pensionable as well. In other words, it is to be a permanent job, a job for life, with a pension beyond it; and provision is to be made, in the event of its untimely termination, as in other forms of employment, for redundancy.

Something has happened this afternoon which I never thought would happen, and that is that I found myself in sympathy with an intervention by the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds).

Mr. Faulds

I am as horrified as the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Powell

I find it, as the hon. Gentleman does, repugnant that a man should be remunerated for being a Member of Parliament when he is not a Member or that he should have compensation for the loss of a position in which it is inherent that he is at all times exposed, in the event of a General Election, to the loss of it.

All these provisions together, in my view, add up to a very big step towards a fundamental alteration in the status of a Member of Parliament. It is, of course, a cumulative change; and with cumulative changes it is particularly difficult to argue, "Here lies the point at which we pass from one zone to another"; but these are changes so large, and are being made in such a manner, that I believe the occasion is marked as one of danger to the future of this House.

It is not secret corruption which is the danger in politics. The forms of corruption to be feared are not those which would be denied, or would be a cause of shame, if they were publicly exposed. The really dangerous forms of political corruption are those which are open and acknowledged, which, if hon. Members like, are part of the system.

Now of course, we all in this House—and it is of the essence, and has been through the centuries, of parliamentary life—live with the corruption of office: the rewards and the punishments, the disciplines and sanctions which the aspiration to office and to honours—though without it this House and our position in it would be meaningless—nevertheless bring with them. But we are now in danger, by this change in our status which we are working out, of creating another form of public and open corruption. Every hon. Member knows that we are not only sent here by those who vote, who cast more votes for us than for any of the other candidates at an election. That, of course, is indispenable to our being here; but every hon. Member knows that there are other things which are equally indispensable. The change which will come about as a result of this alteration in our status—because of our becoming increasingly assimilated to full-time, pensioned employees—is that those who have the voice to say whether we shall or shall not be candidates of our party at a General Election gain a great accession of power over the individual and, thereby, indirectly, over this House.

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Cannock)

rose—

Mr. Powell

I have nearly finished and my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Mr. Cormack) will have an opportunity to intervene, I dare say, before long.

Mr. Cormack

The point I should like to put to my right hon. Friend is this: the consequence of his argument, if followed through, would be that the only people who would be able to come here would be those with substantial private means or extra earnings.

Mr. Molloy

Or from rotten boroughs.

Mr. Powell

Well, there has never, in my opinon, been a time when anyone of any class who ardently aspired to be a Member of this House has been unable to achieve that ambition. I do not believe that the innovation of 1911, or those which have followed, substantially altered the opportunity for those who desired more than anything else to be Members of this House, or that this House is more truly representative of the people of this country now than it was 100 years ago or 200 years ago.

Hon. Members

Oh!

Mr. Molloy

Only half the nation had the vote.

Mr. Powell

The hon. Member did not listen to me. I expressed my opinion, which is not necessarily relevant to the size of the franchise, that this House was as truly representative of the people of this country—sometimes, in some respects, more representative—200 years ago as it is today.

Mr. John Pardoe (Cornwall, North)

What about the women?

Mr. Faulds

Would the "rotten" Member not make me happier by finding it possible to disagree with me when I look at paragraph 42(b) of the Boyle Report under which I, as Opposition spokesman on the Arts—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—well deserved and well carried out—can choose, if I so wish, to go on a happy, sunny holiday to Egypt to check up whether the Egyptian authorities have been kind enough and good enough to give us enough of the Tutankhamoun treasures to exhibit next March at the British Museum? Does he find that an acceptable recommendation or does he not? I hope not.

Mr. Powell

I dare say that the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) and I will find opportunity enough to disagree.

Mr. Faulds

On this?

Mr. Powell

I have one last point to make and that is this. Whatever may be the merits of an increase in our remuneration, I do not think that we ought to make such an increase to operate during the lifetime of this Parliament for which we were elected. We were elected for this Parliament with our eyes open, knowing the conditions under which we undertook to serve, if we were elected. I do not believe it is fitting or dignified for this House that we, who alone have the right to vote ourselves remuneration out of public money, should vote it to ourselves in this Parliament. That is, perhaps, a minor consideration compared with the major ones which I have thought it right to bring to the attention of the House; but I believe this also much concerns the honour of the House and of individual hon. Members.

5.17 p.m.

Mr. Joel Barnett (Heywood and Royton)

I must say that I found the argument of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) even less logical than the ones which I have listened to from him in economic debates in which we have taken part. If I quote him correctly, he was saying than an hon. Member would judge his own level of his expenses. I would submit to the right hon. Gentleman and to the House that that is only possible for an hon. Member who has some outside resources to enable him to do just that. Hon. Members and many who would wish to be representatives in this House would not be able to be here precisely because they do not have those resources. It is right that they should have the opportunity to be here or get to be here to represent their constituencies, and I believe that that totally invalidates every point which the right hon. Member has made.

When the right hon. Gentleman made the case that a hundred years ago this House was as representative as it is today, I must say that I doubted very much whether he carried many hon. Members with him. To make his case even more logical from his own point of view he would be entitled to go even further back, because to be perfectly logical in his argument he would have to say that one should go back more than a hundred years, before 1832. I certainly do not go along with any of the arguments he sought to make along those lines.

The right hon. Gentleman seems to have an obsession with the idea that it is wrong to have salaried employment for a Member of Parliament, but the alternative to not having adequate salary and expenses is that we do not have the sort of efficient House of Commons which my right hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) was talking about earlier.

This brings me to the latter point made by the right hon. Gentleman, that it is never the right time to pay ourselves an increase. It never can be the right time. To say that we should wait from one Parliament to the next is not only a small point but an invalid one—

Mr. Powell

I think the hon. Member mistook my point. I did not use the argument that this is the wrong time. I said that whatever is resolved upon ought to be resolved upon not to take effect during the life of this Parliament. That is a different point.

Mr. Barnett

The right hon. Gentleman always chooses his words carefully, and I am sorry if I paraphrased them wrongly. But the effect of what he was saying was that it is never the right time. To say that hon. Members came into the House knowing what the salary was and therefore they should not have an increase for 11 or 12 years when it is known that there is to be a review by an independent body during this Parliament is not an adequate argument.

There is always considerable difficulty about deciding the amount that should be paid either as salary or as expenses, because there is a considerable difference in the circumstances of hon. Members. For some, £4,500 is more than they would have been able to earn outside. Equally, many hon. Members could have earned considerably more outside. I accept that it is impossible to get the figure right, for example, between the hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) and my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton). Even so, £4,500 is inadequate financial compensation for a bright, young man who could expect in industry unimpeded progress, not to a major rôle, but at least to a higher rung in his chosen profession. So a Member of Parliament should be paid a reasonable salary which should not deter a young man with family responsibilities from coming to the House. Even if it will not financially compensate him for the disruption of a career, if not the total destruction of a career, it certainly should not deter him from becoming a Member of Parliament.

I wish to put a few questions to the Lord President of which I gave notice to the Treasury. I appreciate the careful words of the Lord President when he spoke of the expenses and excessive subsistence allowances and their allowability for income tax purposes. I take the point that the position is exactly as it was before.

Mr. Whitelaw

That is what I meant to say.

Mr. Barnett

I am much obliged. That is somewhat different from Lord Boyle's recommendations. If the Government and the House accept that Lord Boyle and his Committee are right in saying that a travel allowance, as set out in paragraph 42(b), should be available to hon. Members to enable them to do their job more efficiently, will any excess be allowable for tax purposes? It has always been an absurd situatiton that the money an hon. Member spends out of his own resources in seeking to broaden his experience and knowledge to enable him to do a better job should not be allowable for tax purposes. In view of the changed circumstances, if the money does not come out of the £20,000 or if an hon. Member spends more than his entitlement will that amount be allowable for tax?

Not every hon. Member needs to employ a research assistant, but surely no one imagines that the services of a quali fied research assistant could be obtained for £300 a year. It might be possible to get a young graduate for between £1,500 and £2,000 a year who might be shared between two or three people for a short period. As the Government have accepted all Lord Boyle's recommendations, they presumably accept that an hon. Member who feels it necessary should employ a research assistant. They must surely also think it right, if the research assistant is being reimbursed out of the Member's salary, that that payment should be allowable for tax. Hon. Members are assessed for tax under Schedule D and the Pay-As-You-Earn rule. On the question whether travel expenses are "necessarily" incurred an inspector of taxes interprets that rule as narrowly or as widely as he or she thinks fit—and frequently she interprets it rather more narrowly than he.

Mrs. Lena Jeger (Holborn and St. Pancras, South)

Shame!

Mr. Barnett

I am sorry, but it happens to be true in my case, and I speak only for myself. If before an hon. Members comes to a decision on, for example, how he shall vote on the Common Market legislation, he feels that it is vital for him, to enable him to come to a proper conclusion, to travel to the Common Market countries, in the interests of the country and of his constituents it is perfectly reasonable that he should do so. Some of my hon. Friends who are opposed to our entry may well come to the same conclusion without travelling round Europe. But it is impossible for an inspector of taxes to say that that expense is not "necessarily" incurred. How can he or she decide what information an hon. Member needs to enable him to make a decision of that magnitude? If that sort of travel is not to be paid for out of reimbursable expenses it should be deductible for tax.

Mr. Whitelaw

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but it should be made perfectly clear that the recommendation in paragraph 42(b) of the report concerning the fund which it is proposed should be set up for overseas travel, to which the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) also referred, has been specifically reserved and is not contained in the Motions. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's comments, because we have to discuss this very carefully. I take this opportunity to point out that what the hon. Member for Smethwick was saying about this is not strictly accurate because the details have not been worked out and it is not in the Motions.

Mr. Barnett

I appreciate that. I mention this in the hope that when it comes to be considered by the Treasury, which will perhaps advise the Inland Revenue, the point will be recognised.

There are many other aspects of this. For example, expenses in entertaining constituents by a Member of Parliament are wholly disallowed. I do not know why the entertainment of his constituents by an hon. Member should be considered to be less helpful to our parliamentary democracy than the entertaining of a foreign buyer by the manufacturer of a particular product. I should have thought it was equally advantageous to our democracy and that it should be allowable as an expense. Hon. Members have many expenses which are wholly disallowable and have to be paid for out of taxed income. The expenses of an hon. Member every time he opens a bazaar or goes into his constituency are not allowed for tax purposes.

Generally speaking, this is a not unreasonable increase, and in many ways it will help the average hon. Member to do a much better job than he has been able to do in the past, if only by the use of more secretarial help and some research assistance.

5.30 p.m.

Sir Robert Cary (Manchester, Withington)

I hope that the hon. Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Joel Barnett) will allow me to deal with some of his points a little later in my speech.

As Chairman of the Trustees of the Members' Fund, I join with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and his opposite number in the Shadow Cabinet in congratulating the Boyle Committee and its members on their promptitude in presenting this report. Its competence and lucidity will recommend it strongly to every Member of the House. I wish also to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for the sympathy and co-operation he has shown in dealing with the private affairs of Members, particularly in regard to Members' pensions.

I am in something of a difficulty. I came to the House ready to unburden myself on pensions, only to discover that pensions cannot be discussed on this Motion today. I understand that a Bill on Members' pensions is to be presented to the House at a later stage. Therefore, I wish merely to draw attention to the last three lines of the Motion, which will ensure that the Fees Office will be permitteed to deduct £150 in respect of contributory pension fund. At a later stage this figure will have to be increased, but that will be a matter for legislation. I understand that the Fees Office will issue a special memorandum on this subject. I wish to take the opportunity to thank the staff in the Fees Office, particularly the Chief Accountant and his immediate assistants, for all the work they have done to further the interests of Members and in dealing with matters related to the Members' Fund.

A word about Ministerial and other salaries. I fully approve the scales as set out on page 42 of the Boyle Report and I welcome the fact that for the first time four members of the Opposition Front Bench are to receive payment. I remember the work carried out for a period of five or six years by my own colleagues in the Shadow Cabinet when they were preparing themselves to assume the responsibilities of office. I think of the splendid team led by the late Iain Macleod and the extremely hard work done by his young team, who were so preoccupied with their task that they did not have much opportunity to do very much else. When one sees that only four members of the Opposition are to receive some remuneration, one wonders whether there may be a case for widening the patronage of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition in appointing his team to carry the main responsibilities of Opposition.

There is one person I should like to see come in from the cold; namely the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party. Why should he be left out on a limb and ignored? It is unfair that the right hon. Gentleman should not be acknowledged in the scales set out on page 42.

Mr. Arthur Lewis (West Ham, North)

What about Bernadette, Gerry Fitt and the Leader of the Republican Party?

Sir R. Cary

One could go on elaborating, but I do not wish to go any further.

I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) talked about parliamentary remuneration in the terms he did. After all, £4,500 is not a great salary in business terms, and it is not a very great advance on the figure of £3,250. It is not a very great stride forward. Even as respectable a newspaper as The Times said that it was a high payment but was not high enough. It should be higher, but I feel this matter should be considered at intervals at a later stage. I do not see how any hon. Member could vote against the Motion.

If one thinks of the matter only in terms of payment. there are many hon. Members who, if they were seriously concerned about money, could do better than this in another direction.

Mr. Powell

Then let them go and do it.

Sir R. Cary

My right hon. Friend says "Let them go and do it". But Parliament is not concerned solely with money. Everybody who comes to this House is to some extent at the beginning an idealist. He comes to serve the people, not to serve himself. This is the propellant which drives us forward into candidature. I can recall as a young man after the First World War struggling in hard-fought constituencies to try to get support. Most of my uncles said "Why do you want to do a silly thing like that? Why do you not go into the City and make some money?" I suppose it might be said that if one were to focus one's attention elsewhere, one might become chairman of I.C.I., but that would not attract me as against becoming a successful Member of the House of Commons.

Let us be frank, even if I draw £4,500 I cannot think of myself as a paid servant of the State. There are, of course, variations of circumstances as between one M.P. and another. I tend to think of Parliament as a melting-pot out of which emerge great leaders of men. One has only to think of the figures of the past—Lord Oxford, Lord Birkenhead, Sir John Simon—and, of course, the most famous of all, Sir Winston Churchill. The furnace of the House of Commons has produced many small diamonds of leadership. This is the most valuable assembly in the world.

I cannot associate myself with the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. I respect him enormously; he is a great Parliamentarian and has been an important figure both on the Front Bench and on the back benches. However, I cannot agree with his speech today. No doubt he would have a lot of sympathy with some hostile things which are said about M.P.s. I have one such letter in my hand, which reads as follows: I have no patience with all this pleading that goes on. Nobody asks them to be M.P.s and many are quite unfitted for the job. If they are defeated and cannot get a job on the ordinary market, it shows how unfitted they are to represent thousands of people. There is a hostile voice in the country at large on those lines. My right hon. Friend may agree with that hostility.

I answered it in these terms: I have been in the House for 30 years and have seen all the changes throughout the last 40 years, both in personalities and in competence. In truth I cannot detect any decline in standards or in ability. There are a lot of able young men and women in the House on both sides. What has changed is that not very many have completely independent means and all too many are, in the main, completely dependent on our parliamentary payment. The Prime Minister himself is a splendid example of the modern and refreshing invasion of parliamentary affairs. From such as he comes strength, not only for the Conservative Party, but for Britain. If there is a flaw it is, perhaps, single-mindedness but I find that rather exciting and refreshing in the place of his more pliable predecessors. That is a fair commentary on what is happening in the House today. There are young able people in the House. I hope that some of them will attain fulfilment. There are hundreds more outside who would love to change places with us, and that is why the queue for places in Parliament on both sides runs into hundreds, sometimes into thousands.

5.41 p.m.

Mr. Jeremy Thorpe (Devon, North)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Manchester, Withineton (Sir R. Cary) for his reference to myself and for the concern he expressed. I can set the House at rest at once. A salary is not something that I seek for my job, although I shall have a mention or two to make about a third party in a few minutes.

The hon. Member for Withington is held in very great affection in all quarters of the House. The House is extremely wise in its choice of him as the Chairman of the Trustees of our Pension Fund. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Long may the hon. Gentleman continue in that rôle, and long may he have adequate moneys to administer on our behalf.

As regards the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), this is not an occasion for a great panegyric or for a great metaphysical and philosophical discourse. It is an occasion for logic. Just as I felt when I listened to the right hon. Gentleman in the debate on Northern Ireland, when he was for blowing up roads and bridges on the frontier as one of his major contributions to the solution of the problems there—

Mr. Powell

They have since done it.

Mr. Thorpe

—I felt today that, whereas I had always thought that I was in the smallest minority in the House, I am not and the right hon. Gentleman is.

The logic of the right hon. Gentleman's case is that it is perfectly all right to pay someone a salary provided that it is not the sort of salary which is comparable with outside employment—the right hon. Gentleman has got that—but that the payment of money by way of expenses is a public, but none the less insidious, form of corruption. The right hon. Gentleman has been subject to that form of insidious corruption for many years in having free travel to his constituency.

Mr. Powell

indicated dissent.

Mr. Thorpe

If the right hon. Gentleman pays for his own fare, he is an exception because many of us could not afford to pay our fares to our constituencies. I know not whether the right hon. Gentleman makes use of the free postal and telephone service. All I know is that that makes a difference of £200 to £250 a year in my expenses.

The logic of the right hon. Gentleman's case is that, unless Members are actually to be out of pocket on their expenses so that their salary is a minus quantity at the end of the year, they must be paid such a massive salary, with a consequential clawback by the Inland Revenue, that then, and only then, will they be able to afford to do their job.

This is one of the reasons why I took a particular view in another debate last week; namely, that I did not think that a massive sum was a fair expression of a reimbursement for expenses actually incurred in doing a job, which in that case related to the Royal Family.

In almost every other profession there is a form of reimbursement which is far less public than is the case with the reimbursement for Members of Parliament. If, for example, the right hon. Gentleman were to be appointed to public office—if he were to be appointed Chairman of the Race Relations Board—he would be provided with a secretary, with an office, with an entertainment allowance, and very probably with a car. Those would be the expenses of his job, and no one would question them.

If the right hon. Gentleman were in commerce—for instance, if after his considerable experience of the National Health Service, he being a former Minister of Health, he were to be appointed by the President of Kenya to be the head of the Kenyan Buying Delegation in London—again he would be provided with an office, with a secretary, with a car, and with expenses, and those would be regarded as being perfectly acceptable and perfectly proper in the normal course of business.

Therefore, the logic of the right hon. Gentleman's case is that either Members of Parliament will be physically out of pocket on their jobs or, if he does not like reimbursement in cash, they will have to be paid £25,000 or £30,000 a year subject to tax so that they can be reimbursed. I can think of very few things which would be worse for the image of the House.

Turning to the main interest of the debate—that is, the report—I say straight away that any Government which shoulders the responsibility for increasing the pay of Members incur criticism in the country. The Labour Government did so when they accepted the Lawrence Report in 1964, and no doubt this Government will by accepting the Boyle recommendations in 1971. I therefore indicate at the outset my willingness to share that opprobrium, and I think that we can share it on an all-party basis.

It was regrettable that there were one or two candidates at the 1966 General Election who were heard to say that the first thing that a Labour Government did when they came to power was to increase everybody's salaries. I hope that those who campaigned in that way are not over-represented in the House as a result of the last General Election.

We have accepted that the moment is never right but that we are, in effect, paying the price of democracy. I have no hesitation in figuratively taking the electorate by the scruff of the neck and saying to it that we have a system of parliamentary democracy which, although it is capable of immense improvement, is unique in the world, whereby the Government can be changed without a revolution, whereby the spoils system does not operate in regard to the public service, in which the Opposition Front Bench—at least its Leader and its Whips—are quite properly a charge on the Consolidated Fund to oppose that democratically elected Government of the day, and in which ordinary Members of Parliament are able to have direct access to Ministers on behalf of their constituents.

There are very few strongly held views in this country which cannot, if represented by a sizeable minority of the day, in some sense receive vocal expression from some quarter of the House. What we are in effect doing is to ensure that no man who wishes to serve in the House is precluded from standing by reason of the financial deterrents and that those who wish to serve full-time can do so.

Although I have no objection to outside activities for Members—I think that they are sometimes advantageous—I hope that Members will increasingly feel that the logic of this being a full-time job is almost inexorable. Although I immediately admit that I have outside activities, I gave up my profession as a practising barrister-at-law within six months of my election to Parliament because I did not think it possible to combine both professions.

The value of Boyle is that, however much we may be extroverts as a race, we are particularly introversive when it comes to considering our own conditions of service. Boyle has made clear the extent to which the parliamentary salary is swallowed up in expenses, in which respect we are almost unique as a profession. It is not a bad thing that it should be known that we work a 63-hour week. When I was for a while a negotiator on behalf of a trade union and appearing before the Prices and Incomes Board in furthering a pay claim, my case would have been almost unanswerable if I could have claimed that those were the hours worked by my members.

I do not believe that it is generally realised that hon. Members, unlike many people in other jobs, have to maintain two establishments.

I hope that we will not overlook the conditions in which hon. Members work. I have been fortunate. It is staggering to have to tell a foreign legislature that one has one's own room but that this is quite exceptional. When in the ballot I won a room across the way in Bridge Street, I found that my productivity was doubled, if I may coin a phrase, "at a stroke". I hope that it will be a thing of the past for hon. Members to have to sit in corners dictating to their secretaries.

What is the Government's view on the whole question of reviews? Lord Boyle suggested that they should be held at four-year periods. Although he was against linkage, I think that linkage has considerable merit.

I now turn to what I regard as a housekeeping problem of the House of Commons. I need not declare an interest, because it will immediately become self-apparent. It has been increasingly recognised that the Opposition Whips office plays a vital rôle in the parliamentary life of this House. It is perhaps not generally remembered that in the last Parliament it was on the initiative of the former Prime Minister, the present Leader of the Opposition, and at his suggestion that the Opposition Chief Whip was for the first time paid a salary. It was also his suggestion, on the recommendations made, that he should be sworn as a member of the Privy Council. The right hon. Gentleman was good enough to make a similar recommendation regarding myself a few weeks later.

At one stage the Opposition Whips office was at a great disadvantage to the Government Whips office. Government Whips had free postage to send out the whips; the Opposition Whips office did not have that. That position has now been narrowed with free postage.

But we should be clear on what these proposals entail. If I am right, the suggestion, which I wholly support, is that 19 individuals on the Government side in the two Houses should be on the payroll. There is an argument about the number—whether we count the Comptrollers and those in the Household as being on the Whips' pay or on the Ministers' pay. It is possible that I may be two out; but, at any rate, the senior holder of the office, the Treasurer of the Household, is often regarded as the Deputy Chief Whip, and it is suggested that he should have an increase in salary.

If I am right in thinking that we are talking about the Chief Whip in the Commons, the Chief Whip in the Lords, the Members of the Household, the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury and the Assistant Government Whips, we are talking about 19 individuals—however, I am subject to correction for the reasons which I have mentioned—and the figure involved, disregarding those members of the Civil Service who are attached, will be about £83,500.

For the Opposition it is suggested that, in addition to the two existing paid office holders, the Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Chief Whip, there shall be two Opposition Whips paid £4,000 a year each, and that, in addition, the Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Chief Whip in the Lords shall receive a salary. That will produce a figure of roughly £31,000 and six persons for running the Opposition Whips' office. It is arguable whether the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has perhaps a higher claim than one of the Opposition Deputy Whips, but I accept that it is Boyle in total or Boyle not at all. It may be that some of those emoluments will have to be made as a contribution to running the Opposition Whips' office. I believe that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on this side each pay £10 a year to produce £2,800 to help run the Opposition Whips' office.

I ask with some diffidence, but I make no apology for making the point because this is the occasion to raise it: what is the position of a third party in this House? The first question is how, for the purposes of this argument, one defines a third party. This is not difficult. The definition, for the purposes of party political broadcasts, is a party which fields 50 candidates at a General Election and has representation in this House. That is the basis on which we have the three-party allocation of time for party political broadcasts.

Another test is: does that third party provide a Whips' office; is it expected to service some, but not all of the major Committees—for example, Privileges, the Civil List and the Services Committee—is it represented on all-party Committees and, in effect, expected to take part in the machinery of running Parliament? Taking that as the test, it is fairly obvious which parties qualify and which do not. Indeed, regarding my own party, in the Lords we have Liberal Days which are the nearest equivalent to Supply Days in this House.

I do not believe that the Leader or the Whip of a third party should receive any salary. I do not put that forward as a suggestion. However, I know that the right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin), when he was Government Chief Whip, felt very strongly that the two Opposition Whips' offices were at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the Government Whips' office and he was seeking to do something to equalise the assets between the three.

I find that the task of running the third Whips' office in the Commons alone certainly involves me in maintaining a staff of four and my colleague, the Whip, a staff of two, which cost about £11,000 a year to run. That has to be met out of one's own Parliamentary salary and whatever other funds one is able to raise outside. As we are talking of figures like £80,000 and £30,000 for running Whips' offices and making them a charge on the Consolidated Fund, I have the temerity to mention the existence of another Whips' office which is expected to discharge a capacity, however small, in the workings of this House. I make no complaint that Lord Boyle did not raise this matter. I have discussed it with him. I did submit a memorandum in evidence, but it was not strictly within his terms of reference which only related to those already in receipt of remuneration.

Finally, I should like to make three short comments. The first concerns travel abroad. This is of tremendous importance. The answer to the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) is that if this scheme comes about there will be an all-party Committee, which I respectfully suggest should be under the chairmanship of Mr. Speaker, to discuss who will be on a mission in the same way as we discuss the composition of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegations. It was appalling that when the Central African Federation was being discussed—a matter for which this House had close responsibility—the only hon. Members able to go and see for themselves were those who could personally afford the very expensive fare, those who, like myself, were fortunate to go out as television interviewers, and the large majority of those who went out paid for by the public relations firm, Voice and Vision, Ltd. That was wrong.

Next, travel outside one's division, particularly a large county consistency, can involve large sums of money, and I think that Lord Boyle was perceptive in mentioning that. I think it is right that wives should be able to pay more visits. For far too long parliamentary wives have been put in purdah. I am sorry that no Treasury Minister is present, because the Treasury is particularly skinflint about this. It is monstrous that it is so difficult to get a grant for a Minister's wife to accompany him when he travels as part of an official delegation. If, for example, a Minister is attending a British Week somewhere, he should be able to take his wife with him. She can act as an extra hostess at the High Commission or Embassy. Ours is one of the few countries which has extraordinary regulations for and hatred of Ministerial wives.

I think that the procedure with regard to dissolution and redundancy payments is fair and equitable. I cannot remember whether it was the right hon. Gentleman who was playing the rôle of Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice", or the hon. Gentleman who was playing Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol", but my answer to whoever asked whether there were any precedents for the proposal for redundancy and dissolution payments is "Yes, heaps, and heaps and heaps— almost every employer who is worth his salt."

I welcome the Boyle proposals. I believe that they will be accepted by the electorate when it is explained that this is the price that we pay for a system of parliamentary democracy and for keeping the doors wide open for anybody who wishes to come in and try his luck. Merely wanting to serve is only the first barrier. Some hon. Members might have found that election has certain hazards as well. Some of us overcome but some, alas, do not. Once the arguments are put, it will be seen that we have a parliamentary democracy which is cheap at the price, and I make no apology for mentioning the other matters to which I have referred. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is seized of these matters, that he is a good democrat, and that he will give them his consideration.

6.2 p.m.

Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

However distasteful we may find the task of having to debate publicly our own remuneration, I think that we are left with no alternative in the light of what one reads in Appendix B of the Boyle Report. When one appreciates the misconceptions which exist in the public mind about our salaries, remuneration, pensions, and so on, one realises that however desirable it may be to leave this to be decided by a public opinion poll, one cannot do that if one expects to get a sensible or a just solution.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) has saved me a great deal of time because he has today confronted the House, in a way which no one else could have done so adroitly or so expressively, with the real issues involved in what we are facing. We shall change things considerably by what we do today. Whether that is desirable is what the debate is really about, and I think that my right hon. Friend deserves the thanks of the House for having made us face the issue.

In his description of what a Member's rôle has been down the ages, my right hon. Friend reminded me of a little story about the American lady who wrote to her representative in Congress asking "What are you doing about everything?" That is an experience with which we are not unfamiliar at our interviewing sessions in our constituencies. My constituents, to whose opinions and complaints I hope I give the necessary attention, seem to me very often to think of an hon. Member as the local authority, the Government and the head of every nationalised industry as well as being a Member of the House of Commons. In fact, it is perhaps rather touching that so many constituents seem to think that Members are virtually omnipotent.

We all know that that is hardly an accurate description of an hon. Member, and it is right that in this debate mention should be made of the fact that one of our primary rôles—I think it was the right hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) who first mentioned it—is that of watching the work of the Executive, perhaps guiding it, and certainly restraining it from spending too much of the taxpayers' money, or at least ensuring that what is spent is spent wisely and properly and there is no over-spending.

That is the point which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South-West, if I may say so with respect to him, did not fully deal with in his speech. His speech today would have made a great deal of sense before hon. Members received any remuneration whatsoever. But when one considers the complexity of the State as it is today, when one considers the sophistication of many of the subjects with which one is automatically involved by being concerned with the politics of the country, when one realises the immense purchasing power of the Government in matters about which, heaven knows, there have been enough reports to show that it is difficult always to make the right decision, one appreciates the inevitability of our lives becoming more complicated; and if we are to justify the existence of a modern House of Commons we must either do the thing properly or not do it at all. That is where I most part company with what my right hon. Friend said. He rather poured scorn upon those who have been urging better services to enable them to carry out their duties more effectively.

There was a time—and my right hon. Friend might even remember it—when I said that there was a great danger in being in this place too often and for too long a stint each time. One can become what I then described as fungi on the wall, absorbing, absorbing, absorbing more and more information day by day until suddenly, with the sheer weight of information, one drops off the wall and all the information that one has gained is scattered to the four winds and swept up by the dustman next day.

I do not think that anyone wants to see that happen and in recent years the House of Commons, in its wisdom, has devised a way of ensuring that we do not just sit here absorbing, absorbing, absorbing but that we go into considerable detail about those subjects which we think we ought to consider and we call before us people who are capable of giving us better information than sometimes we get from the Government. As long as Parliament devises a machine that is tailor-made to its traditions and needs, we can avoid some of the dangers which my right hon. Friend very properly put before us.

I have had the privilege not only of reading but also of making a small contribution to, the biography that has been written about my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. I think that the challenge from the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) was unjustified. I know that my right hon. Friend has considerably stinted himself in the course of his political life to remain here and do his duty as he saw it, and I should not like to diminish the tribute that I pay to him for that. There will always be men—and women too, I hope—in this House who are prepared to make sacrifices in order to come here. They come here with a high sense of mission and make contributions of various sorts which are by no means confined to this Chamber.

One of the biggest mistakes which too many constituents are apt to make—and they are often encouraged in this view either by no coverage at all through the public media or by misrepresentation—is that of failing to recognise the work which hon. Members do in Committees upstairs on behalf of the House. I regard some of that work as the most worthwhile that I have done in my 26 years' membership of the House.

An example is the Committees on Private Bills, particularly opposed Private Bills—legislation which I enjoy because it nearly always involves giving powers to people who want to do something sensible instead of giving Governments powers to prevent people doing something which they would otherwise like to do. This is some of the most constructive work one can do here, but how often do the public hear of it except through the local paper in the area of the local authority promoting the Bill?

Through the establishment of its specialist Select Committees in recent years, Parliament has enhanced its reputation in areas of human activity outside the House which had been starting to believe, with some cause, that Parliament was totally irrelevant to their needs.

The Select Committee with which I have had most to do is the Select Committee on Science and Technology, the reputation of which outside the House is probably greater than it is in the House. It has made people realise that Parliament is interested in them despite the fact that they are interested in technology and sophisticated scientific matters. They might have thought at one time that Parliament was not capable, apart from being willing, of taking an interest. This is good for Parliament and for our reputation in places which matter considerably for our economy, apart from anything else.

In many of these fields we have some of the ablest people who are leaving our educational system. They would be completely right if they said that, unless Parliament takes an interest in what they are doing, there is no reason for them to take an interest in voting at a general election. I do not want to get too indignant about this but there are moments when I wonder whether the Establishment encourages us to do the work which Parliament has decided we should do as effectively as possible.

For example, not long ago the Select Committee on Science and Technology sent a Sub-Committee to look at the space programme at Woomera. I was on that Committee, which was led by the hon. Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer), who had a distinguished record in the Committee, of which he was the first Chairman in the last Parliament. We flew out and back again—all the way around the world in fact—in 12 days, and it is not an experience which I would recommend to hon. Members. It is an exacting physical undertaking. We flew out against the clock, via Vienna, Bahrein, Calcutta, Singapore and Sydney, and within an hour of our arrival at Adelaide we had started work.

On our final visit to Sydney, having gone there via Woomera, Adelaide and Canberra, two of us volunteered, since we were dealing with the space programme, to go home via Washington. But someone said, "If you are going to do that, since your Committee has officially dispersed in Sydney, you must each pay an extra £13 for the difference in the fare across the Pacific and via Washington." It is that sort of niggling thing which makes back benchers detest the Treasury and all its works from time to time and makes us feel that someone is deliberately trying to undermine our efforts for the benefit of Parliament.

That is one example. I commend also to hon. Members the evidence given by our learned Clerk, Sir Barnett Cocks, when he appeared before the same Select Committee on 21st May, 1968, and told us of the attitude of the Treasury and of the Commission of this House of which, you, Mr. Speaker, are Chairman.

Excellent though the Boyle Report is, the Government should not assume that if the House accepts it—as I hope it will—the Government themselves have not also a part to play in ensuring that those services which are supposed to be provided for the House to do its work are as perfected as possible. I commend to the Leader of the House in particular a study of the position of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in relation to the Commission of this House. That is all I propose to say on that, but it is important if we are to ensure that hon. Members do their work properly.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West referred to something he had said to the Boyle Committee, and I should like to refer to evidence which I gave. I not only appeared in my own capacity but was also asked for some of the views expressed to me in my position as Chairman of the Conservative back benchers committee, commonly known as the 1922 Committee. I did not pretend for a moment that the views which I expressed were other than an attempt to summarise some of the points. After all, every hon. Member had been approached and was equally free to say exactly what he thought.

I would particularly pay tribute to the Committee for having accepted without qualification our first recommendation, that junior Ministers should be dealt with at once. I have thought for a long time that it is wrong that being appointed a junior Minister should deny one part of one's parliamentary salary. I wonder how many of the electorate know that this is so. The Boyle Report put this very succinctly in paragraph 82: Although a Parliamentary Secretary receives a Ministerial salary of £3,750. his Parliamentary salary is reduced immediately on appointment by £2,000 to £1,250, and the Parliamentary expenses which he may claim as deductible for tax are limited to the latter amount. He is also debarred by virtue of holding Ministerial office from the pursuit of any other occupation. Could there be worse reasons for such a situation? I know that jocular references are made to junior Ministers as though they were Captain Bligh's midshipman, but we all know that the amount of work that a junior Minister has to do, particularly in dealing with correspondence with hon. Members on individual cases, is considerable and perhaps not quite as enjoyable as the work of the Minister in charge of the policy of the Department. Therefore, I am glad that this has been done.

Another matter on which questions were put to me when I gave evidence to the Committee—I was surprised that they were put—was the question of whether it would be a good idea to expect constituency parties or political parties to finance Members of Parliament. I sat on that suggestion very firmly indeed. If it be true today, as some say—I do not believe it—that hon. Members are too much subject to the whims of the Whips' Office and that too much pressure is sometimes put on a back bencher, imagine what the situation would be if political parties were actually financing Members.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is right. The approach to this job should be that of a self-employed person, but that principle was compromised a long time ago when a contribution was made to our pension fund. We have an absurd anomaly at the moment whereby Mem bers of Parliament are self-employed for national insurance purposes but for pension purposes a contribution is made by the employer through the Treasury. This has been a nonsense for a long time and I am glad that my right hon. Friend has undertaken to look further into these pension matters.

We must keep a careful watch on State pensions of this sort. My recollection from the Army is that if the Treasury can make a man retire six months before he wants to retire, the Department will do so if it means the man not going into a higher pension scale. I hope that we will not get into that position. If this House is worth coming into and if, as we agreed a long time ago, allowances should be paid, it is sensible for us to ensure that people do not suffer financial loss for doing their jobs as well as they can. We must see that hon. Members are provided with an adequate pension scheme.

A great deal has been said today and is written in the Boyle Report about travel allowances, particularly abroad. We must give enormous thought to this issue, especially as it will arise when we have full participation in the European Parliament. Imagine the humiliation of hon. Members who go to Strasbourg and step out of second-class railway carriages when their counterparts from other countries travel first-class or perhaps go by air. I do not go to Strasbourg but I do attend other conferences, including Königswinter, and I am anxious to avoid this sort of happening.

There must be something terribly wrong when hon. Members of this House are placed in a position of virtually having to accept hospitality in a host country and being unable to return it before leaving. There was the famous case of a Select Committee the members of which wished to send a sub-committee to the United States. The Treasury offered expenses at the rate of £1 per day. After a lot of hullaballoo the Department was persuaded to up its offer, but finally the sum was only £5, which anybody who has crossed the Atlantic will agree is nonsensical in American terms.

We must arrange our affairs so that hon. Members are able to do their job properly. The recommendations of the Boyle Report will at least enable the House to have a more decent salary scale and better pensions. This is a major step in the right direction.

6.22 p.m.

Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West)

I wish to be brief. I will not, therefore, comment on all the points raised by the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) and I make my opening remarks by way of support for his general argument.

I was directed on behalf of this House in 1966 to lead a delegation to Singapore to present a set of books on behalf of the House of Commons. On that occasion I inquired about the normal insurance cover that an hon. Member could get and I was told that if he was under the age of 70 he could be insured for £5,000. I took the matter up with the Treasury and asked for it to be increased to £10,000. The hon. and gallant Member for Carshalton (Captain W. Elliot) was on that delegation with me and will recall this incident. At the time my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He discovered that if I had employed all the resources of Parliament available to me—for example, the many Parliamentary Questions that I might have tabled on the subject—it could have cost the Treasury a lot more than acceding to my request. The figure was raised to £10,000.

I recently went on a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation to New Zealand, a considerable journey to make from this country. We were put among the economy-class travellers. I inquired of some business firms and found that it was their practice to send their employees first-class if they would be in an aeroplane for more than five hours. Surely hon. Members can, when travelling on behalf of this soverign Parliament, travel as first-class citizens. I make this request not as a point of snobbery but as a point of common sense.

The burden of the case made by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) was that Parliament had not improved noticeably in recent times with the payment of hon. Members and in other financial respects and that with these developments corruption had, if anything, increased. I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman. He is an historian of considerable achievement. On this occasion, however, he has gone sadly astray. One need only consider a few of the literary figures of the past, from Pepys onwards, to note the contempt with which they all treated this House. Consider the remarks of Hazlitt and the not too pleasant remarks of Dickens about the "great dust-heads of Westminster".

When in 1834 the Grand Select Committee met to stop one of your predecessors, Mr. Speaker, from selling the gold plate back to himself, it was dealing with Speakers who had their salaries decreased by £1,000 a year, having had a finger in Private Bill legislation and so on. That Grand Select Committee put a stop those practices and we have come a long way since those days.

In those years young men were virtually born into the service of this House. Indeed as recently as 1949, when I first came here, there was a measure of nepotism in some of the offices. We had a chief deliverer of votes who picked up £1,000 a year for that activity and at the same time ran the family business in St. Paul's Churchyard. All this can be found in the Report of the Stokes Committee.

The year 1832 was the date of one of the great catalysts in parliamentary representation. Only 3 per cent. of the adult population had the vote in those days. Is the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West suggesting that an electorate of 3 per cent. chose representatives who were more representative and more worthy to represent the nation than under our present system?

Mr. Powell

I just hope that this House and this generation of Parliament will be remembered in the history of this country as was the House of Commons in which Burke and Pitt sat.

Mr. Pannell

The right hon. Gentleman must always take history in the context of its time.

Mr. Powell

I do.

Mr. Pannell

I need only mention one name, and my hon. Friends will understand my feeling on the subject. I lived politically in the time of Hugh Gaitskell, one of the greatest figures and noblest men I have ever known. I assure the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West that he was not likely to have been exceeded in virtue by any of the gentlemen to whom he referred—not that those who read about the House of Commons, as I do and as I know the right hon. Gentleman does, suffer by reference to our predecessors.

Let us be clear about one thing. This sort of argument crops up all the time. It goes back to the time when Lloyd George brought in a salary of £400 a year. All the arguments and letters in The Times that appeared then could be repeated now. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West might almost have read those letters, which passed into his subconscious to be repeated by him on this occasion.

Mr. Stanley Orme (Salford, West)

The right hon. Gentleman lives in those times.

Mr. Pannell

The same happened when the salary was raised to £1,000 a year, the figure at which it stood when I first came here. Then it went up to £1,250. Winston Churchill refused to bow to the will of the House on the salary issue. Perhaps he was too nervous to do so. It needed the courage of Macmillan to take us a step further.

Then there was the occasion prior to the election of 1964 when the Lawrence Committee was set up. I am sure that the present Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and the then Prime Minister, would have implemented its recommendation had the Conservatives been returned to office. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made a mistake on that occasion when he cut the recommended increase to Ministers in half.

I am always rather nervous when people speak about principles when they are discussing other people's livings. The lowest form of life in political terms is the man who talks about principles while his friends go down.

Mr. Ernle Money (Ipswich)

Would the right hon. Gentleman, with his vast experience of this subject, agree that probably the worst form of corruption is worry about money and that there is nothing more debilitating to hon. Members than to be servants of their bank managers rather than servants of the public? The name of Burke has been mentioned. It will be recalled that lie was constantly in trouble with his bank manager and that his career was ruined in consequence.

Mr. Pannell

I do not want to weary the House with a lot of biographical detail. In my life I have known this sort of worry.

I agree wholeheartedly with the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West in the belief that the most honourable thing to be is a Member of this House. I had wanted to be a Member of the House since I was a very young man. I turned aside from the prospect of high office in the trade union movement in pursuit of this ambition, which took me 30 years to achieve. No one could say that I came to the House for the money at the end of it.

But here is another bit of history. The first example of a Member of Parliament being subsidised in order to carry out his duties was when my union decided to give John Burns £150 a year. I am sure that there were no strings attached to it, any more than there are today. But was not that man more in a position of subjection when he relied completely upon his trade union rather than the State that he sought to serve? How else could he even come here?

This House has been well-represented. It needs not only the noble professions; it also needs the filthy trades. The engine fitter cannot go to do a job at the weekend in his constituency or drive his engine there. He is debarred from doing that by the nature of the job. The right hon. Member will not join in the sort of correspondence which was written to me on the last occasion I said that, which said that such common people should not be in the House anyway.

One has to consider the contribution of great figures of this House, such as Arthur Henderson, an iron founder who came here; J. R. Clynes, who George Bernard Shaw once said had the most fastidious use of the English language of any man he had known; Walter Ayles, who won a Greek scholarship from the bench when he was 21; David Kirkwood and Aneurin Bevan. If Charles James Fox is remembered in this House, so will Aneurin Bevan be. Almost the last thing I heard Aneurin Bevan say, at a speech at a Blackpool party conference, was that the burdens of public life were too great to be pursued for little ends. We had better have this sort of thing in proportion. The right hon. Gentleman will have his share of publicity for a good speech in the Press tomorrow.

This House will again be written off as a squalid place, meanly paid and full of squalid people, and that will include hon. Gentlemen opposite now because they have caught on to what I knew 20 years ago. It was Viscount Samuel who said that an unpaid legislature or an unpaid judiciary are things essentially aristocratic. But we live in a democratic society. I can acquit the right hon. Gentleman in that he has not had my experience.

A great tragedy hit this House and one of its Members in about 1958. If I do not mention the former Member's name it is because it is too well known on this side of the House. He was a Member of the most brilliant promise who may have reached the very top in the House. He was killed in a motor accident. He left five children. It was Members on this side who entered into covenants to carry the children right through life. They have levied themselves annually since then. As a result of this, my party set up a fund, of which I have been a trustee and am now the chairman.

Probably some 70 Members went down at the last General Election and our committee had to do a rescue operation on those who were defeated. The average Member of Parliament, on either side of the House, never thinks that he will be defeated. We never think that electorates will be so unappreciative as to get rid of us. But they do. One Member who came to New Palace Yard did not even know that he would not receive pay for the three weeks of dissolution. Many were school teachers and, it being June, they had to wait until October before they were able to get a job.

We ought to be careful when talking about the burdens we lay on other people in pursuit of our democratic rights. When they were asked to stand for Parliament, should those men have said "No, I might lose my seat "? This reminds me of an occasion when I went on television. I was asked whether Members of Parliament were as good as they used to me. I said "They are better. More and more of them speak in the House and the general standard of literacy has risen". A don said to me "Surely, Mr. Pannell, you understand that there are better men out of Parliament than ever went in?" I looked at him and said "Give me a few names". I knew what the answer would be. He fiddled around and at last he said "Take my own case". I said "But no one has asked you to come in, have they?"

Members of Parliament on both sides have to be extroverts. We have only about five introverts in this place, though we have a great many more megalomaniacs. Members of Parliament, when they become candidates, have to be men who have been capable of being lifted on the shoulders of others to express aspirations bigger than those of themselves. Some men should be teaching sixth formers or counting the petty cash.

The don I mentioned had got hold of that idea; he had read too much of The Times, at that time very much against Members. Men have to be like that to come here. They have to come here not counting the cost or considering "I have 15 years in a superannuation fund". If men considered that, this House would have been denied the great men on both sides.

I do not regard the House as a corrupt place. I refused to serve on the Select Committee on Members' Interests because I thought that it cast an undeserved shadow and an imputation that the House did not deserve. I believe that Members can be found out in this place and that they can declare their interests. If they do not declare them, it is pretty grim at the end of the day.

I became convinced, because of the benevolent fund I mentioned earlier—and I can claim to be the initiator of what is known as the termination grant—that it should be done differently. I should have preferred that the life of a Parliament should be extended for six months, and for all those Members who went on it would be just merged into the three weeks' dissolution pay but that those who were defeated would take a termination grant. To the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West I would say that that is not a golden handshake and it is not unrecognised in commercial practice. I am grateful for the three months as I spent some time on this. I do not say that it will make our fund unnecessary, but when one considers that this side of the House and its fund paid out over £7,000 to stand men on their feet, to pay the rates and, I suppose, even to pay for food to keep them going until they were able to get a job, that was a justification of the death of the distinguished Member of whom I have spoken. I do not know what arrangements exist on the other side of the House.

Another hon. Member raised a sneer about dissolution. Can any hon. Member cite any other job in which a man gets sacked without notice, just like that, without even three weeks' pay? I give a justification for that. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) would agree with me when I say that the Board of the Inland Revenue allows Members, when re-elected, to charge up their normal expenses during those three weeks, because a Member who is returned does not cease to be a Member during that period. That is where he is different from the candidate. His expenses still go on and he can charge for them against income tax. He is in a different position from the other candidates who have never been members. It is a great constitutional nonsense to claim that somehow or other the Queen's Prerogative takes over during that period. There is still a Parliament. Fan mail still comes in during an election period. Deputations still come forward. There is no question of that.

I have dealt with one or two matters of broad principle and I have probably spoken rather too long. But I will say that no Member has been in closer touch with these problems on my side of the House than I have been. I have taken a great deal of interest not only in this matter but also in the conditions under which Members work. I think that it is out of order to refer to the Chair and to anything that you have done, Mr. Speaker. Certainly I must not refer to your antecedents, however lurid they may be. But if I may say so, when you became Leader of the House in 1963 there was a great leap forward on the other side of the House in considering the difficulties of Members and arrangements were made across the road for members of the Opposition. Indeed, Star Court was the first building that had been done in the Palace for over 100 years, and I am rather proud of the fact that it was done under my administration of the Ministry of Public Building and Works.

When I came here I found that I had never come across a place which was so much run by the officials. It was a fantastic situation. The functionaries were the people who ran it. We were here at the caprice of Her Majesty. Now we have taken it over under the Services Committee, not as thoroughly as I would have liked but at least we have taken it over. I have seen Members get an increasing degree of esteem in the 20 years I have been in this House.

I come to one or two points in the report itself. I thank the Leader of the House for his sympathy but I think that he is not yet fully seized of the London weighting problem to which I have referred. However, I rely upon the assurance he has given. As I see it, it will not be a daily allowance at all but a bank—the Government are to create a bank for Members to call upon, as Ministers have a bank of Parliamentary Questions to call upon. That will be very much better.

I do not think that anybody comes here for the money. A great many people come here and within a month know that they should not have been here at all and they go to the bar—a different bar. In effect, a Member has to give something original to the House. It is easy enough to make someone else's speeches in the country but a Member in this House has to make a contribution in his own way, whether it be in the House itself or in Committees. A Member is recognised after a time for the contributions he makes. He is recognised for what he is and not only for what he says. I think that this place is still a place of great esteem. I think that it is still an honourable place. I think that the number of people after my seat proves that. The number of people who go in for selection conferences proves that this is a place to which young men aspire, and it is an honourable ambition.

6.44 p.m.

Mr. Jerry Wiggin (Weston-super-Mare)

It is always a pleasure for the House to listen to the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell). As a comparatively new Member, I want to say how much I appreciate his contributions and the great depth of experience of this place and its workings that he has.

Like all other hon. Members I do not like having to decide on my own salary, but I do not see anything wrong in making a case for its improvement. Surely this sort of thing happens in all walks of life. Every individual in commerce or business, whether he does it himself or through a trade union, has to see that his pay at least comes up to the minimum requirements. I welcome the setting-up of the Boyle Committee and its report as far as it goes.

Since I first came to the House, not very long ago, there have been substantial improvements in many of our allowances. They were sorely needed because even in my first year, only three years ago, I found that my salary after expenses did not exceed £1,000. I do not believe that anyone can consider that to be adequate remuneration for our responsibilities and the work we have to do. As the right hon. Gentleman has said, no one is here for the money. But I do not see any reason why my wife and family should have to suffer because our salary falls so far behind that of other jobs. I sincerely believe that if the figure to be adopted were twice the present salary, I should scarcely find time to spend the money. I know that the proposed figure will be of great assistance to my wife and family.

I do not like the argument that because a lot of people are after our jobs we should not have a salary at all or that at least it should be greatly reduced. That argument can be applied in many other walks of life. The chairmanship of I.C.I. has been mentioned. I suspect that a great many people would like that job even at half the pay. But in practice I.C.I. rightly feels that it should pay its chairman a salary commensurate with the responsibilities and the decisions lie has to take.

Enough has been said, perhaps, by those with greater experience than I on the general issues, and I make no apologies for dealing with one or two minor details, which nevertheless may be just as important as the basic salary. There is the question of the next review. Lord Boyle suggests in the report that a review might be held once in every Parliament or approximately every four years. I see a great trap in this. In a Parliament where the Government's majority is small, as was the case in 1951 and 1964, there will not be a review of salaries. I would like to see a regular period adopted. Whether or not the Government can do this I do not know, but I certainly believe that the Government should attend to the question of having a regular review of expenses.

The principle has now surely been accepted that we have expenses and are to be remunerated for them. The London allowance will be helpful, as will be the improvements in the allowances for secretarial salaries and mileage. But there cannot be many secretaries in London who will come here and work in the conditions we offer or for the hours for £1,000 a year. The Civil Service Department itself is advertising posts in White hall at £1,450. I have to pay my secretary somewhat less than that.

Nevertheless, we in the larger constituencies need a full-time secretary. I do not believe that it is asking too much to have one and that the amount of salary should be provided by regular review. Similarly I find it hard to motor for 5p a mile. The Civil Service gets a better allowance than that, as do local government officials and others who have these matters independently assessed.

Again I cannot honestly say that I come to London for only 34 weeks in the year. What Member living in the country does not come to the House during a recess for a night or two to attend to his post or go to meetings? One only need come here in September to realise how many Members are no longer staying in their constituencies. It is this lack of realism which seems to be nit-picking. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) said about the Treasury. These amounts are small and I do not wish to quibble too much about them but I ask that they be regularly reviewed on a realistic basis.

There also seems to be the view, held by a number of people, that it is easy for Members to obtain part-time work outside this place. It is far from easy. The day of the non-executive directorships which can be picked up by Members of Parliament because of the letters at the end of their names are past. Regular executive work is hard to find because it upsets the other members of a firm who are in regular employment when, at two o'clock, the Member says "I must now go off for Question Time." It is impossible for him to continue meetings and regular assignments. It is not easy to obtain part-time employment.

A number of helpful employers, especially in London, make substantial sacrifices, and employ my hon. Friends, myself and, presumably, hon. Members opposite in part-time work in order to enable us all to carry out our jobs here in a way that does not stultify us in terms of being professional politicians alone.

I make a plea for attention to be paid to the lot of wives and, presumably, in some cases, husbands. The Boyle Report has taken this matter into account only in respect of travel. I agree that the improvement in salaries has obviously benefited them substantially, but they have special problems which need an airing. The Chairman of the Commission is a bachelor and there were no women on the Commission when the question of salaries was investigated.

In every job, the wife has a part to play—no senior executive or director of a company will argue against that—but in our work our wives have a special part to play. I do not have to tell hon. Members what it is. During the week, in our absence they have to carry out numerous engagements, both political and parliamentary. Incidentally, I sometimes wonder whether it is very easy to draw the line between the two. The time they spend in our constituencies with us, at weekends and on other occasions, is enormous. My poor wife has heard my election speech about 20 times every election and she somehow still manages to look reasonably happy.

The separation element is one that we younger people feel more keenly than most. If a Member has a young family of day-school age it is very difficult to avoid splitting the family up, at the very time when it is important that it should be a real unit. Whether our children are educated in London or in our constituencies, there is the problem of travelling to and fro at night. Those who have done so know the difficulties that this creates. The fact that help has to be obtained for baby-sitting and children's care is not taken into account at all at the moment.

The travel arrangements represent a big step forward. First there were none, then there were four and now there are 10 free vouchers a year. Why should not our wives be allowed to come here whenever they need to do so? It would not cost very much and it would make a lot of difference to many people.

One or two references have been made to the Inland Revenue. I find myself locked in battle with the Revenue as to the amount of the rent of my flat that can be ascribed to its use by my wife and children. I view this as a diabolical interference with our liberties. Yet the Revenue officials quite properly quote every line and instruction in the matter. I do not propose to give in on that one. I have never counted but I believe that, comparatively speaking, there are more broken homes in this House than in the nation generally. I do not think that anyone would have to look far to find the reason.

We still seem to be a little short on compassion. Pensions have been mentioned. I have no doubt that the payment of one year's salary on the death of a Member will be a substantial help. It certainly would have helped many people in the past about whom we have heard with sorrow today. I know of one or two myself. I do not know what the tax treatment of that lump sum will be. Presumably it will be the same as with other lump sum payments on death, but I hope that it can at least be made free of tax, if possible.

I am sorry that it is not possible to increase the benefits for a Member's widow. Apparently the Comission found itself unable to recommend this. 'When my right hon. Friend deals with pensions in the future I hope that he will bear in mind that it is our widows who will suffer. We shall not be there to bother about it.

I hope that I have not appeared carping and ungrateful about the Boyle Report, because that is far from what I intended to be. I merely say that when the Commission next reviews the situation I hope that our wives will not be forgotten.

6.55 p.m.

Mr. James Wellbeloved (Erith and Crayford)

I very much agree with much of what was said by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) when he talked about pensions and the salary that will go to a widow of a Member who dies in service. I recall one of my dear friends in this House—a highly respected man—who died in the most tragic and unfortunate circumstances, whose family would have greatly benefited had the proposed arrangements been in operation at the time. I agree with the hon. Member about that, and because this seems to be one of those occasions when there is so much agreement between Members across the Floor of the House I regret that I have to take a slightly disharmonious attitude on one or two aspects.

I have been surprised that nobody so far has made much reference to paragraph 10 of the Boyle Report. That paragraph deals with the outside interests of Members and says: Our survey…has shown however that 70 per cent. of Members other than officeholders pursue some other regular or occasional occupation; though in many cases the amount of time spent on the other occupation is quite small. Nearly 60 per cent. of the Members concerned spend under 10 hours per week pursuing their other occupations while Parliament is sitting, and a further 29 per cent. spend from 10 to 19 hours per week. Two-thirds of these Members earn over £1,000 per year from their other occupations, over one-third more than £3,000, and one-fifth earn over £5,000, with the higher figures tending to be earned by Members with constituencies in or near London. As is to be expected, Members with other occupations spend less time both in attending the House and on other Parliamentary business. My contention is that in the light of that part of the report the Government should have tabled, along with their other Motions implementing the more welcome aspects of the report, a Motion requiring the full declaration by hon. Members of those outside interests.

Mr. John Stokes (Oldbury and Halesowen)

The hon. Member did not continue to quote from paragraph 10, which is very germane to the point. The paragraph goes on to say: We found that involvement in an outside occupation was regarded by at least three out of four Members as beneficial to the work of Parliament by keeping Members in touch with other areas of life and providing expertise helpful to the work of Parliament.

Mr. Wellbeloved

I am not going to make a case based upon a desire to prevent hon. Members engaging in those outside activities which are concerned with our national life. I share the view that those outside interests can sometimes be beneficial to the House.

But those interests should be known to the House and the public. The Report of the Select Committee on Members' Interests, which we have never debated, contained some recommendations which would have gone some way towards dealing with this unacceptable position. That report's recommendations have not been implemented, and in any case it is now outdated, but as we are considering the Boyle Report it would have been appropriate to implement proposals apart from those necessary to ensure that Members and their families have reasonable remuneration.

I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to say something about the Government's intentions on this important matter. There can be no doubt that it would be greatly beneficial to the House if we knew precisely what interests Members had. It would be helpful to constituents in evaluating whether to vote for someone if they were able to assess whether, if elected, he would be concentrating the majority of his time representing them in Parliament or engaging in outside occupations and interests to increase his total income.

When the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) was speaking I thought how beneficial it would have been in evaluating the weight to be given to his remarks about hon. Members to know the extent of his outside interests. I fundamentally disagree with him when he says that we want to go back to the day when it was the prerogative of only rich men to represent the people in the House of Commons. We could more accurately evaluate the strength of his speech if we knew the extent of any outside involvement which he may have. As the Boyle Committee has shown that 70 per cent. of Members other than office-holders have outside interests, positive action must be taken to make these facts known to Members and the public.

The Leader of the House said that salaries had been assessed on the basis of full-time membership. If that is the setting in which the Boyle Committee's recommendations are being accepted, if we are to have periodic reviews of Members' pay every four years and if that is to be the basis upon which a reviewing body is to evaluate the situation, the next review body must go much more deeply into what is known as job evaluation.

We had a debate last week—and we shall continue it tomorrow—about the Civil List. Many of my hon. Friends have been concerned about the Monarchy's hangers-on; we are also concerned about the hangers-on at Westminster, about the five minutes to ten brigade who come in and vote a couple of times a week and whom we do not otherwise see, except when they come occasionally to make a speech. They do not serve on Standing Committees, they do not serve on Select Committees. Many of those of us on this side of the House who are virtually full-time Members are becoming sick and tired of carrying the hangers-on at Westminster. We want the Government, whichever Government it is at the time of the next review, to do a proper job evaluation.

If we are to have our income assessed on full-time membership, there should be a reduced salary for those Members who are hangers-on at Westminster, the trendy writers of editorials in weekly journals who pop in for their vote and the occasional speech. I am not too keen to see them superannuated at £4,500 a year at this stage, if the assessment of pay is to be on a full-time basis. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to give some sort of undertaking that proper job evaluation will be required in the terms of reference of the next review body.

It is recommended that Members should be paid during the course of an election campaign. Frankly I am opposed to this part of the Government's proposals. I see no justification for one candidate in each of the 630 constituencies being in the privileged position of being paid his full-time salary during the campaign. I know that some Members argue that this is only putting them into the category of those people who are employed by some large firms. If we are talking about pay which will enable people with small incomes to come here and to do a job for which we would otherwise have to rely on the privileged and rich, we must consider the constitutional rights of every British citizen, who is entitled under our law and qualifications to have the same advantages as any other candidate at an election. Whether he is Communist, Liberal or anything else, he may be losing wages as a plumber, a carpenter or a dock worker, and there can be no justification for saying that ex-Members of Parliament should be paid during a general election campaign.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)

Is my hon. Friend aware that Ministers already enjoy that privilege?

Mr. Wellbeloved

I am aware of that and I will deal with Ministers' remuneration later.

I am surprised that my hon. Friends have not yet said that this important issue has been brought before the House rather quickly without giving hon. Members the opportunity to consult at least their political organisations on the timing and justification. I have no doubt that if I had consulted my own local political colleagues, not the local electors as a whole, they would have agreed that Members of Parliament should be properly paid for doing a proper job; I would not have feared having time for consultation.

I do not believe that because our own interests are involved we should not make the obvious political points which it may be our duty to make on the subject of Ministerial and other salaries. When the Division comes, I hope that my hon. Friends will at least consider whether they can justify their silence on the subject of Ministers' pay.

Every hon. Member, whether a Minister or a back bencher, will receive the parliamentary salary. A Minister will receive £3,000 out of £4,500. That is a pretty substantial increase at once—a £1,750 increase on ministerial pay. If we look at the various increases which are to be paid to Ministers it can be seen that they work out on average at between £34 and £86 per week, excluding the Prime Minister. That takes us from Parliamentary Secretaries up to Cabinet Ministers. If we add £86 for Cabinet Ministers to the increase in parliamentary salary no one needs to be a genius to see that Ministers in the Cabinet will be getting an increase in pay of £129 a week.

Do my hon. Friends intend this evening to reward the Secretary of State for Employment for having imposed the Industrial Relations Act upon the workers with a pay rise of £129 a week? Are we to reward the Secretary of State for Education and Science with an extra £129 a week for snatching away schoolchildren's milk? That is what we will be doing if we do not vote on Ministers' salaries.

I hope my hon. Friends will be prepared to divide the House on this. It is quite wrong for us to stand back and see Government Ministers, responsible for nearly 1 million unemployed and for all the regressive Acts which we condemn politically outside this House to our supporters and to the country, being rewarded by £129 a week. I hope that my hon. Friends will be prepared to stand up and be counted on this issue of whether the Government are worthy of this reward after what they have imposed on the people. The Government should have done what my party did when in government in 1964—recognised the legitimate claims of back-bench Members but said that Ministerial increases were not fully justified in the circumstances. The Government should not in today's circumstances have awarded the full extent of the Boyle recommendations.

I welcome and accept my full share of responsibility for Members' salaries but I hope that on the political case we will oppose the Ministerial increases at this time.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. J. R. Kinsey (Birmingham, Perry Barr)

I will refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) only to make the declaration that I have no outside personal interests but my wife works very hard, as many other working wives do in support of the family income, and runs a small business. If that is of any benefit to the hon. Member he is entitled to know how hard my wife works in support of my household.

As I said when the statement was made to the House on 6th December, I do not disagree with the Boyle Report as such but I question the strategy of introducing the increases at the present time and accepting the report in its entirety. I do not quarrel with the expenses side. These are due to matters beyond our control, and for such things as the London allowance it is reasonable that the expenses should be met. The expenses arise in other ways, and we have to be realistic about the extra cost of travel and such things. My quarrel is not with the expenses but with the implementation of the salary increases in their entirety.

In reply to me on 6th December, my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council referred me to paragraph 121 of Lord Boyle's Report. I accept that as a different view but the Government have an important duty to interpret that view against their general policies. The Government's general policy for the country is one of wage restraint. I accept that to argue against an increase in the personal income of a colleague is not a welcome argument. I found that out when, as an ordinary worker at the bench, I argued the same point with my trade union colleagues as did many others during the post-war years. When I questioned ever-increasing wages and their effect on inflation I found that while I had a lot of support when the increases related to another person's wage packet, people took a different point of view when their own wages were involved. It was always much more justifiable when a man was arguing his own case. Members of Parliament seem to be in the same category.

We are a cross-section of the public and I would expect a cross-section of public opinion to be reflected here. As I considered my trade union colleagues to be wrong then, so I believe that my parliamentary colleagues are wrong today. If we examine the post-war history of inflation it will be seen how much better we could have curbed the inflationary process if we had listened a little to the people who urged restraint. The Government's policy on wages since June, 1970, can be seen to be justifiable. It is necessary to take inflation out of the system, and I am pleased that the first signs of success are beginning to be seen.

The Government must consider the psychological effects on future wage claims as from today. The argument of 4 per cent. per annum spread over seven years, put forward since 1964, is insufficient to justify what the Government and this House are proposing now. The rise will be interpreted as a 38 per cent. increase as from this date.

For some years the workers have been subjected by Governments of both major political parties to wage freeze and wage squeeze, with the exception of the lucky few just before the General Election who started the inflation which is so rampant. We are having to tackle this inflation, and the Government are advocating a policy of wage restraint. It is the right policy. It took some determination and fight to get it accepted, but it is beginning to be effective.

The Government and hon. Members have a special duty when arguing from a position of privilege and subjecting other wage awards and claims to scathing criticism, whether they be on behalf of the doctors, judges and civil servants, or of the electricians and postal workers.

Mr. Molloy

What the hon. Gentleman fails to recognise is that the argument on wage increases concerns discrimination as between those who work for the Government and those who do not, which in a reasonably free society should be as abhorrent to the hon. Gentleman as it is to me.

Mr. Kinsey

My argument is one of discrimination. We are the discriminating force. The hon. Gentleman has the chance to redress the situation if he thinks it is wrong, because we are arguing, from a moral position, about our own salaries. The arguments we put forward in respect of ourselves should reflect those which we advocate in respect of others. The proposed award for Members does not reflect the morality of our arguments. In order truly to reflect our arguments, this wage award should be spread over two or three years. The public would then see that we believed in the principles we advocated.

Mr. Hugh Dykes (Harrow, East)

My hon. Friend has not mentioned one element in the general wages argument; namely, the linking of wage increases to productivity. The argument about comparing Members' salaries with general wage increases linked to productivity cannot be upheld because there is no way of measuring it.

Mr. Kinsey

My hon. Friend has missed the point. This wage award will be judged as from this time and will not reflect the arguments we put forward in respect of other people.

To support the view which I hold, I quote from paragraph 121 of the Boyle Report: We have been conscious of the declared intention of the present Government to implement our proposals unless there are clear and compelling reasons for not doing so. The policy of wage restraint which the Government are advocating is right and is working. That is the compelling reason for not accepting quite so completely all the Boyle Committee's recommendations. We should set an example.

7.25 p.m.

Mr. William Molloy (Ealing, North)

I pay my respects to the Boyle Committee because it did an extraordinarily good job in the detailed manner in which it set about its task. I could criticise many aspects of its conclusions, but I believe that the hallmark of its report is that the job has been done thoroughly, and that is probably because of the calibre of its chairman and his immense knowledge of public life in general and of this House in particular. I therefore pay tribute to Lord Boyle.

I have only one comment to make on the speech which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey) has just read. He forgot to mention that in no other profession, trade or industry, except in respect of the judges, does this machinery have to be put into operation in order to give a wage increase. Industry would never function and commerce would collapse if a Royal Commission had to be appointed and an Act of Parliament passed to bring about a change in rates of pay or expenses. The analogies which the hon. Member drew made his speech, sincere though it may have been, quite ludicrous. Does anyone believe that a trade union or employers' organisation would be prepared to accept this form of machinery for bringing about wage increases or making changes in respect of expenses? Yet this machinery is adopted for judges, who have not come out of it too badly, and for Members of Parliament.

Mr. Skinner

My hon. Friend is referring to the tortuous exercise which must be carried out relating to hon. Members' pay. I remind him that there are 280,000 miners who will be going through a much more formidable exercise for an increase of £2. Will my hon. Friend take that into consideration when he is dealing with increases of £1,250?

Mr. Molloy

I take that into account. I have probably sat at more negotiating tables at national level than anyone else in the House. I am prepared boldly to go on record and say that I do my job as a Member of Parliament just as conscientiously as I did the job when I was a coal miner or an errand boy. I wanted rises then, and I have the guts to ask for them now and to face my constituents after asking for them.

One reason why people are anxious about whether we are of the right calibre is this. On most issues we are prepared to stand up and be counted, but when it comes to improving our lot we say, "We are not sure whether this is the right time for an increase", and people say, "You have not much confidence in yourselves and yet it is in you that we have entrusted the future of our nation". I am prepared to say that for the work I do for the people I represent I am worth every ha'penny of what I get now and I shall be worth every ha'penny of what I get in future.

The first letter which I received on this matter, dismissing those gutless anonymous letters written on some expensive typewriter, was from an old-age pensioner. He listed some of the things I have been able to do in my constituency, such as trying to get an extra zebra crossing or bridges built over Western Avenue because a couple of children have been killed. I can quite understand that such a matter may not be of great interest to my hon. and right hon. Friends or to hon. and right hon. Members opposite, but it is to my constituents. I had a hell of a row with Ministers in the Labour Government on behalf of the people of my constituency, and I was worth my salt for that issue alone, and I know full well that hon. and right hon. Friends of mine and hon. Members opposite can make similar claims, because one of the wonderful things about this place, as I said in an interruption of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), is that when we have a constituency problem about, say, a school with a couple of hundred children, we do not size up whether there are many votes or not in it, or how much it will cost us in fares to go down to the constituency. I sincerely believe that no Member on either side of this House every gives that sort of thing a thought, as was implied by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West.

Mr. Powell

The hon. Member is quite mistaken. I implied no such thing at all, and if he will do me the goodness, as I am sure he will, to read my speech tomorrow, he will find that there was no such implication.

Mr. Molloy

I will certainly do that. I say in advance to the right hon. Gentleman that he will know better than I what he said, and if I misunderstood him on that point, I am sorry, and I will certainly read his speech. What I am absolutely sure about is that part of his speech where he very cunningly inferred that the status of this House would drop because of the possibility of corruption, and he then had the nerve to refer to the times in our history when some of the most horrible and vulgar things were the rotten boroughs and the stinking corruption which existed.

It was a great pity for this debate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) did not immediately follow the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. In the seven years or so in which I have been a Member of this House, I have previously heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West do a very good demolition job on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, but if ever there was a complete and total demolition of an argument which we have had from the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West it was carried out by my right hon. Friend this afternoon, and, if I may say to my right hon. Friend, if there is one speech in his life of which he will be proud, it will be that speech which he made this afternoon.

My right hon. Friend's speech and the speech by the hon. Member for Manchester Withington (Sir R. Cary) were two classical speeches. They were not speeches in defence of the Conservative Party or the Labour Party or any party, but classical speeches from what I would call very good House of Commons men, speeches in defence of this House of Commons and for all that it means to the outside world as well as to our own country. I am grateful to both the hon. Member for Withington and my right hon. Friend for the speeches which they made.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) is not in the Chamber. I am sorry that he did not make the same sort of speech, but gave in a little to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. I am sorry because, in view of his position in his party, I think he had a special responsibility to make a defence of this House and of the people who sit and who will sit here, irrespective of which side of the Chamber they sit.

I have heard in other places some of the arguments which were advanced by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. I know that he has made a great study of the House of Commons and how it works, but some of us were involved in politics at the grass roots level long before we ever came into the House of Commons, and I will fight for our proper remuneration, just as, as I said, when I was an errand boy, or a miner, or a civil servant, I fought for proper remuneration; but if we were arguing about a reduction in our pay, I would still want to be a Member of the British House of Commons because one of the greatest things for anyone born or living in this island to achieve is membership of this House of Commons. That was so wonderfully expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West.

In the difficult rôle in which he has to operate as Leader of the House, the Leader of the House today was a leader indeed, as he has been on other occasions in the past—not so much a member of the Cabinet but Leader of the House of Commons, and I am grateful to him for the contribution which we had from him. Not for the first time he has behaved in an exemplary manner as the Leader of the House of Commons, and, if I am harsh, severe, savage in criticism of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, I would be less than truthful if I did not express my admiration for what the Leader of the House has done for the ordinary back benchers on either side of the House.

We are talking about our own remuneration or pay or allowances, or whatever we may call it, but these are things I have campaigned for nearly all my life. I was very active in British constitutional government long before I came to this House of Commons. I was very proud indeed to be a councillor in the Metropolitan Borough of Fulham. I held many chairmanships in that borough. My colleagues, Labour aldermen and councillors, and Conservative aldermen and councillors opposing us, very seriously and sometimes very hard, were all prepared to put in a vast amount of time and make responsible decisions, and one of the things which used to aggravate me was that the conditions in which we had to do our work were often far from adequate while at the same time those who had to carry out our decisions were not too badly off.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West quoted a long list of hon. Members on both sides of the House and mentioned the name of Aneurin Bevan, and I was reminded that I was in the Gallery when I heard him say something I still remember when people cavil and complain about the power of the civil servants. I suppose most of us here have from time to time felt the frustration and annoyance that in pursuing a case for a constituent we have to sit on a shabby bench outside this Chamber while reading a letter, or that we have to read it in the canteen where we may get fish and chips all over it while trying to work out what the letter is all about, and then have to argue the case with a medium grade or higher grade civil servant and see the different conditions in which he or she works. I may say as a former staff side chairman that I have contributed to seeing that the conditions in which civil servants do their work should be right, that they should have the right tools for the job, that all these things should be properly provided. I certainly agree with Aneurin Bevan that it is quite wrong for us or the general public outside to complain and cavil at the power of civil servants when we in this House have not the courage to give ourselves the right tools for our job so that we can exercise the proper power we were given by the people who sent us here.

I revert to local government for a moment because it is relevant to this argument and to my argument. One of the first speeches I made in this House was on the need to look at all the expenses involved for the ordinary people in all our political parties who do so much work at local government level. They are still the cinderellas of our British constitution. I hope that the hon. Members who have the courage to argue their own case will make out as fervent and sincere an argument for their colleagues in the political parties who do so much work in local government.

When I was listening to the admirable speech of the Leader of the House, I knew full well that if he had been advancing another case I should be attacking him, but, even if we did not get a halfpenny more, I should still be fighting just as hard in the next General Election as I did in the three others to get back here.

At the same time, we are still at the bottom of the league—

Mr. Skinner

The pensioners are at the bottom.

Mr. Molloy

If my hon. Friend does not want to take the increase, he need not. I say bluntly that I shall take mine. My hon. Friend is right to say he will not take it, and I admire him for it. One's sense of dignity and determination carries one right through. My hon. Friend has worked in the pits and has fought for improved conditions for the men, not for himself. I understand that, because I am the same sort of person. One's sense of fair play, justice and dignity carries one through.

With other hon. Members, I have been abroad on official business for my country and my constituents, and on these occasions we have sometimes felt embarrassed. Irrespective of what the Govern ment might do, I do not want to see my country embarrassed, any more than I want to see old-age pensioners, miners, railwaymen or anyone else in difficulties. I will fight for them as long as I have breath in me, but I hope that I shall not be a hypocrite and that I shall have the courage to state what I feel about my own position. I do not want money for the sake of money. In the part of the world where I was brought up I was taught not to want to become the owner of a steel works or a colliery. I was taught that steel works and collieries should be run for the benefit of the nation and should be brought into public ownership. I am willing to accept that I am owned by the nation and by my constituents, and that I have a responsibility to do my best for them.

The test of hon. Members with marginal seats is whether or not they come back to the House. An hon. Member fighting for a marginal seat can have some assurance one way or the other of his calibre and ability to work for his constituents.

The implementation of the Boyle Report, when it is understood by people outside the House, will raise the status of Members of Parliament and of the House of Commons, provided that all hon. Members who accept it are willing to say so and to contribute even more to the causes which we support on behalf of our constituents. I do not believe that the implementation of the report will have a corrupting effect on any hon. Member. What is remarkable about the House of Commons is that every one of us individually accepts that the only guide to a man is his conscience and the only shield to his memory is his rectitude and the sincerity of his actions. Irrespective of the level of our remuneration, that will always remain the hallmark of a Member of this House of Commons.

7.44 p.m.

Mr. John Stokes (Oldbury and Halesowen)

As a comparatively new Member I find the debate most interesting and enjoyable. In this matter the honour of the whole House is involved and party differences are generally muted. The hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) made great play of the supposed mystery of the other activities of hon. Members such as myself. My activity for the last 25 years has been in personnel work in industry and commerce. Part of that time I have spent on the subject of salaries, and that is why I am taking part in this debate tonight.

I feel that by having an outside job I am kept fully in contact with life outside and, if I may say so with respect to my Front Bench, I also have some independence from the Whips. The subject of salaries has always been a highly emotional one. It is doubly so in our case as no one is quite sure what our jobs can be compared with. I believe that they are unique. There is also the problem of the extent to which they are considered to be full-time or part-time jobs.

We can congratulate Lord Boyle and the Review Body on doing a professional job on the terms which they were given. They fell down in one respect only and that was in the inclusion in their report of the pages on the so-called public attitude survey which, like so many similar surveys, is simply not worth the paper on which it is printed.

Like many other hon. Members, I was fascinated by the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). I know him to be an Englishman, a patriot and a great upholder of the Houses of Parliament, both the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and of our privileges and independence. It is, therefore, a grief to me to have to differ from some of his remarks. I yield to no one in my admiration for this House, which was in the unreformed days possibly a better House than it is now with full democracy, but we have to live in the present age and, having had salaries for such a long time, we cannot put the clock back. I agree with my right hon. Friend that we must be careful not to over-step the limit.

Hon. Members have mentioned the anonymous letters they have had. I have not had any but I know that there is an under-current of feeling both about the emoluments for the Monarchy which we discussed recently and about our own emoluments. I believe both sets of criticism arise from almost total ignorance of the sort of life we have to lead.

I was most moved by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) who spoke of the difficulties of young married men in this House. I am a comparative newcomer and I am lucky to be blessed with a happy marriage of 30 years' standing, but I can say quite frankly that I was not very popular just before the House rose for the Summer Recess and I appreciate that a great strain is placed on married men with families.

The report goes some way to distinguish between the salaries for the work we do and the expenses which are necessary to fulfil the job. Taxi fares paid by many hon. Members sometimes amount to several pounds a day and hon. Members have to face considerable expenses when entertaining constituents and others. None of these items is recompensed. Therefore, I welcome the refund of expenses to be granted for travel, secretarial help and subsistence when a Member is away from home. The so-called salary increase only just makes up for the rise in the cost of living. We are told that there will be no further review for a period of four years.

There are one or two oddities in the report to which attention should be drawn. Some of them have been mentioned. Ministers in the other place seem to be penalised and get no equivalent to our parliamentary salary. Furthermore, Chairmen of Select Committees are to receive nothing while the provision for Opposition Whips, which I welcome, seems to be on the generous side. The pensions arrangements for Members are quite unrealistic since they are based on sixtieths. Certainly the London allowance, which is taxed, is nothing like enough.

Nevertheless, I believe that on the whole the resulting package is just about right, even if it is the minimum that can be done. I am particularly pleased about the salaries of junior Ministers which, as everyone recognises, have up to now been a scandal. For some reason, dating perhaps from a more spacious and aristocratic age than ours, there has in recent years been a meanness and unwillingness to pay the proper rate for those in public life. Therefore, although I regard the report as by no means generous, I feel that it takes a substantial step forward in treating the pay and expenses of Members of Parliament in a fairer and more business-like manner.

7.54 p.m.

Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)

The Leader of the House in moving the Second Reading congratulated Lord Boyle and the Review Body on the work they had done. I am a little surprised how few subsequent speakers have mentioned this subject, but I wish to add my congratulations to the Review Body.

The previous report on Members' salaries, the Lawrence Report, did not set out to alter the system by which Members were paid. It increased the amount but stated that it was for Parliament itself, if it so wished, to alter the system. However, since its terms of reference were wider than that, I feel that that report could have gone further. Therefore, the Boyle Committee is particularly to be congratulated on changing the system in a number of respects.

The second reason for offering congratulations to the Boyle Committee is more personal to hon. Members on this side of the House since the group of Opposition backbenchers interested in these subjects submitted evidence to the Review Body. It would not be true to say that the Boyle Report wholly agreed to all our recommendations; it certainly did not do so in regard to basic salary. While Members of Parliament have been recommended a 38 per cent. increase, there has been a 67 per cent. increase in salaries outside the House. I think this answers the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey). However, the report at least gave us something on every point we put forward. The Boyle Committee has allowed various expenses, and though, again, it can be said we have not been granted the amount of money we suggested, the Committee fairly considered all our points, as well as points put to it by other hon. Members on both sides of the House.

Mr. Kinsey

The hon. Member referred to my interpretation of the percentage increase, but I would point out that these matters are always open to various interpretations. The point the hon. Member makes might be true if he takes a particular period of seven years and excludes the last increase in expenses. However, it is not so if he takes the situation over the whole period since the end of the war when we have gone ahead of other people outside the House.

Mr. English

I was quoting from the report itself—as I did after the Leader of the House's statement—and I am sure the hon. Member can read the passage concerned without my delaying the House with it.

Having said that I am satisfied with the Boyle Report, I must point out that I am not quite so satisfied with the Government's interpretation of it as exemplified by the Motions which they have tabled. I refer particularly to the second Motion and to the third paragraph which relates to the subsistence allowance. I do not wish to be harsh on the Leader of the House since I know he was under great pressure to table the Motions before Parliament adjourned for the Christmas Recess so that the provisions shall come into force by 1st January.

However, I should like to draw the attention of the House to the difference between the right hon. Gentleman's statement on 6th December and his statement today. On 6th December the right hon. Gentleman first quoted from paragraph 121 of the Report of the Review Body as follows: It is in our view of the highest importance that these recommendations both as they affect salaries and allowances should now be implemented as a whole and in full. The right hon. Gentleman went on in his own words to say: The Government intend to respond to this strong expression of the Review Body by accepting the proposals of the Report, subject to further discussion with the parties, and with the House authorities, regarding the detailed implementation of the proposed new allowances for Members."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th December, 1971; Vol. 827, c. 950.] However, in his speech today the right hon. Gentleman said he had consulted the House authorities but he omitted any mention of consultation with the parties. I presume the reason is that he had not consulted through the usual channels or otherwise. Perhaps he did not have time to do so in the short time available to him.

Mr. Whitelaw

I would point out that after my discussions with the House authorities I informed those concerned about what I was doing, although the time available did not enable me to consult before tabling the Motion. Furthermore, if the hon. Gentleman looks at Appendix F on page 89 of the report he will see that the Review Body said of the subsistence allowance: The arrangements set out below are intended only as an outline; details will need to be determined by the appropriate authorities. I believe we have carried this out in a way which will be to the advantage of Members of the House of Commons, although there may be some individual variations.

Mr. English

I am coming to the substantive point. I realise that there were discussions after the Motion had been tabled, but discussing Motions after they have been tabled is very different from discussing them while they are in the drafting stage.

I do not want to be harsh on the Leader of the House. I entirely accept the assuranec he gave in his speech that he will reconsider the matter in the light of the way it works. However, I fear that it is not merely the way it works that will be the trouble. I fear that he is committing us to a principle which is contrary to that of the Boyle Report.

To start with a very minor point, the report states that London Members should get £175 and provincial Members should be entitled to the subsistence allowance. There is no implication that I can find in the report that there should be a third class of citizen, namely, the outer London Member who gets neither. I can see exactly why £175 is mentioned. During the course of the debate I heard two hon. Members say that £175 was too small. However, it is chosen because that is the Civil Service London weighting. This is exactly how the Boyle Committee derived it. That London weighting applies to a radius of four miles from Charing Cross.

Apart from any Inland Revenue reason which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, if we extended the London allowance too far it would have obvious repercussions on tens of thousands of civil servants who might wish to extend their radius for getting it.

If an outer London Member goes home and stays with his wife overnight, he gets nothing; he is not entitled to claim the £175 London weighting. He is not entitled under the Motion to claim as a provincial Member.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

Surely my hon. Friend is wrong. If an outer London Member stays the night, or if he claims that he has stayed the night, in London, a greater London Member such as myself who does not live in London or in his constituency but who lives out of London will be able to claim the amount. I see the Leader of the House nodding his head.

Mr. English

I agree. I did not give that example. I gave the example—I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) fits it perfectly—of an hon. Member who lived at his home in his outer London constituency.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

He can still claim it.

Mr. English

Of course, by the simple process of getting a flat in London or a cottage in the country, but why should he have to? We have gone into this in a fair amount of detail. As I put it somewhat facetiously to some of my colleagues. it would pay them to get a mistress and install her in a flat in the centre of London.

Mr. Stokes

Surely such a Member can stay the night at a flat or an hotel in London and claim.

Mr. English

Yes, perhaps he can. It so happens that, like the hon. Gentleman, he may have been happily married for a long time and accustomed to going home at night.

This deliberately creates an anomaly which is not in the report and an anomaly which, strangely enough, applies only to those Members who go home at night.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

Let us forget the greater London Member. My hon. Friend is what is called a provincial Member. If he does not stay the night but goes home, he will not be able to claim this allowance either. The greater London Member is put on exactly the same basis as the provincial Member. I see the Leader of the House confirming this.

Mr. English

I have explained the point several times over. If my hon. Friend wishes me to explain it in even greater detail, I think that I had better do so outside the Chamber because it is clear to me that my hon. Friend has not been present for some of the very long discussions I have had with a large number of hon. Members who are affected by these circumstances and also with some of those who drafted the Motion.

However, that is a minor anomaly which can be cleared up easily. I am much more concerned about the major change of principle which the Government have seen fit to import into the Motion. In respect of the subsistence allowance, and for the subsistence allowance alone, the Boyle Committee decided to tie us to the Civil Service rate appropriate to assistant secretary level and above. This is the way in which the Boyle Committee arrived at the subsistence allowance of £5.25 a night for a stay overnight in London or £5 a night for a stay overnight in the provinces. Paragraph 40 of the Report, which is not the appendix which the Leader of the House keeps quoting but is the original basic recommendation, states why the Committee did this: This scheme is based on the practice currently in operation for Members of the public services who are sent away from their main place of work. That is a fair and reasonable basis upon which this subsistence allowance can be justified. If we are saying that we will do for ourselves no better and no worse than we do for those who are in effect, if not directly, our employees—some of them are; they are the employees of all the public services—we can fairly stand up in the face of the public at large and justify this allowance. This has been changed by the Government from an overnight subsistence allowance to a figure of £750 a year.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer (Liverpool, Walton)

Quite right.

Mr. English

It makes a considerable difference. My hon. Friend who says "Quite right" will surely recognise that I am not arguing the point on a party basis. There are hon. Members on both sides who will accept what the Government have done and hon. Members on both sides who may think it improper. I am putting one point of view. My hon. Friend will no doubt have an opportunity to express an alternative point of view.

My point of view is that what the Boyle Committee deliberately, as I understand it, recommended was that we put ourselves on the same basis as that applying to the public service—namely, an amount per night for an overnight stay. This is customary in industry. The Motion gives a lump sum of £750 a year.

The man who comes down only once a week but who stays in the Dorchester can legitimately claim this sum because he will certainly be spending the money. On the other hand, some Members travel to London on Sunday night so as to be here early on Monday morning—as the Boyle Report says. The man who stays in London for four or five nights a week will get exactly the same sum as the man who stays at the Dorchester for one night whereas under the Boyle proposal he would not. The proposal as set out in the Motion will literally pay the laziest Member of the House as much as it will pay the most active, and I believe it to be wrong.

I know that there are other considerations. If it were to be done on the Boyle basis, additional expenses could not be claimed for tax purposes. It is precisely that principle that some of us want to get away from. A claim for tax purposes is an admirable thing if one has a large outside income and the tax rate of a millionaire. The hon. Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) has stated openly that he claims the whole of his parliamentary income—quite legitimately—as a parliamentary expense. He spends it in that way. He is entitled to do so, but it is not a matter which any one of the 30 per cent. of back benchers mentioned in the Boyle Report can do on his parliamentary income, and their tax rate is considerably lower. Claims for tax purposes are more beneficial the more prosperous a Member is. This was the ancient system which many of us—presumably the 30 per cent. referred to in the Boyle Report who do not have outside incomes—wish to get away from.

Incidentally, only this morning I received a petition signed by hundreds of my constituents. It was about the Civil List and Members' salaries. Immediately I opened it I thought, "It is obvious that they will be 'agin' both of them." To my considerable surprise, I found that they were not against the Queen's increase, but they thought that her private fortune should be taxed, and they were not against an increase in Members' pay. In fact, the relevant section starts off by saying that they are sympathetic to Members of Parliament who only had their parliamentary income to live on, but that they felt that other Members might be subjected to the kind of means test which is steadily becoming more popular these days. I must show this petition to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. Obviously his general principles have percolated to my constituency.

The system now proposed is literally a deliberate incentive to the more prosperous and laziest Members of the House. Therefore, it should be specifically reconsidered by the Government after a period of operation. This is my principal criticism of the change.

I do not wish to end on a note of criticism. I accept that in broad amount the Leader of the House and the Government have accepted the Boyle Report, even on this issue, and on all other issues they have accepted it in full exactly as presented. I have no patience with certain hon. Members on both sides of the House, such as the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, who produced a strange eighteenth or nineteenth century argument, the ultimate implication of which, as far as I can see, is that, as in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, we should not be paid at all; we should probably be provided with a Government sinecure, which was the practice in those days, for which hon. Members did no work but received an income. Hence, in the eighteenth century it was possible to say that Members of Parliament were not paid, although they were being paid in a somewhat underhand way—in some cases out of the Civil List—by the Government of the day. I cannot bring myself to believe that we are more corrupt in this day and age than in the eighteenth century. It is clear that the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is a student of classical rather than eighteenth century history as well as classical languages.

It is high time that Members of Parliament were paid an adequate rate for the job, but not too high. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy) said that he would come for no more; he would fight three more elections for less money than is proposed. But that is not the real question, as I am sure my hon. Friend would agree. The real question is whether the wives and children of Members should have to do it as well.

8.14 p.m.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook (Orpington)

I cannot share in the general welcome which has been given to the Bill, because there are two basic objections to it. First, I think that it will encourage that class of politicians who are solely dependent on their parliamentary salaries.

Mr. Heffer

What is wrong with that?

Mr. Stanbrook

It will also encourage a larger number of Members who are not representative of the people as a whole, not so much in contact with the real world and, perhaps, more susceptible to party pressure, which is a matter of some consequence to hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Mr. Heffer

The hon. Gentleman is talking rubbish.

Mr. Stanbrook

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman disagrees with me. It gives me great heart because I know that I must be right.

The second objection is more fundamental.

Mr. Heffer

The hon. Gentleman is probably well heeled.

Mr. Stanbrook

If the hon. Gentleman will listen, he might be educated.

My second objection is that the Bill—the Boyle Report itself—fails to distinguish between the services and facilities which a Member of Parliament needs to do his job properly—this is a separate aspect of our work—and what he reasonably requires for his personal and domestic needs.

The present system of Members' remuneration confuses those two elements and adds to the misunderstanding which undoubtedly exists among the general public about Members of Parliament, their work and salaries. It is on the same level of understanding, or misunderstanding, as the notion of the Civil List being the Queen's pay. Oddly enough, in the proposals which we are to debate tomorrow there is to be no element for the personal needs of the Queen; there is to be no contribution to the Privy Purse. In future the whole of it is to be devoted to the public requirements of the Monarchy. Yet it is wrongly and unfairly castigated as the Queen's pay rise.

In the same way Members of Parliament now get expense allowances, which have been increased, but they are still expected to bear a substantial part of their working expenses out of what the general public thinks are their personal incomes.

At current rates our secretarial allowance enables us to buy one-third of the services of a secretary. The new proposals will apparently enable us to buy two-thirds of a secretary, taking the current rate as about £1,500 a year full-time. If we want help with research we have to manage with half a secretary plus £300 towards research assistance. It seems, therefore, that the allowances proposed in the Bill are inadequate but that the income is excessive.

The fundamental fault in these proposals is their approach to the whole concept of parliamentary income and their failure to distinguish between these two aspects of our work and requirements. In what other job is a worker expected to provide an office, office facilities, equipment and staff out of his own wages? It is a fact that if we were to do the job properly we could well spend the whole of the existing £3,250 a year on an office, office facilities, equipment and staff. Indeed, we have been told that some hon. Members do. It is wrong in those circumstances that the public should be left with the impression that Members of Parliament are already paid £3,250 for their own private and personal needs. That is the impression which gets about. It is Members' pay which is always spoken about, not Members' actual expenses in doing their jobs properly.

The only fair and sensible way of dealing with this problem is to provide directly, not by way of allowances, for the exclusive use of each Member an office—not one which he shares with perhaps eight or more other Members—office equipment, facilities and staff, together with reasonable travelling and subsistence allowances. In addition, we should pay him the minimum sum which he reasonably requires for his personal needs. I believe that £3,250 is already more than adequate for that purpose. I believe that the pay should be reduced to £3,000 a year if my suggestions were adopted.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

Let us accept that the hon. Gentleman is correct. He must then go a step further and suggest that the non-elected Members in the other place should not get £8.50 a day tax-free, because they do not even have to stay the night. All that they need to do is to show their faces in the Chamber and then go home.

Mr. Stanbrook

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has taken my point, which is that the question of parliamentary remuneration is confused because of the way in which expenses are dealt with. The hon. Gentleman has given a perfect example of it.

I know what will be said about my suggestion that all our working expenses should be taken out of the arena of pay and that proper direct provision should be made for them. It will be said that no accommodation is available. I disagree with that. A new parliamentary block is being proposed on the other side of Bridge Street. There is the excellent old Colonial Office site, which used to be called the old Westminster Hospital site, within six minutes of this building. The need is urgent and must be met before the expiry of 10 years. For that reason the Government should inquire into the possibilities of providing office accommodation within existing Government buildings which are within six minutes radius of this House.

A solution on those lines becomes more urgent every day. It is vital for the health of parliamentary democracy in this country. Palliatives such as the present proposals serve only to cloud and confuse the issue of the proper remuneration of the representatives of the people. In addition they serve to weaken the independence and power of individual Members. For that reason the Government should take the Bill back and reconsider the whole subject.

8.22 p.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)

The speech of the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) shows how the impressions of different Members can vary. My impression from the Report of the Boyle Committee, and, indeed, from the Press coverage that it received, was that, in contradistinction to the whole aura of the Lawrence Committee, for the first time some differentiation had been made between what was necessary for our work and our personal income. On reflection I do not see how the Boyle Committee could have made any sharper distinction along those lines, unless its recommendations had been very different, and if they had been very different, they would have been perhaps less blanket-like in suiting the vast majority of hon. Members.

I thought that in this as in many other things the Boyle Committee had done a good job. Indeed, I am one of many in this House who think that the Boyle Committee's Report should be accepted as a package, and that it is rather unwise of us, having been given an outside package, to start tinkering too much with it, because if we are to bring ourselves into disrepute at all it will be by failing to accept the decision of an outside body. We can always take refuge, to put it at its lowest, in saying that this is what an outside body thinks is right and, therefore, we shall go along with it. If we start to tinker too much, we shall run into difficulties.

I shall confine myself to one matter which Boyle left open. The reference to it is in paragraph 42(b) relating to overseas travel and Treasury help for Members who want to go on bona fide overseas travel. I do not want to be too personal about it, but I had the good fortune recently to spend three weeks in the People's Republic of China. I do not exaggerate when I say that three of my colleagues, unknown to one another, half in fun perhaps, or wholly in earnest for all I know, asked me politely, not offensively, how much of Mao Tse-tung's gold I accepted. To be serious about it, and not flippant, this is a very important question, because anyone who comes back from a controversial country faces the problem of people wondering how much his opinions have been influenced by hospitality, and I knew that if I had to admit that I had accepted so much as one yuan in personal expenses from China I should not have been believed in anything that I said favourably about that country. It is perhaps human nature to suspect those who come back after being the guests of foreign Governments, as being in a sense the creature of foreign Governments.

That is a bad thing. It may have arisen out of the situation of the Central African Federation to which the right hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe) referred. Be that as it may, we have to expect of our colleagues that they can come back from a controversial country as their "own men". Un-influenced by having been put in a position of either not going there at all or having to accept money from foreign Governments. Those who can pay for visits, as I did this one basically though journalism, are in a fortunate position, but there are occasions when either one does not particularly want to write about the country or the country is not of sufficient noteworthiness to be able to persuade any newspaper, magazine or trade magazine to accept articles and pay money for them.

It may be asked whether Members are to do the work of diplomats. I do not believe that our function is that of the Foreign Office, but it is a fact that our foreign policy in certain countries of the world has got into far more difficulty than it otherwise would have done because of a lack of contact between those countries and Members of Parliament.

Again to be personal, I was a bit shaken to be told by a man of the highest calibre and considerable intelligence, who was head of the American and Western European Department of the Chinese Foreign Office, during a two hours and 55 minutes' interview: "As Lord Attlee was telling us about the policy of your party". That was 1954 when that Labour Party delegation went to China. For 17 years we have had no contact with them. It is not entirely a matter of visas. It was a matter of visas for a couple of years during the cultural revolution, but that was all. It was basically a matter of money. Expenses for the fare and the journey do really add up.

Perhaps I may give the House another example. In 1966 I had the good fortune to go to Indonesia. The first question that President Sukarno, then in his decline, asked Colin Jackson, the former Member for Brighouse and Spenborough, and myself was, "How is Woodrow Wyatt? Is he going to be your Prime Minister?" It revealed that people there were totally out of touch with politics in Britain. This is not perhaps the time to argue it, but I take the view that had there been a closer relationship between our two countries we should have been saved a few lives and a great deal of money by the absence of confrontation. Therefore, it is truly important that politicians visit these places, because they can do many things which diplomats cannot. Yes, it is true that sometimes we can go on C.P.A. visits—

Mr. Arthur Lewis

Some can.

Mr. Dalyell

Sometimes we can go on I.P.U. visits—

Mr. Lewis

Some can.

Mr. Dalyell

We can sometimes go on Service visits—

Mr. Lewis

Some can.

Mr. Dalyell

The first time that I went to the Far East was in 1965, and my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) was with me.

Mr. Lewis

That was the Army, not the C.P.A.

Mr. Dalyell

Yes, it was a Service visit.

In February, 1965, I was very interested in the question of confrontation with Indonesia, and I asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether, by paying something towards my fare, I could go on an R.A.F. plane. I was told there was no chance. I received the same answer at Whitsun, 1965, when I was told that there were no helicopters to take me around. I asked again in July, 1965. That time I went to the Government Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Edward Short). He was not greatly impressed by the fact that I had then become something of an expert at long distance on Borneo, the Borneo war and its implications. But, after looking at my Division record, he said, "You have a 100 per cent. Division record. You must be rewarded." That is a very good politician's answer. I went to confrontation and Borneo not because of a constant interest in, or as a serious critic of, the defence policies of my Government but because I was up late every night to vote in the Division Lobby and had to be rewarded. That is not the best reason for being chosen to go to the Far East—

Mr. Lewis

At least it is an explanation; now I know.

Mr. Dalyell

Therefore, I am slightly alarmed by the imputation that the choice will be made under paragraph 42(b) on the same basis as the C.P.A. and I.P.U. visits. I do not know how I would have done it better had I been dictator in this field, but it strikes me—I say this without any personal rancour, because I was very lucky on one occasion in going on the one visit that I wanted to, with the I.P.U. but never with the C.P.A.—that they are chosen on some kind of Buggins' turn and in a sense at the discretion of the Whips. I am not saying that the Whips are corrupt, but they want to achieve fairness, see that everyone has a turn and ensure that before anyone goes to a particular country of his interest someone else should go once. But it makes it very difficult for an hon. Member who is not a journalist, as I tend to be, or who has few private means to visit the country of his specialist interest.

This £20,000 will not go far, certainly not if the Opposition Front Bench spokesmen are included. I should have thought that £2,000 or £3,000 a year would not have been an absurd allocation to the Shadow Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and Defence. After they have had their wallop, how much is left for the other 628 of us? There will not be much change out of £20,000.

I should like to hear that some detailed consideration will be given to precisely how this money will be allocated. I think that I am in time to express a hope, because this is still fluid. I understand that it will be done on a different basis to the C.P.A. and I.P.U. allocations, which can go on as they are. I should like to see it done, I suppose, on the basis not of a scholarship but as some form of written request from a Member stating precisely why he wants to go to a particular country. I hope that a Committee under Mr. Speaker will take into account his reasons for going before the money is allocated, and scrutinise its possible usefulness, especially if the Member is a serious critic of the Government's policy in a particular part of the world.

This situation is still fluid. All that I am asking for is an undertaking that serious consideration be given to the allocation of the £20,000. I also question whether £20,000 is even a realistic starting figure.

8.35 p.m.

Mr. Richard Luce (Arundel and Shoreham)

I fully agree with everything the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) has said about foreign tours. Last August I went to Geneva in a private capacity to visit C.E.R.N., to which Britain makes a contribution. I was astonished that although from every other country which makes a contribution there had been a number of delegations to the establishment to see the work that was being done, when I asked what sort of parliamentary delegations had come from the United Kingdom I was told that no formal or official delegation had been sent. This is a reflection on our policy governing these matters and I therefore agree with everything the hon. Member for West Lothian says about foreign tours and the size of the fund.

Although a very recent newcomer to this place, I join with hon. Members in paying tribute to the Boyle Report and the way it was presented. I regard it as a step in the right direction, although there are certain respects in which there are inadequacies and it is my purpose in speaking today to highlight some of them. The report states as one of its basic premises: as a general rule we believe that, in future, a clear separation should be observed between salary, on the one hand, and provision for expenses on the other. That is stated clearly in paragraph 33 on page 12. This is a fundamental change of enormous importance, because no longer shall we have to pay for routine and ordinary parliamentary work out of our own salaries.

We should get adequate subsistence allowances and travelling expenses as well as adequate secretarial allowances. I regret to say, however, that the proposed secretarial allowance is not adequate. My purpose is not just to praise the Report but to highlight this one aspect of it in which there is inadequacy.

I join with hon. Members in declaring that the proposed increase in the salary of Parliamentary Under-Secretaries is one of the most needed changes recommended in the Boyle Report. One can only describe as scandalous the conditions under which Parliamentary Under-Secretaries, bearing in mind their responsibilities, have had to live for the past several years.

My main criticism is based on the proposal for an improvement in research facilities and secretarial allowances, both of which I regard as closely interlinked. Before joining this House in the spring I took the view, having been in contact with lion. Members, that their secretarial support and research facilities were inadequate. My views have been greatly strengthened in the nine months that I have been a Member.

It is essential, if we are to do our jobs efficiently and effectively, that we should be adequately staffed by secretaries and have easy access to information. In other words, we must have research assistants to enable us to be better watchdogs of the public interest, act as a more effective check against the Executive and, in a general sense, to become better lion. Members.

The Boyle Committee recognises that all aspects of our work, both in this House and in the constituencies, demand more from us. Even if we have outside occupations we are, in a sense, doing a full-time job. After all, if we are working on our parliamentary duties for 63 hours a week, we must accept, as the British public accepts, that we are doing a full-time job.

The Boyle Report makes clear the demands that are made on us by Select and other Committees. Secretarial and research assistance is vital if we are to do our work effectively, but the proposed allowances are inadequate. A secretarial allowance of £1,000 a year, from which we may take £300 to pay for research assistance is literally tinkering with the problem and with our needs. To enable me to do my job more efficiently, I would certainly need a full-time secretary at the proper London rate—about £1,500 a year—to release me from being bogged down in unnecessary administrative chores to get on with the wider functions of being a Member of Parliament.

On top of that it is essential that we should have larger and proper allowances to employ a research assistant. From the evidence of the Boyle Report we find that approximately one in 10 hon. Members employ or share a research assistant and, quite naturally, these hon. Members tend to be those who have an outside supplementary income of over £1,000. All good luck to them. But it is disappointing to find in the report that only 45 hon. Members stated in their evidence that they would like to see extra research facilities and support.

The kind of work that a research assistant should be doing to enable us to do our job better is to prepare background material to enable us to probe more effectively at Question Time; to prepare background material for debates to enable us to make more effective contributions; to do preparatory work for our contributions to Committees, Select, Standing and others; to prepare background information about constituents' complaints; to help, if we are lucky enough, in sponsoring a Private Bill; to widen our knowledge of constituency matters; and to help on issues that we as individuals feel of great importance in our parliamentary work.

It would be wrong and churlish not to pay tribute to the House of Commons Library and to the excellent job done by the staff with very limited resources. I suggest that they would be of great importance to our research assistants, and the research assistants would tap the resources of the Library, if we were able to employ them, to collect material and to sift through the great number of documents that the Library was able to produce, highlighting the important information and the points we ought to bear in mind.

The evidence of the Boyle Report about other countries' experience with regard to research assistants is not very full. We get an indication that German Members of Parliament have some assistants. We know that Congressmen in America get considerable assistance. There is not much evidence in the report to help us on that. But we are all agreed about one thing; that our aim is to do our job as effectively and efficiently as possible on behalf of the British public. It is a prerequisite of that that we should have adequate facilities and conditions. The recommendations for improving the allowances with regard to research and to secretaries are inadequate to enable us to do this to our best ability. My view, therefore, is that although the report is a step in the right direction, there is still a long way to go.

8.43 p.m.

Mr. Neville Sandelson (Hayes and Harlington)

I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Arundel and Shoreham (Mr. Luce), not least because I agree almost in the entirety with what he has said on this subject. I shall probably be adopting almost all his arguments.

As the fairly recent entrant to the House, even more recent than the hon. Member for Arundel and Shoreham, I hope that I may say without presumption that the Boyle Report recommendations concerning hon. Members' remuneration are both equitable and overdue. Nevertheless, the Boyle Report still remains open to criticism, not least because it fails to go far enough in proposing the provision of adequate working facilities and assistance for hon. Members.

In particular, I want to draw the attention of the House to the unsatisfactory position of Members' secretaries, without whose conscientious work many hon. Members would find their own duties much more difficult and much more arduous. I am sure that many hon. Members, benefiting from the services of efficient secretaries who are often highly experienced in the work of the House, share my disquiet at their present conditions of employment.

The Boyle Report identifies the problem but regrettably offers nothing by way of remedy. A brief passage at page 6 speaks for itself: Because of financial circumstances, Members frequently pay their secretaries salaries less than those paid to secretaries in other forms of employment, although good staff are often attracted by the interest of the job. The inability of Members to guarantee continuity of employment generally means that their secretaries are not covered by a superannuation scheme. It reflects little credit on the House or on the Review Body that while something is being done to improve the personal position of Members, no direct provision is made for those who are so vital to the proper execution of our duties.

It seems absurd that Members' secretaries, utterly indispensable, as I am sure hon. Members will agree, to the proper functioning of the House itself, should be paid, as most of them are, rather less than their equivalent in other sectors of employment, that they should be so completely dependent upon the individual generosity of Members—a generosity which must naturally vary according to private circumstances—and that in addition they should be denied most of the other job advantages that secretaries in other work take for granted.

The recommended increase in the secretarial allowance to £1,000 a year to meet both secretarial and general office expenses—a sum which also includes, as has been pointed out, a payment for research work, which is an inadequate situation in itself—hardly affects the basic problem of the secretaries. A Member employing a full-time secretary will still be out of pocket even if he continues to pay his secretary a salary at the present rather low level by comparison with remuneration obtainable by secretaries elsewhere, and it is quite likely that even with the increased secretarial allowance Members will find difficulty in paying their secretaries more than in the past.

Dr. Alan Glyn (Windsor)

Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that as the current rate outside for secretaries is so much higher—about £1,500 a year—a Member will have to take £500 a year out of the increase he is getting in order to pay a full-time secretary?

Mr. Sandelson

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. What he has said is true and is applicable to many Members who are in the House at the moment. This unsatisfactory state of affairs goes much beyond the level of remuneration.

In a debate on Members' expenses and allowances two years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) stated the position very clearly. He enumerated the various disadvantages under which Members' secretaries were employed. I can do no better than to remind the House of some of them, and I hope that my hon. Friend will bear with me while I remind the House of what he said, in so many terms, two years ago.

First, only in exceptional cases is there a contract of employment. Secondly, some secretaries are taken on by Members only if they agree to be classed as self-employed, in order to save Members the cost of employment stamps. That has frequently happened with some Members who have been in financial difficulty. Indeed, I find it difficult to believe that any such condition would be imposed on secretaries by hon. Members if those Members had not been placed in a position of considerable financial embarrassment.

Thirdly, no guarantee is given for sick pay, and it sometimes happens that secretaries receive no pay when they are off sick. The House will bear in mind that when a secretary is off sick a Member has to turn elsewhere for secretarial assistance and pay for it accordingly.

Fourthly, there is no security of employment. Secretaries who work for Members with marginal constituencies not only receive no compensation or redundancy payment if those Members lose their seats; they are faced with the possibility of having to fend for themselves out of meagre personal resources until they are able to find fresh employment with a new Member or a different Member.

Fifthly, nearly all secretaries are receiving less than the salary of the average London secretary and, sixthly, their working conditions are quite inadequate and much below modern office standards. They have no luncheon vouchers or cheap canteen meals such as are provided for the overwhelming majority of office workers employed in other jobs in London.

Finally—a consideration of the utmost importance, and one to which the report draws attention—they have no pension scheme. I am conscious that a number of secretaries who have devoted their whole lives to parliamentary work are compelled by insecurity to continue work long beyond the normal retirement age. That seems to me—as it will to other hon. Members—quite wrong.

The House should not turn a blind eye to this aspect of parliamentary life. This matter should not be shelved for consideration at a later date. The terms and conditions of secretaries' employment should be reviewed now, when the remuneration of Ministers and Members is the subject of review. Many hon. Members will feel as I do that secretaries should have an official House of Commons status, that they should be paid independently of the Member for whom they work and that their salaries should be allied to a recognised Civil Service rate, with the benefit of periodic increases and a superannuation scheme.

In awarding ourselves increased remuneration—for very good and proper reasons, from which few would dissent—we should equally have regard for those who serve us but who, at the moment, are inadequately cared for.

8.54 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards (Pembroke)

I agree with almost every word of the speech of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Sandelson), perhaps the more so because my secretary is in a fortunate position in working for a London firm of which I am lucky enough to be a director. She does not suffer the disadvantages to which hon. Members have referred. It is precisely because I am in a fortunate position that I feel that I should take part in this debate.

I represent a large rural constituency 250 miles from London. As I have said, I am fortunate in having another income, though without that other source of income I do not see how I could have met the expenses which I have necessarily incurred in serving that constituency since being elected. My constituents rightly expect to see me and my family in the constituency frequently, but equally I feel that I have the right occasionally to see my own family here in London, and this means running two homes with all the widespread costs that that necessarily involves.

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), I believe it to be an honour to be a Member of the House and I am happy to make some financial sacrifice to be a Member. But there is a limit to the sacrifice which I should demand of my family and a limit to the service I can perform for my constituents out of my own pocket. I am acutely conscious that there are many Members on both sides of the House who are in a position far worse than mine.

I admire the dedicated ascetic fervour of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, whose dedication is an example to us all, but I must ask him whether it is worse for the performance of our parliamentary duties and the avoidance of corruption to rely for our living on reimbursement by the nation rather than on payments from outside sources, whether they be in business or fees received from Press, television and radio broadcasting. Unlike my right hon. Friend, I have to travel about 250 miles every weekend around my constituency, and I cannot see why he should consider that I might be corrupted if I am recompensed for that expenditure. Does he think that it would be better for me to telephone my constituents at the other end of my constituency and say that I will come and see them if they will pay for my petrol?

Another anomaly which I am glad to see being removed is that, as a Welsh Member, I frequently have to go to Cardiff in order to visit the Welsh Office and perhaps to lead a deputation of my constituents and yet, until now, every time I made such a journey I have had to pay the expenses of doing so out of my own pocket. That is another of the absurdities now being removed.

I thought that the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) was answered by his hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy). I do not always agree with the hon. Member for Ealing, North but I agreed with almost everything he had to say today, particularly when he talked about the impossibility of carrying out job evaluation for a Member of Parliament. How on earth are we to undertake such a task? On what basis are we to evaluate the contribution of an individual member? Is there to be a better reward for trudging faithfully through the Lobbies than for making a few exceptionally brilliant contributions in the House? Is there to be some special reward for putting down a large number of Parliamentary Questions, whatever their source may be? Is devoted constituency work to be of less value than conscientious attendance in Committees?

If the hon. Member for Erith and Cray-ford is to make, as he did at the end of his speech, a political attack on the present Government and suggest that the remuneration of Ministers should be adjusted in accordance with their performance, the only fair way in which to make such an adjustment would be after a general election, when the job evaluation would have been carried out by the country. Perhaps then we could have a deduction from salaries of those members of the Government who had been thrown out. Perhaps the right hon. Gentlemen on the hon. Gentleman's Front Bench will now make a contribution towards the increased salaries which we are about to pay.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) referred to ministerial salaries. I agree that it was among the most urgent priorities for us to see that junior ministerial salaries were increased. My hon. Friend referred to the part of the parliamentary salary which was then removed, but we have only partially removed that. I did not entirely follow the logic of the Boyle Committee here because on obtaining ministerial salary a Member then loses £1,500 from his parliamentary salary.

At Paragraph 40 the Boyle Committee said that provincial Members would be regarded as living or working either in London or their constituency according to their choice and would receive a subsistence allowance for the additional costs incurred in attending at their place of work. When I asked my right hon. Friend the Lord President how the decision was to be taken as to what was the main place of residence, he suggested that it would be at our choice and that this was the position under the present tax rules. With respect, it is not. Many hon. Members will have had long and detailed arguments with their inspectors of taxes about what constitutes their main residence. It is sometimes very difficult to define.

What about the hon. Member who has two homes, who feels it right to have his family with him in his constituency for part of the year and in London with him when the House is sitting, who perhaps feels it right to spend the holidays and the many weekends in his constituency but whose children are educated in London, where he may also have some alternative remuneration? How does he establish what his main residence is? This is a matter of vital importance. An hon. Member with a distant constituency and a house in London which is treated as his main home, however conscientious he may be in attending his constituency every weekend or during the parliamentary recesses except for a brief holiday, will find it difficult to match the corresponding attendance of a Member who opts for a house in the constituency and works at Westminster.

If he lives in a distant part of the country and travels on a night sleeper, those nights away from home will not be counted for this purpose because it will be argued that in establishing the necessary expenditure the cost of overnight accommodation on the sleeper has already been paid for. I foresee long and difficult arguments both as to what is the main place of residence and what is the justifiable expense.

I hope that the Minister who replies will be able to tell me that we will conform with what the Boyle Committee recommended and that the selection of one's house should be at the option of the Member. I hope my hon. Friend can tell us that the business of claiming our expenses will not be immensely complicated and cumbersome. My right hon. Friend the Lord President justified the change in method by saying it was simpler. If we are to have to produce a bill for every meal we have on a train, or every detailed expense incurred in our constituencies, it will be a nightmare for us all. It will be impossible for many of us to cover more than a fraction of the items of expense we incur.

If a Member must have a second home, how will the proportion necessary as a result of his attendance in his constituency be decided? It has been said that the Revenue tends to argue about the number of rooms occupied by a Member's family. If a Member has to have an additional home, it may be empty for part of the time but the rates, insurance and heating bills have to be paid and perhaps someone has to be employed to look after it. Can my hon. Friend assure me that the expenses procedure will not be too complicated?

I support those, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin), who have made a plea for Members' families. Perhaps the greatest single shock for a new and young Member is to discover how often he is parted from his family and the stresses and strains which it imposes on family life. This is the matter which is least understood by constituents. They cannot understand why a Member's wife and children are not always in the constituency. They sometimes find it incredible that he should want to have them in London and perhaps be able to say "Good morning" to the children at breakfast time even if he can seldom say "Good night" to them in the evening.

Perhaps the aspect of the proposals which I most welcome is that they show that a start has been made in recognising the problem. But it is only a start. Much more provision should be made for wives. At the moment they are made to feel strangers, and almost unwelcome strangers. Things are better than they were. They now have a room to which they can go to watch television, but they must be involved much more in the affairs of this place. They must be able to come here and to feel that they are welcome because they play an absolutely essential rôle in the parliamentary work of every Member of Parliament.

9.7 p.m.

Mr. Raphael Tuck (Watford)

I give a grudging welcome to the Bill and to the Motions but, although the blueprint was more or less good, the prototype has turned out to be not quite so good. In my view, the matter has been done upside down. It is not realistic. Let me give a few examples.

A Member of Parliament is treated worse than a manager in a business. The manager in a business does not have to employ and pay a secretary. The business pays his secretary and he has no say in the matter. He might hire her, but the business pays her. The secretary receives the stamp from the firm. The firm makes itself responsible for everything pertaining to the secretary, and the manager does not have the worry and bother of paying her or stamping her card.

It is all very well to draw a line between country Members or provincial Members and London Members. But it should not matter what part of the country a Member represents. There should be two tests in respect of expenses for Members: first, is the expense incurred by reason of his being a Member?, and, secondly, if so, is it reasonable? Let me give an example.

A Member who represents a London constituency may live in, say, Hendon or perhaps not so far out but cannot go home to dinner and get back in time for the vote. Therefore, he must have his dinner here, which costs him much more than it would if he had it at home. His wife might feed him at home for five or six shillings, but here he has to pay about £1. That £1, or most of it, is incurred by reason of his being a Member of Parliament. Whether he is a London Member of a country Member does not matter. The test should be: is it reasonable? He should be given a food voucher, a meal voucher, for his dinner, if he has to have his dinner in the House of Commons for that £1. If he likes to have his dinner at the Dorchester for £5 or £6 or more, that is his own look out, but he should be given £1 for it whether he is a London Member or otherwise.

If a Member lives outside London and has a London constituency and has to move into London he does not get anything at all by way of expenses in London. Because he has a London constituency he should get them by reason of his being a Member of Parliament. Again, a Member who has a constituency outside London and lives in another district altogether can choose between London and his constituency. He should not have to choose. All these expenses should be given to him provided they are reasonable.

A Member who lives outside London can take off a certain amount for his living expenses in London, and now we hear that four days a week are envisaged as a proper period. First of all, a Member may want to come from Orkney and Shetland on a Sunday night rather than on a Monday since he might not get here in time otherwise, and that means he has five days a week in London. Secondly, as was pointed out very cogently by the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Nicholas Edwards), if a Member has to rent a house in London he cannot rent it for four days a week and clear out of the house for the other three days. He has to rent the house for the whole time; and he has to pay for heating, and he has to pay rates. All these expenses are incurred by reason of his being a Member of Parliament. If one goes to an hotel one ought to get a reasonable allowance—not for the Dorchester at 13 guineas a night, probably; but, perhaps, an allowance of £3 a night.

Then again, as to fares, I am the Member for Watford and I am allowed my fare from Euston to Watford. If I have to take a taxi to Euston or from Euston back here, and take a taxi in Watford, it may cost me £3 or £4 a time, but I do not get it. Of course, one can get it from tax on taxable income at 6s. 5d. in the £ once the two-ninths has been taken into consideration, but an hon. Member, in my view, should be given not just a deduction from taxable income, but all reasonable expenses which are incurred by his being a Member of Parliament. It does not matter, in my view, whether he is a London Member or a provincial Member or where he comes from.

Although I know that at this late stage it is impossible to do anything about it, I ask for consideration to be given to this view for the future, so that we can have expenses based on a reasonable estimate; based on reason instead of turned upside down as they are at present.

9.14 p.m.

Sir Brandon Rhys Williams (Kensington, South)

For a number of years before I was elected to this House I worked for management consultants, and a large part of my duty was the assessment of salaries appropriate to jobs and proper conditions of service; I think it may be helpful to my right hon. Friend if I make what might be called Committee points arising out of the recommendations of Lord Boyle and his colleagues. In general, I think they have done an extremely workmanlike job, but there are some details which need further study.

Firstly, though, I should like to say that I heard the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). I think it would be true to say that he jarred on the House; few hon. Members who have spoken since have agreed with much that he said. He is an historian, and I think he would agree that in the origins of Parliament in feudal times society was organised very differently from the way in which it is organised now; there was a class which was maintained by the rest of the population to deal with problems of government and administration and it was thought natural that they should be kept in that status if they carried out those duties. Even up to Victorian times an owner of property, particularly of land, was expected by society to take an active part in public life. It was incumbent upon him—as to the manor born—to seek election to Parliament or to contribute in whatever way he was able in recognition of the status society gave him.

But things have changed since those days. My right hon. Friend, I think, has not noticed the social change which has been taking place and which might be called the managerial revolution. People who are active in administration and prominent in national affairs are mostly salaried men today, and that goes for Parliament as well as for industry and the professions.

The Review Body in its assessment of the basic salary has assumed that, after the other recommendations have been followed, the £4,500 will in general be clear; but few right hon. and hon. Members would not agree that a Member of Parliament is obliged to find out of his pocket considerably more than a man earning a similar amount in industry or the professions. That £4,500, which might have been an appropriate figure if it were clear, is not in my opinion enough. This is, however, a difficult assessment to make and I want only to express my view that it is on the low side. Perhaps it is all part of the Anglo-Saxon nervous breakdown that we are suspicions of people in public life and do not like to see them put on too much side. Perhaps in the 1970s we have to go through this stage—that the public do not want us to be paid quite as much as we think we deserve.

I think almost every hon. Member will welcome the recommendations on the severance arrangements, but they have not been worked out quite well enough. There will, for instance, be men who have to leave the House through ill-health, and there will be temptations to people even to run in opposition to their local associations so as to be defeated at an election rather than to be pushed out beforehand. I suggest that matters would be improved if all hon. Members were given three or six months' pay after ceasing to be Members, but that exceptions should be made for people retiring on a pension or taking public office, and in certain other cases which could easily be defined.

When we come on to consideration of the revision of hon. Members' pensions, it would be appropriate for hon. Members to be given the option to make their own arrangements if they chose to do so. Some hon. Members before coming to the House may have arranged to cover their retirement by life insurance or under the provisions of the 1956 Act, and it would be perfectly proper for them to be allowed to continue to do so.

Several hon. Members have dealt in detail with the recommendations for the secretarial allowance, and I add my support to what they have said. It is wrong that an hon. Member who wishes to employ a secretary full time, as many hon. Members must, should have to pay some hundreds a year out of his own pocket. If it is true, as I have heard say, that the cost of a secretary outside London is substantially less than it is in London, London weighting might be given so that hon. Members who employ secretaries, particularly within the precincts, should be allowed more than the £1,000 a year.

As regards expenses for research, it is particularly important for the Opposition Members that expenses should be allowed. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party. It would be proper for Opposition Members to be entitled to draw some expenses for research—and I can tell by their faces that they are not disposed to disagree with me about that. It would be difficult to allocate the money on the basis of the number of Members in the House, but it might be allocated on the amount they spend on research, a proportion of the cost being borne by the State.

I do not think a man should come into public life to make something out of it, but nor should he go out of it having made a loss.

9.20 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop (South Shields)

As one of the diminishing band of Members who first came to the House in 1945, I am sure it will be agreed that anybody who came into the House of Commons at the salaries then avail able did not come here for what they could get out of it. As one of those who had to face these problems at that time, I feel it is right that I should say a word in full support of the Review Body's recommendations.

I welcome the whole tone of the Boyle Report. Those of us who think back to those early days realise some of the great difficulties which faced us, which undoubtedly prevented us from doing the level of work some of us believe we ought to have been doing at that time. The problem for those of us who had young families at that time is unquestionable. Whether one's families have done any better because of the considerable absence of their father I would not like to say, but I can vouch for the fact that the father did worse because of the lack of contact with his family. There is no reason why that sort of situation should be accepted by this House. Therefore, I welcome this necessary reform.

I find it difficult to understand why so many right hon. and hon. Members, particularly hon. Members on the Government side—although there are some hon. Members on this side of the House who are in this category—believe that the only way an hon. Member can maintain valid contact with what is going on outside is by taking or retaining another job. There is another means of keeping that contact, namely, by applying oneself and willingly offering oneself for a great deal of voluntary work outside the House. I know that the vast majority of Members offer themselves in this way. Over the years this provides a very wide range of valuable up-to-date contact—and I speak with some experience—which has enabled me and others to keep abreast of what is happening outside the House.

It is utterly wrong to suggest that the only way of keeping such contact is by taking other paid employment outside. Some of us rather resent this assumption. We resent it all the more because those who do not have paid employment elsewhere naturally are more available for the other work of the House than those who have regular paid commitments outside the House. I have never been one of those who have said that this is wrong or that it should be stopped. I merely say that there should be some recognition of this difference when it comes to considering a Member's remuneration.

Therefore, I personally would like to have seen an experiment to enable those hon. Members who bear the brunt of the work in Committees and in the House—work which is not perhaps quite so glamorous as, say, taking part in Question Time in the afternoon—to claim some kind of expense or attendance allowance or something of the sort, even at the cost of a reduction of the payment recommended by the Boyle Committee. I hope it may still be possible for this kind of suggestion to be considered.

I believe nevertheless that these recommendations will help hon. Members to play the full part that is expected of them. I welcome in particular the suggestion that a fund should be established—this is a point which I suggested to the Boyle Committee—to finance foreign travel for Members who wish to undertake a properly documented project. The present position is inadequate and unsatisfactory. The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and Inter-Parliamentary Union recommendations are bound continuously to widen the range of hon. Members who are able to make visits abroad. It is right that hon. Members who make a reasoned application for help with inquiries they wish to make abroad should be given independent and separate facilities.

Therefore, for these reasons and for others, I greatly hope that the report as a whole will receive general welcome and that the Government's recommendations will be accepted.

Several Hon. Members

rose—

Mr. Speaker

Order. We have about 14 minutes before the Minister would like to reply. We should try for an equitable distribution. I hope that if I call the hon. Member for Windsor (Dr. Glyn) he will be very brief.

9.26 p.m.

Dr. Alan Glyn (Windsor)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I agree with the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) who stated that an hon. Member, though he does not come to Parliament for profit, should not be out of pocket as a result of being a Member of Parliament. We have the choice of accepting the Boyle Report or of rejecting it. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has stated the position clearly. I ask him to acquaint his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer with some of the difficulties which hon. Members will face in their income tax matters.

It is always unpleasant to have to vote oneself money. It is particularly so at this time, when unemployment is running so high. There is a misunderstanding in the country about the work of Members of Parliament. The idea is that we are getting a clear increase in pay. As I indicated in my intervention to the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Sandelson), most of this extra money will be absorbed by increased expenditure which hon. Members are compelled to incur—for instance about £500 on secretarial assistance. The House should make very clear to the public that hon. Members are in a very different position from outside employees of the present salary level. A larger proportion of it—in some cases, the whole of it—in particular of Members who live a long way from Westminster, goes in expenses attributable to the job.

The difficult question of provincial Members has been raised in the debate, principally by Opposition Members. The recommendation of the report is that claims will be allowable only for each night's absence. A slightly different interpretation should be justifiable, because a Member who visits his constituency and spends the day there incurs expenditure which he would not normally incur. Such expenditure is properly incurred in the Member's capacity as Member of Parliament.

I have experienced losing my seat and know that when one leaves the House it is very difficult to pick up the threads of another job. I should like to see a system established whereby, without wangling and without argument, a Member whose service ceases is entitled to a terminal grant, whether his service ceases because he is defeated at an election, whether because he is not readopted, or whether because his constituency is abolished. When a Member leaves this House after having served for a reasonable time, he should be entitled to a terminal grant.

The Schedule regarding Inner London seats will have to be altered because when the new boundaries come into operation many of the constituencies mentioned therein will be changed or abolished.

I hope that the message which will get home to the country is that we are asking not for a direct rise in pay but for something towards the expenses which many Members of Parliament—not so much myself, but those who live in the North and similar areas—are compelled to pay out of their salary. I suggest that expenses and salary should be clearly delineated.

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer (Liverpool, Walton)

The House is aware that prior to coming to this House I was and had been for many years a shop steward. This is the first time in the whole of my career as a shop steward that I have had to wait for seven years before getting an increase in salary. I assure the House that in places where I have worked there would have been an industrial dispute long before seven years was up; there would undoubtedly have been a walk-out by the men and a demand for more money.

I am sorry that I missed the speech of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). I understand that he is concerned about the status of Members of Parliament. I should make it clear to the right hon. Gentleman that at one time people of my class, working people, never entered the portals of the House of Commons because they did not have the money to sustain them as Members. It was only when the trade union movement decided to assist people whom it supported that my class entered this House and played any part on behalf of the overwhelming mass of ordinary working people who have a right to be represented and whose voice should be heard in this place.

An increase in salary does not diminish the status of Members of Parliament. It puts Members of Parliament in a more independent position than they have been so far. We have all heard of consultancies. We all know of hon. Members on both sides of the House who have been forced to take consultancies to augment their income in order to live reasonably decently.

I have always been an independent Member of this House although a member of the Labour Party. The fact that I have no other income has not deterred me from voting against a three-line Whip. At no time has it made me a creature of the Whips. At no time has it made me dependent upon what my leaders have said. I have always thought it my duty to endeavour to reflect the views and opinions of the people who sent me here. Therefore, we need not concern ourselves too much about the future status of Members. This is well covered.

I should like to mention one further point quickly because I know that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) wishes to make some comments. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Sandelson) quite rightly dealt with the question of secretaries. The Boyle Report is a fair, reasonable and important document which takes us a long way forward regarding Members' remuneration and the important question of services for Members but we are still getting the question of secretarial assistance wrong.

In my opinion secretaries should not be employed by Members themselves. They should be paid proper wages by, and have their conditions of work determined as though they were employed in, the Civil Service. The only requirement of a Member should be to prove that he is employing a secretary. He should have the right to choose his secretary rather than have someone from a pool appointed to him and turn out not to be the kind of secretary he wants. I hope that when the matter is considered again the appointment of secretaries will be done on a different basis from the present practice. The Boyle Report represents an important step forward. If I believed that the Government would give the old-age pensioners an increase if I withheld my support tonight I would do so, but in my view it is not a question of one or the other. It is a question of the Government softening their heart and doing something positive to help old-age pensioners now irrespective of their decision on the report.

9.36 p.m.

Mr Arthur Lewis (West Ham, North)

Perhaps I may start by taking up the last point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), namely, the plight of old-age pensioners. I have listened to these debates since 1945 and on every occasion some hon. Members on both sides have claimed that they do not want the extra money and could not take it because of the poor old-age pensioners. I say to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) and to any other hon. Members who are opposed to the increase that they do not have to accept it. If an employee in private industry refuses a rise his employer keeps the money. If hon. Members do not want the proposed increase, the Treasury will get the money. There is, therefore, no need for any hon. Member to accept the increase if his conscience bothers him.

I should like to pay a tribute to the Government in general—this is very unusual for me—and to the Leader of the House in particular. I think that the right hon. Gentleman has been exceptionally good, not only on this occasion but in recent months and when he was in opposition. The right hon. Gentleman is deserving of praise personally, and I think that Lord Boyle and his Committee are deserving of the highest praise too. I shall have some adverse things to say in a moment, but may I first, on behalf of all Members of the House, irrespective of where they sit, pay tribute to the Fees Office and to the Accountant and the Deputy-Accountant for the way in which they assist hon. Members.

I think that the Boyle Committee has been reasonably fair in giving some nice cake to hon. Members—not enough cake; not perhaps fruity enough, but nevertheless quite reasonable—but that it has been over-generous not only to Government Ministers but to the Opposition Chief Whip and the Leader of the Opposition, who has not been privileged to hear the debate.

We all know about the penalties of office. I am told that my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman)—I intended to ask him, but I have not seen him—has some adverse comments to make about the proposed increase. I understand that he, too, has signed a contract for his memoirs but I do not know for certain that he has.

Certain privileges go with the holding of office, both at the time and after leaving it, and I ask the Government, when they introduce legislation to impose a means test on council house tenants, to realise that the biggest council house tenants are Ministers. They have some marvellous flats and houses which, I am told, are worth about £5,000 a year tax-free. [Interruption.] Most senior Ministers have. When they cut into the social services and the milk for the children, they might consider cutting down here. That is a little ungenerous of me, I suppose, but it is nice to get this on the record, because it is true.

Will the Leader of the House try to be as fair as he always is on the marvellous foreign travel allowances? I have been here since 1945 and I have found that it is the usual crowd who go to N.A.T.O., the Council of Europe, W.E.U., I.P.U. and C.P.A. and that they occasionally turn up here to show that they are Members.

Perhaps the Leader of the House might try arranging this himself. I think that Mr. Speaker is too busy to do it. I am not suggesting that the Leader of the House is not too busy, but he might do it much better if he tried to organise it with the fairness which he has always shown on these general questions. I would feel much happier if he did it than if it were left to the usual channels. I mean no disrespect to the Opposition Chief Whip but there have been murmurings that what has happened in the past has not seemed to be as fair and reasonable as most hon. Members would wish.

9.42 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service Department (Mr. David Howell)

I think that everyone will agree that this has been a valuable debate. The Boyle Report has received a general and fair welcome throughout. The right hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) spoke of the sentiment of a strong House of Commons and set the tone for many speeches. These proposals help to maintain a strong House of Commons, capable of carrying out its duties effectively in the modern context. That is what we believe, and that is why we have brought forward these Measures.

The right hon. Member for Workington asked about the Chairman and Deputy Chairmen of Ways and Means. They are paid on the House of Commons Vote, as Officers of the House; the House of Commons Offices Commission authorises the payment and will arrange for the increases on application by you, Mr. Speaker.

The debate got off to a controversial start when my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) pointed in sombre terms to a trend he foresaw as a result of the report and these measures. As is often the case with my right hon. Friend's observations and warnings, they would be justified if the situation were carried to the extremes which he believes now exist. As the late fain Macleod once said of one of his other propositions, one can start out on the bus journey with him but one must get out long before he does—

Mr. Powell

He said the last station but one.

Mr. Howell

I get off tonight, I am afraid, a good few stops earlier still.

Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Joel Barnett), raised the question of overseas travel. The position is not, as one hon. Member suggested, all arranged and approved. The whole question of overseas travel remains wide open or, in the expression of the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), "fluid". All the points made today on this subject will be considered. That is the whole point of leaving the issue open at this stage. A number of relevant and valuable points have been put forward, and they will be considered, as will all other aspects.

The second point made by the hon. Member for Heywood and Royton was about research expenses. I think he realises that the position remains as it was before. The Boyle Report makes the proposition of £300 worth of expenses, but this will, of course, reduce the tax deductions which hon. Members might otherwise claim. Apart from this sum of £300, the position remains as before. The same is true of entertainment expenses.

My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) spoke eloquently and strongly in disagreement with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. I am sure that we all shared the feelings he expressed and appreciated the words he used from his great experience of these matters, coupled with the service he gives in connection with hon. Members' pensions. Pensions are not included in today's proceedings, but we appreciated his remarks and were pleased to hear his comments.

The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party mentioned, first, the question of regular reviews. The best I can do—he will agree that this goes a long way to giving him the assurance he wanted—is to repeat some words used by my right hon. Friend in December, 1970, in answer to the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), when he said specifically that it was the intention of the Government that a review should be made once in every Parliament of normal length.

That is as far as I can go at this stage. However, that states firmly what our intention is. It means that hon. Members need not worry about this whole problem being allowed to drift on for too long. My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin) also raised this point, and I hope that this answer satisfies him.

The Leader of the Liberal Party then talked of the expenses of third parties in the House and rightly said that it was not a subject directly within the terms of reference of the Boyle Committee. However, I assure him that these matters and the others he raised which are not directly within the terms of the Committee will be considered in detail.

My hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke), who has sent me a note saying that unfortunately he cannot be here for the close of the debate, warned of the danger of our becoming a "fungus on the wall" He rightly pointed out that the work of this House is by no means confined to the Chamber, as many people outside imagine it is. A major amount of work goes on upstairs in Committee, and he emphasised that the more complex, vast and detailed the whole procedure of the Executive becomes, the more need there is for hon. Members to focus on those activities and for there to be a critique of the Executive through, among other things, the committee system. My hon. Friend also kindly referred to the salaries of junior Ministers, and it will come as no surprise if I express gratitude for his remarks.

The right hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) was in vintage form this afternoon and we enjoyed his speech greatly. We recognise the tremendous contribution he has made to thinking over the years on the ideas behind the developments that have occurred, and he can fairly be acknowledged as the father of the idea of, for example, termination grants. We acknowledge fully the part that he has played in all this.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare touched on regular reviews, which I have already mentioned, and asked whether the £750 overnight allowance sum covered nights when Parliament was not sitting but nights which hon. Members spent in London on parliamentary business. The answer is that if it comes within the £750 total, it does. The £750, if one does one's arithmetic, covers just slightly more than four nights a week for 34 weeks of the year. If an hon. Member, as part of the expenditure he incurs, is on parliamentary business in London when Parliament is not sitting, that is perfectly allowable as a claim to the Fees Office, as would be any other accommodation expense incurred if he was in London. I hope that that meets my hon. Friend's worry about this.

My hon. Friend also spoke very graphically, in a way that many hon. Members on both sides will appreciate, of the problems of the younger family man and the difficulties of the two-home and on-the-road caravan existence that so many hon. Members have to pursue. He also raised the question of the tax treatment of severance pay. The position on this should be made clear. It is that we hope to arrange for the severance payment to be non-taxable. Under the present situation, severance payments would be taxable as ordinary remuneration. I think that it will be agreed that they should not be taxed more heavily than businessmen's golden handshakes usually are, and my right hon. Friend has asked the Chancellor whether he will include the necessary provision in next year's Finance Bill. If that is agreed, a terminal payment will be taxable only to the extent that together with any other payment received from any source it exceeds in aggregate £5,000.

The hon. Member for Erith and Cray-ford (Mr. Wellbeloved) raised the question of hon. Members' interests. I can only repeat to him the words of my right hon. Friend, who made the matter absolutely clear a few weeks ago when he told the hon. Member for Erith and Cray-ford that the Report of the Committee was discussed at the time through the usual channels and that it was agreed that no further action should be taken. My right hon. Friend pointed out that he was prepared again to discuss that matter through the usual channels. That was the position and is the position now.

The hon. Member for Erith and Cray-ford went on to make a pretty strong attack on the salaries of Ministers and, indeed, on the salaries of present Ministers rather than Ministers in general. All I can comment there is that, if he really means that, he must follow the principle of sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander. I wonder whether he would do that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Kinsey), if I understood him correctly, said that he approved the general tenor of the Boyle Report and the general line of the Bill and the Motions, but that he thought the timing was wrong. All I can say to him—it is certainly not meant to be abrupt or in any way facetious—is that the timing is always wrong. Although I should be the last to question his sincerity and strength of feeling, which I recognise, I do not consider that the argument about the timing being wrong is any more relevant now than it is at any other time.

The hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) raised with my right hon. Friend the question of consultation, and he received a very full answer from my right hon. Friend meeting that point. The hon. Gentleman also went in great detail into the question of the £750 versus £5.25-a-night, and expressed a number of views. He is entitled to express them but it is our view, and that of many hon. Members, that when one examines the two comparative systems—the one where one is dealing with the Fees Office, which is important in getting direct recompense for payments incurred, and the other where one is operating with the Inland Revenue—it is clear that the system we propose is the better deal. If any hon. Member does not recognise it now, I am sure that he will recognise it when the system is in operation.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Sandelson) and others talked about the question of secretaries' pay and conditions. This is and always has been a difficult question. It is worth remembering how far we have come since the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) and others who spoke about it first came into the House. We have come a long way. It can always be said about this aspect, as about almost all aspects, that the report does not go far enough, and one or two hon. Members have pointed to specific aspects where they sincerely and genuinely believe that it does not. But, taking the report as a whole, the House has recognised that it meets the needs and, as the report itself says in paragraph 121, provides …the absolute minimum which we consider to be necessary. For these reasons, I echo the tributes to Lord Boyle for the value of the work of his Committee. There can be no doubt that the shift of emphasis from remuneration to allowances constitutes a major change, and it will now be up to everyone to co-operate in making the scheme work. Only experience can show how appropriate the arrangements are, and my right hon. Friend has said that he will see how they work in practice. We will watch the scheme closely.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Jopling.]

Committee tomorrow.