MEMBERS (EXPENSES AND FINANCIAL INTERESTS)

HC Deb 04 August 1972 vol 842 cc1176-222

2.12 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, West)

I anticipated that the business put down for today might collapse before Four o'clock and I therefore sought an opportunity to raise with the Government questions which they wanted to put before the House but which they withdrew at the last moment because they saw that the business would not go through "on the nod". I refer specifically to the Motions on parliamentary expenses, Motions Nos. 7 and 8 appearing on the Order Paper dated 3rd August. I intend to say a brief word on Motion No. 6, which deals with the financing of foreign language courses which might be undertaken by a Member of Parliament.

That Motion is composed in the following terms, to be moved by the Leader of the House That, in the opinion of this House, provision should be made as from 1st April, 1972, for the reimbursement to any Member, within a maximum of £60, of two-thirds of the cost of a course of study which he has completed in a European Economic Community language. In other words if an hon. Member chose to learn, French, German, Italian, Belgian or Dutch, or whatever, so long as it was an EEC language he would get £60 of the taxpayers' money as a contribution towards the cost. Some of us object to that. I want to learn Chinese but I will not get £60. Why should I not learn Chinese? If I do that is a matter for me and not for the taxpayer. If an hon. Member wants to learn German or French that is also a matter for him, not for the taxpayer. I objected to that in principle and put down an Amendment which sought to reduce £60 to £1, to provide that the payment should not relate exclusively to Common Market languages but should apply to any language, and that at the end of the year a list should be published of all hon. Members who had taken advantage of the scheme and the language they had learned.

It is interesting that in this morning's post I, and probably other hon. Members, received a document from Educational Productions and Systems Limited, of Nottinghamshire. I presume that this organisation thought that the Motion had already been passed. In the document they invite us to learn a foreign language. I need not go through the document which is principally devoted to French. I do not see why, if an hon. Member cannot speak French or German, the French or Germans should not learn to speak English. English is the international language so why not let M. Pompidou have a course in English rather than hon. Members having a course in French?

I ask the Government whether this is the end of the order or whether they intend to pursue it at some future occasion, on a Friday or at two or three in the morning when troublesome characters like myself have gone to bed. I was speaking to one of my hon. Friends about the principle underlying the Motion and he told me that he could not dance. Dancing is a very important social grace. An hon. Member often attends social functions where he is expected to dance with the mayor's wife and with every councillor's wife, and if he cannot dance he has to sit like a wallflower. Why should he not expect the taxpayer to pay him £60 a year to learn to dance, to do not only the old fashioned dance but the jive dancing that is done? Why should not the taxpayer pay for the development of an hon. Member's social graces. That is absurd and the Minister must know it, and I hope that he will see that the order is dropped because of the nonsense that it is.

Motion No. 7 is more important. It is in the name of the Leader of the House and says: That, in the opinion of this House, provision should be made as from 1st April, 1972, for the reimbursement of expenses incurred by Members in travelling outside their constituencies, both within the United Kingdom and overseas, for the purpose of informing themselves on subjects of relevance to their Parliamentary work. I suppose that the Motion is in fulfilment of a recommendation in the Boyle Committee's Report. The report devoted quite a lot of time to the matter. Schedule E explains what happens in other countries when elected representatives travel in their own countries and overseas. The list runs from Belgium to New Zealand, but I will quote only one or two examples. In Belguim an MP is entitled to free travel first-class on Belgian railways, buses and trams and on Dover-Ostend ferries. In Denmark all MPs receive free air travel between home and Copenhagen and free travel within Denmark at all times.

I asked the Library for information about other countries and it produced a great deal of material including an article from the Congressional Quarterly Guide, an American publication for the Congress of 1971, on which the heading is "Travel abroad: junketing". It reveals what happens in America.

In its section on foreign travel the Boyle Committee devoted one paragraph to the suggestion that £20,000 a year should be devoted to subsidising travel overseas for hon. Members and £10,000 a year to subsidising travel within the United Kingdom. The Motion in the name of the Secretary of State did not put a ceiling of £20,000 on the amount. That figure may be in the Minister's brief and I am prepared to bet 100 to I that it is, but I have to go by the Motion, because nobody tells me anything and I have to assume that there is no ceiling.

I have to assume that there would be no method of control. I suggested a constructive Amendment to the original Motion proposing that a committee might be set up if such a scheme were to be operated. I propose that we should have a committee not of the hierarchies of the parties but of the elected back-bench Members, elected by their respective parties, and I think that that was a reasonable proposition.

Motion No. 8 took up that aspect of the matter. Clearly the Secretary of State had had second thoughts, and he proposed that there should be a committee consisting of Sir Henry Legge-Bourke, Mr. Robert Mellish, Mr. Douglas Houghton, Mr. Nigel Fisher, Mr. John Hall. They were to be appointed to administer the reimbursement of expenses incurred by Members in travelling outside their constituencies both within the United Kingdom and overseas for the purpose of informing themselves of subjects of relevance to their parliamentary work.

I do not know how those names were selected. I was not asked to nominate anybody and as far as I know no member of the Parliamentary Labour Party was asked to make a nomination, nor, so far as I know, was any member of the Tory back benches, except, perhaps, those whose names appeared. There is nothing personal in this. I assure my right hon. Friends who are sitting on the Front Bench looking worried—

Mr. Robert Mellish (Bermondsey)

I am amused.

Mr. Hamilton

I am glad that my right hon. Friend is amused. I am grateful for any amusement that might be created about this matter in the House. It is not amusing outside. I do not think that the public outside finds it amusing. But be that as it may. I have no personal axe to grind. But this matter is extremely important and the appearance of a Motion of this kind is extremely ill-timed. It appeared on the assumption that it would go through without debate and the fact that the Government have removed it indicates that they do not want a debate.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service Department (Mr. Kenneth Baker) indicated dissent.

Mr. Hamilton

I see no other reason for dropping it. If that were not the reason, I should like to know what was. I suggested certain Amendments. They are not on the Order Paper and the Parliamentary Secretary need not look for them, for when the Motions were withdrawn, my Amendments fell. However, I should like it to be on the record that I suggested that all those names should be eliminated and that we should have Mr. Speaker, the Official Solicitor, and Mr. Maudling". If that were not acceptable, I suggested as an alternative that I should be in sole control of overseas jaunting by Members of Parliament. A further suggestion was that in view of the obvious sexual discrimination in the composition of the committee—all male—there should be added the names Miss Joan Lestor and Miss Janet Fookes". Those were constructive alternative Amendments that might well have been adopted. However, in view of the Government's withdrawal of their Motion, those Amendments will not now appear. Is that withdrawal permanent—not only the language course proposal but that on foreign travel—or are the Motions merely postponed?

I have a little experience of foreign travel by hon. Members. I was Chairman of the Estimates Committee from 1964 to 1970. Select Committees in general eventually got a sum of money from the Treasury to enable them to travel overseas to see what was happening in their own subjects in other countries. We soon discovered, to my dismay but not to my surprise, that this was being abused, that sub-committees of Select Committees realised that if they got in first, if they had first bite at the cherry, their chance of as overseas tour would be better than that of a committee that delayed its application until six or nine months of the financial year had gone.

I will quote an instance which should be on the record so that the public may know what happened. A sub-committee of the Estimates Committee decided that it wanted to go abroad to see how housing finance was organised in other countries. In the course of evidence given to it by Professor Cullingworth and Professor Donaldson, the chairman asked whether those professors thought it profitable for the sub-committee to go abroad to see how other countries financed public sector housing. The answer was that some interesting experiments were going on in Sweden and Holland.

I was sitting in as an ex-officio member of the sub-committee, being Chairman of the Estimates Committee. I asked whether they knew what was happening in Japan. The two professors smiled and said that there might be interesting developments in Japan and that if the subcommittee wanted an adviser to go with it, they would be glad to oblige.

The sub-committee subsequently came to the full Estimates Committee and got approval to go to Sweden and Holland for a few days. It wanted to go for three or four days, but the whole Estimates Committee, contrary to my advice as chairman, said, "No, you cannot do the job in four days; you must make it a week". I had to go along to the liaison committee, the committee composed of the chairmen of all the Select Committees in the House, and argue the case as directed by the Estimates Committee. It agreed that the visit should take place, and it took place.

Then along came the chairman of the Science and Technology Committee. He said that lie wanted to take his committee to the Woomera rocket range in Australia. I contacted the Ministry of Defence and asked what there was to see in Woomera. They said, "A bloody great range of thousands of miles of desert with a few electrical sockets and plugs at one end to make the wretched things fly". That proposal was turned down by the liaison committee.

However, the chairman of the Science and Technology Committee was not to be deterred. He went back to his own sub-committee, returned to us, and said, "We have reconsidered the position and we still think that we should go to Woomera". I was the only person in the liaison committee who still voted against that proposal. The 1970 election then intervened and the chairmanship of the Select Committee on Science and Technology changed. The hon. Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) became the chairman, and the members of the Committee went to Woomera.

Last night I had a phone call from the chairman of the sub-committee of the Expenditure Committee. He told me that the sub-committee was currently in Sweden—Sweden seems to have a great attraction. I asked, "What is the subject which the sub-committee is investigating?" He replied, "Employment services." I asked, "What the devil has that got to do with Sweden?" He answered, "Sweden has some interesting developments going on in employment services."

Although we find difficulty in getting a quorum of three to examine witnesses—the Parliamentary Secretary knows how difficult it sometimes is to get a quorum of three or four in such a sub-committee—come a visit overseas and every Member is suddenly available. I am citing these facts from personal experience. Every member of the sub-committee was available to go to Sweden. Two of them came back half-way through this week, but the rest are still there. As there was insufficient money left in the kitty, they had to be at Gatwick Airport at 3.30 in the morning because that was the cheapest possible form of travel. However, they were determined to go, even if it meant getting to Gatwick at that time.

I shall quote another case. When I was chairman of the Estimates Committee there was a sub-committee investigating the financing of trunk roads. An hon. Member was put on that subcommittee within a few months of becoming a Member. During the first month of his being a member of the sub-committee he said, "We must go to California because there are important developments going on in trunk road financing in San Francisco and Los Angeles." The chairman of the subcommittee came to me, as chairman of the full committee, and asked for my opinion. I said, "You had better not bring that in front of the committee while I am the chairman." The idea was dropped. They never went to Califnoria.

I mention those cases because if the Government Motion, which has now been perhaps temporarily dropped, were to go through, I do not know how it would be administered. It is all very well for the names of the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) who is the Chief Whip of the Labour Party, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), who is Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the hon. Member for Surbiton (Mr. Nigel Fisher) and the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) appearing in Motion No. 8, but I do not know how these people are to ensure that a visit is bona fide. I do not know how they will ensure that a Member is not furthering his business interests. There may be hon. Members who have shareholdings in South African gold mines and who might convince the committee that they want to go to South Africa to study the problem of apartheid. Who is to say what is the primary interest, apartheid, or the gold-mine shares and the gold-mine industry?

It is not right for the party hierarchies to get together and decide to establish this committee. I have great respect and affection for my right hon. Friends the Chief Whip and the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, but if the 69 Labour hon. Members who voted in favour of entering Europe said to the committee, "We want to spend a month in Brussels to see how the Common Market works", I wonder whether my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey would be objective in assessing the merits of that claim? If there were a counterclaim by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) and other hon. Members who are anti-Common Market, and the two claims came together in the same afternoon, I wonder which my right hon. Friend would choose. That is an interesting proposition.

Mr. Mellish

My hon. Friend will understand that it was no desire on my part to be on the committee. I have more than enough work to do, and any extra chores thrown on my back are not welcome. However, in the interests of the House I agreed to accept a further responsibility. If it would get my hon. Friend out of any trouble, I should be willing not to be on such a committee. I should be glad if my hon. Friend would take my place.

Mr. Hamilton

I anticipated that offer, and that is why I had an Amendment down to delete my right hon. Friend's name. I knew that he was overworked. I am underworked. Therefore I propose that I should administer the whole scheme myself. I was being helpful and I hope my right hon. Friend appreciates that. His name is there and he obviously agreed that it should be there—maybe he did not. Maybe he was not consulted as one or two other hon. Members were not consulted until they saw their names on the Order Paper.

All I am saying is that it would be an impossible scheme to administer fairly. When I saw it I thought, "I'll start maping out my programme between now and 1975". Bernard Levin rang me up. I said, "I am interested in the geisha girls in Japan. Maybe if we could get some geisha girls here we could solve our prostitution problem. How are genuine Chinese restaurants run? I want to go to China to see how genuine ours are. I want to go to the United States to see how they deal with their race problem, I want to go to Brazil to see how they manage to produce better footballers than we do.

"I want to go to South Africa to see the apartheid thing operating. The Olympic Games will take place this year. I want to see how our British athletes fare. I believe that facilities for sport here are so inadequate that our athletes will be shown in a very bad light in Munich and I want to see what the reasons are. I want to see the World Cup to see how our footballers compete."

I have a whole itinerary mapped out. I am the blue-eyed boy of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby and the Opposition Chief Whip. I am sure that they will give me consent to do these things.

Mr. Douglas Houghton (Sowerby)

To bring my hon. Friend back to this projected visit to Japan, I see in The Times yesterday Mr. Bernard Levin says: … Mr. Hamilton tells me that if the measure goes through he is himself going to swan off to Tokyo in order to investigate the geisha system at first hand, with a view to recommending its adoption in this country in the hope that it will reduce the incidence of prostitution. Nor, as far as I can see, would there be any way of stopping him from doing precisely that, at public expense. Has my hon. Friend told Mr. Bernard Levin of his intention to go and has he borne in mind, when Mr. Bernard Levin says that there is nothing to stop him doing so, the nominations of those who would form this committee of scrutiny on these visits, of which my name is one? I can assure him that there is something to stop him and that is me.

Mr. Hamilton

My right hon. Friend is out of date. When I spoke to Mr. Bernard Levin there was no such Motion on the Paper. The only Motion was No. 7 in which there was no mention of a committee. All that it said was that hon. Members would be reimbursed for travel overseas for the purposes of informing themselves on subjects of relevance to their parliamentary work. I think it is relevant to my parliamentary work that I should try to stop prostitution in this country. If I could convince the Leader of the House that the introduction of geisha girls into this country would stop prostitution, it would be a worthwhile visit.

Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)

Does my hon. Friend realise that the weakness of his argument is that this was originally suggested by hon. Members on both sides of the House and taken up by the Boyle Committee as a reason for providing public funds so that hon. Members could go abroad? Is he aware—I am not suggesting that he would accept this—that the alternative is that someone might offer him his expenses if such a person happened to own businesses employing geisha girls in Japan which he might wish to extend to this country, and we all know that the Japanese have a notable ability as exporters? I hope that he realises that I agree with him about the committee, that it should not be a special committee, but a House of Commons Services Committee.

Mr. Hamilton

My hon. Friend should have come in earlier, because I touched on that point before he arrived. I said that this was based on a recommendation of the Boyle Committee and I quoted, not at such a considerable length as I might have done, from Schedule E where it indicated what travel was allowed to Members of Parliament in other countries. I suppose that one of the reasons for the original Motion was precisely that which my hon. Friend suggests, that if hon. Members are not to have these facilities available the temptation is for them to travel overseas by other and less reputable means. This temptation is open to Members and there is no doubt about it.

We had that experience with the Greek colonels. There is, unfortunately, no Member of the Liberal Party here, but I recall that some time ago the Greek colonels' rotten, corrupt, dictatorial regime invited three hon. Members of this House and their wives to swan off to Greece to have a look round. The hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston) and his wife were two of the people who went. Subsequently the hon. Member wrote an article in The Guardian and said that this regime was OK. This is exactly what the Greek colonels wanted, that was why they paid the expenses. This is a more reprehensible way of foreign travel than the Government are suggesting. That is precisely the point my hon. Friend was making. Of course these temptations are placed before Members of Parliament continuously.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Ardwick)

Since the article in The Times by Mr. Bernard Levin has been raised by my hon. Friend and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), may I ask my hon. Friend whether he does not regard this as an appropriate moment, before proceeding in whichever direction his argument takes him, to repudiate the sheer journalistic squalor of the article in which a journalist like Mr. Levin attacks Members of Parliament who may or may not wish to travel abroad on parliamentary duties, whereas Mr. Levin as an employee of newspapers for several years has gone swanning off? He went swanning off all round the world on a trip financed by the Daily Mail, he has just been swanning off to Miami Beach to report, allegedly, the Democratic Convention for The Times.

Would my hon. Friend not further agree, in the repudiation which I trust he will make of Bernard Levin, that Mr. Levin's account of the Democratic Convention was so inaccurate, as was demonstrated in subsequent correspondence in The Times, that if he as a journalist is saying that Members of Parliament must learn the facts not from their own trips but from journalistic reports, they cannot do so if journalists are to be so unreliable as Mr. Levin so continually is?

Mr. Hamilton

I am pretty sure that that intervention will be the subject matter of a subsequent article in The Times by Mr. Levin. He will no doubt defend himself. Of course journalists are subject to the same kind of corrupt practice as Members of Parliament, probably more so. I remember some years ago the Press criticising the subsidising of the Members' refreshment facilities in this House. It was subsequently discovered that the subsidy of the Press Gallery refreshment department was far heavier and the losses far greater than the rest. This is the price we pay for our freedom to say what we like. The Press says what it likes and we will say what we like, and my hon. Friend has said what he likes about Bernard Levin and no doubt Bernard Levin will say what he likes about my hon. Friend. We ought not to be too thin-skinned about this. If Bernard Levin wants to go off to Miami Beach it is his business, but it is our right and my right to say what we like about these proposals, and this is what I am doing.

I come now to a more serious point. I see my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) sitting in his place. I have a great affection and respect for him, although we differ on many important matters. I know that my hon. Friend is angry—and I hope that I am not saying anything which is unfair—that I am raising this subject in this way. He and other Members went to Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland with the agreement of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. They were told that they need not pay their bills. [Interruption.] I am not deliberately distorting. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West will correct me if I say anything wrong. I understand that there are bills outstanding in Northern Ireland which were to have been recouped after the Government's Motion had gone through, virtually on the nod. The proposal was to run from 1st April. In other words, there was an element of retrospection in it.

I ask the Minister how my hon. Friend and his colleagues who went to Ireland in good faith are to be recouped. Will it be done out of Government funds? Nobody could say that a visit to Northern Ireland was a jaunt at the moment. I would not go for a substantial fee, let alone just for my expenses. My hon. Friends went in the course of their parliamentary duties to see at first hand what was going on in Northern Ireland. It was right for them to go also to Southern Ireland to ascertain the views of the Southern Irish Government. We have an Amendment down to the proposals to the effect that there might be a case—certainly it would be a stronger case—for free travel in the United Kingdom rather than throughout the world. It is important that the Minister should deal with this point.

Mr. Stanley Orme (Salford, West)

I want to make it clear that I am not angry. My parliamentary colleagues and myself went to Belfast and to Derry with the knowledge of the Secretary of State but not with the promise that the bills would be paid. However, it was possible, if the Boyle recommendations had been adopted by the House, that our expenses would be met. My parliamentary colleagues and I make no apology for having gone to Belfast and Derry. We were in considerable physical danger in the north. In fact, our car was hijacked. Nor is it a jaunt going to Dublin at the moment. We were made no promises about expenses. The fact that the Government are not proceeding with their proposal will have to be re-examined. My parliamentary colleagues and I will have to take responsibility for what has taken place.

Mr. Hamilton

My hon. Friend is very fair. I would not impugn his integrity or that of the Members who went with him. But they have a right to insist that the Government foot the bill, because they went to Ireland to do a service to this House and to this country, and they did it with the most honourable motives. I would not have wanted to join them. I am a bit of a coward. I would not put my life in jeopardy by going to Belfast or Dublin in present circumstances. I cast no aspersions on my hon. Friend or on any of his colleagues.

I turn to the other aspect, a related matter, of which I have given the Minister notice, namely, the Report of the Select Committee dealing with Members' interests which was published on 4th December, 1969. It has never been debated. However lukewarm and wishy-washy the recommendations, the 1970 election intervened before the Labour Government had time to implement them. There is no indication that the present Government will implement even the ineffectual recommendations of the Committee, but they might have allowed time for a debate on them. I take this opportunity of initiating a mini-debate on them and of making a major speech.

I took, and still take, the view that there should be a compulsory public register of the financial outside interests of all Members. I wish to quote from the Memorandum which I submitted to the Committee. First, I went through the historical background, saying: In a speech made at Liverpool, and reported in The Guardian on 25th March, 1963, Mr. Wilson", then Leader of the Opposition, had said that 'in my view we shall have to introduce legislation requiring lobbies to register and to make a public disclosure of their interests and personnel'. I went on to say at page 89 of the report: That several M.P.s receive payments either in cash or in kind from outside bodies is a well-known fact. Much information is known and recorded, for instance by Mr. Andrew Roth in his books on the Business Backgrounds of M.P.s. I give Mr. Roth a free advertisement of his recent work entitled "Lords on the Boards". It is well worth while reading it. It shows how members of the other place have massive outside business interests. If one looks at the records concerning the Burmah Oil incident, which I quoted at length in the House some years ago, one finds that 38 Burmah Oil shareholders voted in the House of Lords to give £60 million of taxpayers' money to their own company because its oil installations in Burma had been blown up to prevent them from falling into Japanese hands during the war. In fact, one of them took his seat that day just to vote his own company £60 million of public money. Mr. Roth's book "Lords on the Boards" is compulsive reading for hon. Members and for the public.

In my Memorandum to the Committee I went on to say: Mr. Francis Noel-Baker"— who used to be a Member of Parliament— writing in Parliamentary Affairs (the Journal of the Hansard Society, Vol. XV, 1961–62) on the problem of Business Affiliations of M.P.s referred to the inadequacy of Members' pay and conditions. He went on to say, 'The door in fact, is wide open for a new form of political corruption and there is an uneasy feeling in Parliament and outside that its extent could be much greater than the known or published facts reveal.'". My own comment was: There is much truth in that assertion, as any reading of Mr. Roth's books will indicate. I went on to quote various other authorities who said that some form of public register should be formulated.

When I gave that evidence in front of the Select Committee it was said, "Oh, it would be too difficult. Wives could hold shares. There could be nominee shareholders"—and the rest. Of course there are difficulties, but so there are with the tax laws. There are all kinds of ways of evading income tax, surtax, death duty; you name it, and it can be evaded. A constant battle goes on between the Treasury and the taxpayer and the accountants, how to get round the tax laws, but that is no reason why we should not have laws of taxation. I cannot believe that parliamentary draftsmen who can draft a short Bill taking us into such a complex organisation as the EEC cannot devise some method by which the public outside can be made aware of the business interests of Members of this House in outside bodies. It might not be watertight; I do not believe it could be; but that is no reason why we should not try.

Whether we are talking about Members' travel overseas financed by the Government or by foreign Governments or by firms, whether we are talking of Members' outside financial interests, it all boils down eventually to the personal integrity and judgment of the individual Member of Parliament, He, in the end, must decide what is right and what is wrong, what is defensible and what is indefensible, what he will be answerable for to his constituency party and to the public outside, but that is no reason why we should not try to produce a set of ground rules to which he could refer.

There is a good deal of cynicism outside this House about this House. I have said before and I repeat now—and it is no catch phrase—that I believe that this House as a legislature is probably the least corrupt of any in the world, but that is not to say that it is not corrupt, that is not to say that certain hon. Members—I believe a minority of Members—have yielded and are yielding to temptations which are continually put before us week after week. The same applies to local councillors. It spreads through. There is no reason why we should be complacent about it. All I want the Government to do is to have a very good and serious look at these things—in view of recent developments, even more so should they have a look at it. I am glad to have had this opportunity of raising the matter, a matter which the Government, I think, would have preferred not to have been raised.

3.3 p.m.

Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

First, I apologise to the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) for having missed the first three minutes of his speech. I did not know he intended to raise this matter until I saw his name go up on the indicator today. Sometimes it happens that when the business of the House for the day is completed a little earlier than expected an hon. Member who has the good sense to anticipate that fact can grasp his opportunity to raise a matter on the Adjournment, which occurs sooner than was expected. I congratulate the hon. Member at least on exercising initiative on this occasion and taking his opportunity.

However, I must say that I should have like a little more notice of what he intended to say because he has drawn attention to the fact that I was one of the hon. Members who, had the House approved a Motion which contained my name, would have been responsible for administering the fund made available for Members' travel in the United Kingdom and overseas.

I must say that it was not a task which I relished. When I was first asked whether I would consider doing this, I naturally asked how much work it would entail, and I was told, "Very little", but the more I have contemplated it ever since that moment, the more convinced I have become that it would have been an increasingly exacting exercise. The exercise of one's judgment as between one hon. Member's claim and another would be very considerable indeed.

However amusing Mr. Bernard Levin may be on paper—and I hugely enjoy many of the articles he writes—I must confess that I do not think that he is much of a mathematician. If he had got down to the hard tack of dividing £10,000 equitably between 630 Members of Parliament he would have found that it works out at about £16 a head. For £20,000 it is about £32 per head. A sum of £32 does not go very far when one is travelling abroad, and £16 could not be regarded as a lavish additional allowance to enable hon. Members to travel around in this country in the course of their duties as they conceive them to be and to inform themselves on matters concerning or likely to concern the House. What would concern that committee would be to ensure that all hon. Members were being treated equally, and that no one was regarded as privileged in the allocation of the allowances.

It is worth reminding the hon. Member for Fife, West what the right hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) said when the proposals of the Boyle Committee were first put before the House: 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."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th December, 1971; Vol. 828, C. 1143.] It was on that assumption that the Government put down the Motions on the Order Paper to which exception has been taken by the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) and others. I am sorry that the hon. Member for West Ham, North is not here today because he is as ardent a protagonist of anti-privilege as is the hon. Member for Fife, West. They both resent what they regard as privilege which could be thought to be unfair. I respect them for holding that view, but I sometimes wonder what privileges they enjoy about which we do not know.

The hon. Member for Fife, West says that he wants all outside interests to be declared and that there is no way at the moment of doing this. Any constituency association is fully entitled to ask its Member what are his outside interests, and, presumably, the local Press and the national newspapers are entitled to publish his answers to such questions. The question arises whether a central register should be kept here of Members' outside interests, but this might have unfortunate results which the hon. Gentleman does not contemplate.

Once a central register is kept, any change in a hon. Member's outside interests would have to be recorded. This might conceivably have unfortunate effects, for example on investments. For an hon. Member to announce publicly that he had changed his investments might have highly undesirable effects.

I entirely agree that an hon. Member who is asked about his outside interests by his constituents should answer straightforwardly, and I would regret it if any hon. Member did not do so. But we must remember that we take pride in calling ourselves "honourable" Members. The basis on which the House has operated down the years, and on which I hope it will always operate, is the assumption that we are all "honourable" Members until it is proved otherwise. We take responsibility for what we say, knowing that we can be cross-questioned on it in the House, by our constituents, by newspaper men and by any other member of the public. Hon. Members know that when they speak in this House they must bear in mind this responsibility.

I turn to the main burden of the hon. Member's remarks. The question of travel allowances to hon. Members in pursuing what they believe to be a cause which will help them to be able to play their part here more effectively is not an easy one. We must recognise that both Front Benches agreed that the Boyle recommendations must be accepted in toto or not at all.

It is worth quoting these words from the Boyle Report: We have regarded this as placing on us an added responsibility to keep 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. The Government accepted that, as did the Opposition Front Bench. It was on that assumption that the Motions were tabled, and not for some deceitful purpose such as was suggested yesterday in Mr. Bernard Levin's article. It was absolutely in accordance with the decision taken by the House following the recommendation of the Boyle Committee.

I come to the question of administration. The hon. Member for Fife, West asked how on earth those who were to serve on the proposed committee were selected. I cannot say what happened on the Opposition side of the House, but I can gladly tell him what happened on this side. As the House knows, I am chairman of a certain committee concerning the Conservative Party and I was asked whether I would consider this matter with my colleagues. I did so, and I consulted the executive committee, whose purpose is to look into this sort of matter when asked.

We put forward the names of certain hon. Members. One name we put forward was that of the hon. Member for Wycome (Mr. John Hall) who happens to be the Chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and who undertakes an immense amount of work involving foreign travel. He has special knowledge of these matters and of the costs involved and knows the subjects which have to be discussed from time to time. Our other nominee is my hon. Friend the Member for Surbiton (Mr. Nigel Fisher), who is particularly interested in Commonwealth affairs and who travels a great deal at his own expense. He, too, has a personal and active knowledge of the likely costs arising from these journeys.

The hon. Member for Fife, West was somewhat naughty in seeking to paint an absurd picture of hon. Members going off to have a jolly good time, dancing with the mayor's wife, and so on. It was all very colourful and not quite as serious as I think it should have been—especially when we realise that this involves taxpayers' money. I realise that the hon. Gentleman is a great champion of ensuring that public money is properly spent, but on this occasion he has painted such an absurd picture that it should be dismissed as not worthy of the occasion.

I do not regard this proposal of the Boyle Committee as anything like its best proposal. I regard it either as much too small, or it is a question whether it ought to be there at all. I am sure that I speak for many of my colleagues when I say that I should not mind if the whole idea were dropped. The more that I look at it, the more complicated administratively I foresee it being.

However, I should not reject it for the reason advanced by the hon. Member for Fife, West. I should reject it because I believe it to be unworkable without being unfair to someone. I should hate to see its administration being unfair. Every hon. Member should be treated equally. However, if we set a limit of £16 for United Kingdom travel and £32 for overseas travel, it becomes ludicrous—

Mr. Mellish

When the names of right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the House were first mooted for membership of the committee, it was my assumption that at our first meeting we should have to decide our terms of reference. It occurred to me, though this is the first time that I have said so publicly, that the smallness of the fund was such that we might have decided that it was not workable, anyway. However, the important feature of this fund was that whatever sums were granted to any hon. Member, full details would be published, and the whole world would know. In that, I include members of the Press. They would want to know about these matters, though they have probably left the Press Gallery by now since the more lurid part of this debate is over.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's intervention. I hope that he will not assume that, if this committee has to be set up and he and I find ourselves on it, what I have said today is my last word on the subject. Obviously, we should have to get down to working out the modus vivendi of the committee.

I say only that I foresaw deeper and deeper complications ahead of us. That is why I feel that the Government have been wise to withdraw this proposal. Many people will say, "This is one part of the Boyle Report which was a pity. Let us cancel the whole idea and not try again with it." I think that there would be strong support for that point of view from this side of the House.

This assumes, of course, that we are not prepared to say that Members of Parliament shall be provided with adequate allowances on the lines of those of most other Western States. If we do not take that view, we have to think in terms of much bigger sums. If we gave travel facilities in the United Kingdom alone comparable to those enjoyed by the members of legislatures in many advanced States in the world, we should find ourselves running into millions of £s rather than tens of thousands.

After many years of restraint, even taking into account some rise in the cost of living, we know that the fact that we have salaries which are not too much out of line with true costs has not been greeted with wild enthusiasm by the electorate. The country at large underestimates the hours of work put in by hon. Members in this House. The other day I was asked how many hours the parliamentary week involved. I was unable to get the figure below 65. Often it was well about 80 and sometimes above 100 hours a week. That is the sort of time for which a Member of Parliament is involved in work here, in his constituency and connected with work in both.

One piece of work in which hon. Members are involved concerns Select Committees on opposed Private Bills. I no longer do it to the extent that I used to. There is no extra pay for that. It is usually done in the mornings. The amount of work and background reading often is vast. Members of the Press do not take much notice of such committees. That may be because the matters dealt with are largely of local interest. However, it is very important to the localities and the people concerned. That work is part of the parliamentary life, and the country outside knows little of it.

The hon. Member for Fife, West picked upon one Select Committee of which I was a member. I refer to the Select Committee on Science and Technology. In the course of the Second Reading debate on the Bill dealing with our salaries, I referred to this matter. Apparently the hon. Member for Fife, West was opposed to our going to Woomera. Either the British space programme is important or it is not. If it is important, it is as well for Members of Parliament to be as fully informed as possible before starting to adjudicate on the future of that programme. We could not have produced the report that we in fact produced had we not gone to Woomera. As I said on that occasion, when the work of the Committee in Australia had finished two of us—my hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Tebbit) and I—volunteered to go back via Washington to meet some of the representatives of the country most involved in space in the Western world—the United States.

It might interest the House to he reminded of our itinerary. We left Heathrow for Sydney on a Sunday afternoon, going via Vienna, Cairo, Bahrain, Calcutta and Singapore, putting down only to refuel and go on. It is the wrong way to travel if one wishes comfort.

Within an hour of arriving in Sydney we were off in another aeroplane for Adelaide. Half an hour after arriving at Adelaide we were being interviewed by the Premier of South Australia. We then, at last, managed to get a wash and change for the first time in 36 hours. After a quick lunch we went to the Weapons Research Establishment at Salisbury. We went back to Adelaide. Next day we left at 6.30 in the morning for Woomera where we spent two days, travelling 100 miles up there in an aircraft built at least 14 years ago. Then we came back again to Adelaide, went up to Salisbury, spent a whole day there, back to Adelaide, and then over to Canberra. There we not only did work for the Select Committee on Science and Technology, but we met a number of the Clerks of the Parliament there and had an interesting conference. We went back to Sydney the following afternoon, and that was the official end of the Committee's work.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Epping and I had decided to go on to Washington and come back that way, we had to pay the extra fare, £13, out of our own pockets. If hon. Members wish to go round the world I advise them to take more than 14 days in which to do it. It took me three weeks to get over the visit.

The country does not appreciate that the burden of the work we do for this House is considerable. We are not overpaid for what we try to do. Some hon. Members do more than others. That will always be so. However, we are not overpaid as a Parliament. The proposed allowances were not excessive, but the difficulty of administration would be so great that it is better to drop the whole idea until we can think straight on the whole matter.

3.23 p.m.

Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)

I think there are times when, because of events, we tend to make a meal out of something that need not be treated in that way.

Like the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke), I should like to apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) for not being here at the beginning of his speech. However, my hon. Friend will realise that an Adjournment debate is technically one debate and one simply has to watch the board to see when a Member rises if a second Adjournment debate is to take place.

I think my hon. Friend also realises that he puts at least half the hon. Members present on this side of the House in a difficult position regarding the second part of his speech. I will not comment on it for a reason of which he is aware—namely, that we on this side have set up a committee of eight to consider Mem- bers' outside interests. Two of the members of that committee are my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) and myself. Therefore, it is almost impossible for us at this stage, before the committee has met and considered proposals on what it believes should be the situation, to comment on the matter.

Like my hon. Friend, when the Select Committe dealing with Members' Interests was sitting, I put before it a memorandum of evidence and raised the question of a register of Members. I also pointed out some of the difficulties.

My hon. Friend said that in the end it is a question of Members' individual integrity. My hon. Friend is right, but only in the sense that every job we do involves our own individual integrity, whether inside or outside this House. In that sense Members of Parliament are no different from other people, but there is a way in which they are different. My hon. Friend mentioned constituencies and parties. An individual Member's integrity is relevant to his job in the same way as the integrity of any other individual is to his job, but there are people outside the House who are interested in us because they elect us or because they vote for or against us at a General Election or at party meetings when they select candidates. I am sure it will be agreed that it is not only the individual Member's integrity that is involved. What is involved is a sufficient degree of publicity of a Member's actions to enable people outside to make a legitimate choice in deciding whether they wish him to be in the House. In that respect Members are different from many other people. That is as far as I wish to go on that issue.

I should like to take up the other point raised by my hon. Friend. The history of travelling expenses is interesting. I first heard of it from the former Member for Ormskirk, Sir Douglas Glover, who raised it in the House late one night. The hon. Gentleman was often here at all hours of the day or night, very much like the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely, who referred to the hours that Members work. The former Member for Ormskirk raised the question for the most legitimate of reasons. I subsequently learned that he was not the first person in the House to raise the matter, but he was the first in my recollection as a Member, and he raised it because he wanted to ensure that Members could go about their legitimate duties outside the House without having to be beholden to other people who might have interests—and who better to pay for such things than the country as a whole?

I said earlier that we sometimes make a meal out of something which need not be treated in that way. My father was a railway executive. When he died my mother, as his widow, had a free pass which would take her over any part of the railway system for which he had been an executive. There is nobody in the kingdom who works in industry in any capacity who, when he is sent on a job by the firm for which he works, is not paid for that purpose. There are many people who, like my mother as a widow, have a small fringe benefit of the kind that I have mentioned.

Is it being suggested that Members of Parliament should be worse off than every other person employed in the United Kingdom? When the former Member for Ormskirk raised the matter, I thought that it was an extremely sensible proposal, and when the Boyle Committee met I submitted a memorandum to it. That has not been published because, quite rightly, the committee did not publish any of its evidence. My memorandum included the suggestion that the idea put forward by the former Member for Ormskirk should be adopted and the committee accepted that.

The Government said that they were going to implement the entire Boyle Report. Like the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely, I am not sure that the way in which the Boyle Committee put the matter was the best way. I think that it would be simpler to say that we could use our railway warrants which are provided to take us from this place to our constituencies, or the car allowances which are paid to Members who drive cars for the same purpose for travel anywhere in the United Kingdom. That might be a better way of doing it. But the Boyle Committee made its proposal, it was an independent committee, and the Government have said that they intend to implement what the committee recommended.

At no time during any of the discussions do I recollect my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West objecting to what was proposed. I do not recollect his objecting when the former Member for Ormskirk raised it. I do not recollect his objecting during the discussions on the Boyle Report. I do not recollect his objecting even when the Government put down their Motion for debate on the Floor of the House. On the first occasion that the Government Motion was put down and withdrawn my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West was not there. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) was present but my other hon. Friend did not seem to be concerned. He may have been concerned, but he did not say so. He has taken an interest in this issue only since more recent events on other issues. I accept that he is a master of the ability to influence public opinion, but on this sort of subject there should be a measure of consistency in view expressed on the Floor of the House. I have always been in favour of a reasonable travelling allowance for hon. Members.

I am concerned that the Government originally withdrew their resolutions in a fit of pique—and I describe it as such because I was present at the time. The Motion embodying the recommendation of the Boyle Committee dealing with travelling expenses was preceded by another Motion which the Boyle Committee had not recommended—that we should give £60 to every hon. Member who wished to attend an EEC language course. There was no requirement that the hon. Member should pass the course or qualify —only that he should attend. My hon. Friend for Ardwick and I objected to that. Some people believe we should not have done so. Since we opposed it, the Government withdrew the second resolution on travelling expenses to which we were not opposed. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) opposed it at the time, but it could have gone through.

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West that the method of implementing the Boyle Report is, to say the least, slightly strange in one small respect. I believe that we should have a travel fund and that the amount would have to be worked out.

Within the United Kingdom a fund would not be needed because the principles that apply for travel to constituencies could be extended. Obviously this is a difficult matter, but nevertheless there should be a means by which the community as a whole could pay for Members going abroad for what other hon. Members—not those making the trip—would describe as for legitimate parliamentary purposes.

If Members of Parliament go abroad they cannot even claim the cost of the visit for tax purposes if they are paying for it out of their own income. It is not merely a question of paying their own expenses. They are not even allowed to pay for it themselves and then charge an appropriate proportion to tax, as any business man could when travelling abroad for the purpose of his business. If an hon. Member wanted to go to Northern Ireland, Vietnam or anywhere else for parliamentary purposes, the cost of the trip could not be charged to tax, but a business man selling spanners could charge his expenses to tax.

The committee that decides upon the matter should be the broadest possible, and the defect of the particular committee proposed was that it was so small and restricted. I would rather see the Services Committee, which is ultimately responsible for the budget of the House, considering the matter rather than these hon. Members. That is a minor point. The major point is that if we do not provide Members of Parliament with legitimate means of doing the things they feel they must do in the course of their duties, then a minority, as my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West said, might adopt illegitimate means of doing the same thing.

3.35 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton (Sowerby)

The House is in some difficulty this afternoon, because the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) related to Motions which were on the Order Paper for today, but which are not now on the Order Paper for today. The Government decided not to move those Motions today, to reconsider the matter and, if they thought fit, to bring them forward on a subsequent occasion. If they are brought forward on a subsequent occasion, the House will have an opportunity to debate them fully, perhaps in more satisfactory conditions than this afternoon; if they are not brought forward again there is nothing to debate and we are finished with them. So we are in the difficulty that we do not know whether we are debating something tangible. We are certainly debating, at any rate in part, something that is not before the House.

Nevertheless, with his usual ingenuity, my hon. Friend took the opportunity of the collapse of a certain part of the business on account of the withdrawal of these Motions to raise the same matters on the Adjournment—which shows what can be done in the House if one knows one's way about. One thing that will be very noticeable is how hard the House tries for virtue and what a painful way we choose to achieve it—self-examination, self-exposure, self-criticism.

When I was listening to the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) defending, rightly, properly and moderately, the prestige, the zeal and the integrity of the House, I wondered how interested the Press was in what he was saying. It was very interested in what my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West was saying. He was the man who was good for the headlines, not the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Mellish

Hear, hear.

Mr. Houghton

That is the dilemma that always confronts the House when it begins to debate itself. We have to do it in public and we can be misrepresented. What is discussed here can be grievously distorted for the sake of Press advantage, or publicity, or political prejudice, or whatever it may be. That is sad, but we are a public body doing its work in public and we have to take the consequences.

Nevertheless, these conditions impose upon us all a full sense of responsibility for what we do and what we say, because we can seriously damage the institution of Parliament, unwittingly perhaps, and at this time, when our institutions are under such challenge, the object of much cynicism and derision, we must be careful that we do not damage the whole fabric of our democratic and parliamentary system. What will be put in its place if this Parliament goes, if this Parliament is regarded as something unworthy and corrupt, cynical in its approach to its duties, striving for its advantage, having private interests, going on bonanza trips all over the world, if this kind of legend is built up about the House, our reputation, our authority and our influence are bound to diminish.

I say to my hon. Friend that he does not choose his language carefully and moderately enough when he is dealing with these delicate matters. I shall not go into many of the topics that he raised. I have great respect for my hon. Friend. He has abundant courage. Sometimes hon. Members who are in a minority but who have courage nevertheless do a service to the public and to Parliament, and I do not deny that. But sometimes in the House we make possible unimpeded progress towards minority rule.

These are the occasions when any hon. Member, even though he represents no one but himself and has the full confidence of his constituents, can in certain circumstances hold up our proceedings here hour by hour throughout the day and night. This is a right that we give in our democratic parliamentary system to hon. Members to have their say without let or hindrance, and the House can scarcely bring proceedings to a close, even if it wants to if the hon. Member concerned is in order and availing himself properly of the time put at our disposal. But all this puts on hon. Members a very grave responsibility about what we do.

The two main issues that have been raised are travel allowances and Members' interests. The subject of Members' interests is by no means new. It has been debated in the past from time to time when disclosures have been made or information has come to light which disturbs the House, and the House then feels that it should examine once again this difficult matter. This occurred during the lifetime of the Labour Government, and a Select Committee was set up presided over by my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss). It spent a considerable period in close examination of a complex problem, and it produced a report.

It is true that that report was never debated here. Probably it should have been debated but, unhappily, there are times when the House, roused to indignation or apprehension and in a mood or spirit of moral fervour, says that a Select Committee must be set up, that something must be done to inquire into whatever the subject may be, and that some remedy must be found, but by the time the Select Committee set up to deal with the matter produces its report the House has lost interest in the circumstance of its appointment, and we wait until the next incident occurs.

So it is that we are now all going to the Vote Office for our copies of the 1967 Select Committee's Report to see what was said about a problem which has recently been revived in the House. If we read that report—and I wonder how many hon. and right hon. Members read it then or have refreshed their memories about it since—we appreciate how difficult the problem is. None of us wants to hide matters which are of public interest, and probably many of us would go much further than would members of the public in the disclosure of our affairs in order that the public might see that we were neither corrupt, nor in the pay of other people, nor in circumstances and conditions which would unfit us to represent the public in this House of Commons.

For my own part, I would be prepared for anyone to see my income tax return at any time: they would then see how little I have made out of being in Parliament for the last 22 years. I know that the same applies to many other hon. Members. As I have said, I would be prepared to submit to a degree of inspection of my private affairs which I would not ask private citizens themselves to agree to, but the problem is: what is suitable and proper for disclosure?

I do not want to dwell on these matters, because I am a member of a committee of the Parliamentary Labour Party which has been appointed to take a party look at the subject in order to see whether we can come to any conclusions that we might on a subsequent occasion put before the House. Nevertheless, I need only, in a couple of sentences, ask whether one discloses shareholdings, control of private compies, substantial blocks of shares in public companies, fees paid by outside bodies. Should we know what the lawyers or the solicitors are earning? We know that certain hon. Members are journalists and we read what they have to say: it would be interesting to know how much they are paid for their work. Are we entitled to know? These are questions we should ask ourselves.

Mr. Mellish

We know how much some people get paid.

Mr. Houghton

Some hon. Members have fairly regular columns in local newspapers. Are they paid for those? Are they in any way beholden to the politics of the newspapers for which they write? All these are important and difficult questions.

I wish to say little more on this matter until the committee that has been appointed has had an opportunity of considering it further, but there is one thing that I can say without fear of contradiction; we all want to do what can properly and fairly be done to assure the public that we are the most incorrupt Parliament in the world. We wish to retain confidence in our capacity to represent the public and to do it without fear or favour, or undue personal interest.

The issue of travel is a new one. It came from the Boyle Committee. It is not without importance. I should mention that another of the dilemmas of those who serve the House is that we are extremely loth to propose anything for our own benefit. Many attempts have been made to deal with the problems of pay and conditions of hon. Members. Select Committees in all sorts of ways have tried to solve this difficult problem.

All that I want to say is that probably as a result of a small Bill that I introduced into the House some time ago our affairs were remitted to a review body for its advice on what should be done in terms of the pay and conditions of Members. That committee was presided over by Lord Boyle of Handsworth, who for many years was a Member of this House. He is now Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University. He was a much respected Member of this House in his time—a man of great public eminence, respected for his integrity, wisdom and judgment.

Lord Boyle was chairman of this committee, and he and the other distinguished members of it voluntarily undertook the task of deciding for us what we felt incapable of deciding for ourselves. Among the Members were Lord Beeching and Sir George Coldstream—a distinguished Permanent Secretary to Lord Chancellors. It was a committee of high quality.

The Government decided—rightly in my view—to accept without amendment the recommendations of the Boyle Committee on pay and conditions of Members of Parliament. That is the only way to do it. If a person puts out his washing because it is too dirty or too difficult for him to wash it himself, he must take it when it comes back from the laundry—and this came back from the laundry and the Government decided to accept it.

One of the recommendations of the committee related to travel within the United Kingdom and overseas. I am sure that this recommendation came from the committee because it received evidence showing, or sought from its own inquiries to find out, how well or ill informed Parliament is on matters which should be within the scope of its attention and expert knowledge. The committee made this modest recommendation —the subject of a Motion on the Order Paper that was withdrawn.

I see that in Mr. Bernard Levin's article in The Times on Thursday—and this is the mischief of the matter, if I may say so to my hon. Friend the Member for West Fife—he says: Now if you look at the small print in the Boyle Committee Report, a most significant fact emerges. The travelling expenses now incurred by Members of Parliament are, says the Report, generally not even deductible for tax'. That is a fair-sized cat to be let out of a bag only six words long, for if the Members' expenses are not deductible for tax it means that they cannot satisfy the Inland Revenue authorities that the travel is 'wholly and necessarily' for the purpose of their parliamentary work. It is therefore proposed by the Government and Opposition that Members of Parliament, alone among citizens shall not only be permitted to evade the provisions of the Income Tax Acts by paying no tax on the cost of their own private travel; they will actually get the lot back from the public purse. That is a mischievous distortion of the tax position.

The difficulty about Members of Parliament and their tax expenses is well known.

The Inland Revenue naturally does not allow Members to choose which expenses they like to charge against their assessable income. The Inland Revenue wants to know, "Is this wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred in the performance of your duties as a Member of Parliament?" It looks for some authority or sanction for the expenditure from such bodies as the House may direct—some authority that these matters are within the scope of legitimate parliamentary expenses. The fact that they are not admissible for tax purposes does not mean that they are not desirable expenses or expenses which will add to the value and knowledge of Members.

The Boyle Committee is trying to provide for expenditure in this direction which would be regarded as desirable when approved by a committee of the whole House. There would be no question of tax admissibility then, because the expenses would be paid out of the fund provided. There is nothing whatever in the point made by Bernard Levin in this context.

I hope that the House will permit me one personal reference. For many years I was the Front Bench spokesman on social security. I then went into the Government as a Cabinet Minister for two and a half years as the co-ordinating Minister for the whole of the social services. Not one penny of public money sent me anywhere in the world to look at the social services. I never had the opportunity of going, and I never asked for it. That is an indicaton of how austere we are in these matters. I am sure this applies to many of my hon. and right hon. Friends. The austerity that underlies all our activities here is unbelievable to members of legislative assemblies elsewhere.

My hon. Friend had a good deal of fun, and this is the danger, When we have fun in this House it can be construed in a way damagng to us all. It is difficult to be facetious in public because it is bound to be misunderstood. Some of the situations and applications for overseas travel which my hon. Friend mentioned are, as he knows, absolute fantasy. He is just enjoying himself. He knows that it was rubbish from beginning to end and yet it is seriously put to this House as a practical dilemma for the committee of which, were it to be appointed, I and my right hon. Friend the Opposition Chief Whip would be members. We would stop my hon. Friend going to Japan to look at the geisha girls, we would stop any hon. Member who wanted to see how our footballers played in the World Cup in Munich or Vienna, or wherever else they play.

No, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is not a serious argument, this is not put forward with any sense of responsibility, and I must rebuke my hon. Friend, not because we do not all enjoy these contributions that he makes. Within our own circle we understand it and we understand him. But the Press men have gone. They went after my hon. Friend sat down. We shall see tomorrow what is made of this debate and how much improvement in the public mind comes out of a debate on one of the most difficult and delicate matters confronting parliamentarians.

Both Motions can and probably will come before the House in due course. I hope that I have said enough to warn all right hon. and hon. Members to be careful and not to damage Parliament unnecessarily and wantonly, because this institution is probably the one thing which stands between the public and anarchy. We have a grave responsibility to honour the traditions, rights and powers of Parliament handed down to us over hundreds of years. We must sustain it, foster its reputation and be worthy of it. We must not injure it unless it must be injured in the public interest.

3.56 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service Department (Mr. Kenneth Baker)

This is the first day on which you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have presided over the House since your appointment on Wednesday. I should like to congratulate you on behalf of the House.

It is a common occurrence for backbench Members to prepare long speeches and to sit through debates without being called and then to go away and persuade themselves that the speeches they did not make were the best. That has happened to me on five occasions this week. I have prepared five speeches to make from this Box but because of business changes I have not made any of them. They are the good ones which got away.

When the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) speaks in the way in which he has spoken today—as a sort of Savanarola of the lowlands—he can, as the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said, do a great deal of damage to the concept of parliamentary government in this country. The debate at times denegrated into a dog-eat-dog argument. I was surprised to hear the hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) attacking Mr. Bernard Levin. Both those gentlemen are my constituents, so I did not intervene because I would not want to jeopardise their potential support for me at the next election.

I should like to deal first with what the hon. Member for Fife, West said about the language Motion. It was debated late at night on 13th June for about two hours. It was debated thoroughly and there was a vote on it. But it could not be proceeded with because there were not 40 Members in the House. That was why it was tabled again for discussion today.

The hon. Member for Fife, West wanted to know why the Motion was confined to Common Market languages. It seems that he wants to learn Chinese—apparently on his way to Japan. During the debate on the Motion, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said: Most of us would agree that, in or out of the Common Market, the future of this country is probably more tied up with Europe than it was a few decades ago. That is probably inevitable. There are European institutions outside the Common Market. It helps hon. Members to do their duty to this House and, therefore, to the country if they are able to participate more freely in these institutions and to talk the languages of other members who join in them."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th June, 1972; Vol. 838, c. 1463.] That is a sensible and practical approach. Certain hon. Members who will be participating more in European affairs in future felt that if they did not have the facility of tongue of one of the continental languages they should try to learn it. I should say that I would not have thought very much money would have been spent by the taxpayer on this, because the proposal was to pay only £60 or up to £60, but only if the course were completed. It is the experience, I understand, in language courses that courses are not often completed.

I turn now to the—

It being Four o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the blouse lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Rossi.]

Mr. Baker

I turn now to the more substantive point concerning travel funds. As the House will be aware, the two Motions which were tabled but which have not been proceeded with today arose out of a Boyle recommendation, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sowerby mentioned. It is the only outstanding recommendation of the Boyle Report. Both Front Benches have placed considerable emphasis in the past on accepting such reports in toto. If we ask a body like this to undertake a difficult and embarrassing task, or a task which we find embarrassing, we should accept its report in toto. The particular recommendation was in 42(b): An increasing number of Members incur expenses in travelling outside their constituencies, both within the United Kingdom and overseas, to inform themselves on subjects of relevance to their work. These are generally not even deductible for tax. We consider that such travel should be encouraged where it can be shown to be of assistance to Members in carrying out their duties effectively. We have in mind, for example, visits in connection with the sponsoring of a private Bill, to extend a Member's knowledge of an industry which is of special importance in his constituency, and, in the case of Opposition spokesmen, to examine matters of national interest in the sphere for which they are responsible. I think this indicates that the sort of travel the Boyle Report had in mind was not the sort of jaunts the hon. Member for Fife, West was talking about. The object of that recommendation was not to give the luckiest people the jolliest time. It was to provide a facility which many hon. Member do not have but which would help them with their parliamentary work as Members of this legislative assembly.

I need not remind the House—indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) did—that action has been taken on the rest of the Boyle Report, but I should like to emphasise at the outset that the Government regard this as very much a matter for the House, and one in which they would particularly seek to be guided by the general wishes of Members. This is not a matter for the Government, and the proposal does not emanate from the Government. It is a matter for the House. If the House wants these funds to be set up, set up they will be; if it does not, then nothing will happen.

I was asked whether the decision not to proceed with those Motions today meant that they were going to be dropped for good. That is not the position. They will stand on the Order Paper; they will come up if the House so wishes them to come up. They have been held over today because it became quite clear that there was considerable opposition from certain Members on both sides of the House to these proposals, some to the principle of these proposals, some to the details of these proposals. So it is the Government's intention to proceed with them only if it becomes clear that this is the wish of the House.

The effect of the first Motion, if it had been proceeded with, would have been to set up these two proposed travel funds.

Mr. Mellish

There is one other aspect to the matter of the Motions not being proceeded with today and I think it ought to be made clear otherwise it might be said that the Government or the Opposition were running away from honourable debate. It is known that on the last two Fridays the debates here went on extremely late for a Friday; they were quite exceptionally lengthy. The staff of the House have been acutely embarrassed and, indeed, hurt, and it was felt that to have a third very long Friday in succession was really asking rather too much.

Mr. Baker

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for putting a bit of flesh on the bones of the reasons why we did not proceed with the Motions today.

The first Motion, if it had been proceeded with, would have been to set up two funds. They would have been financed out of public funds, and, as recommended in the Review Body's Report, these annual subscriptions from the Exchequer would have amounted in the first instance to £10,000 for travel within the United Kingdom and to £20,000 for overseas travel. These proposals were very modest. In comparison with what other legislative assemblies provide it is apparent that far from being over-generous we are being niggardly.

The hon. Member for Fife, West mentioned Belgium, but in France members of the legislative assembly have free travel and subsistence allowances for official journeys both inside and outside France, free first-class rail travel within France at all times, a limited number of tickets for sleepers on trains or air journeys between the capital and their constituencies and a pool of cars available, with chauffeurs, in the Paris area. I should like to hear the hon. Member for Fife, West wax eloquent on that if it were ever suggested. As he will know, junior Ministers in this country do not now have cars allocated to them.

In Germany all deputies receive automatically a travel allowance of £103 a month—£1,200 a year. In Italy Members of Parliament receive free rail travel and free travel on shipping lines subsidised by the State and on motorways administered by IRI. They also have a certain number of free flights between their constituencies and the capital if the distance is in excess of 500 kilometres, and so on.

I should like to dispel the impression, if there is such an impression, that the modest proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Boyle, are over-generous; they are not. Indeed, the modesty of the proposals might have created difficulties in administering the funds.

The second Motion that will not be proceeded with today would have set up an all-party committee of which my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Ely the right hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) and the right hon. Member for Sowerby would have been members, together with two senior Members of the House, assisted by a Clerk of the House. It would have been entirely for the committee, within the terms of the Motion, to have decided how the annual amounts were allocated, whether hon. Members should apply before undertaking the journey or afterwards and whether the allowance would be for hotels as well as for travelling. The committee would have decided these things and reported all their decisions back to the House so that the House, the public and the Press would know exactly who was getting how much for what.

I notice that the hon. Member for Fife, West was prudent enough to suggest that he should be a member of the committee. I was not aware that Savonarola actually suggested that he should preside over the orgies in Florence. None the less, the hon. Gentleman had the prudence to put himself on the committee, and to suggest that an hon. Lady with whom from time to time he pairs should also be on the committee.

In view of the publicity which has been given to these travel allowances I make clear, as was made clear in an intervention by the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme), that there could have been no question of the pre-allocation of funds for any visits which he or his colleagues may have undertaken to Ireland. The committee, if it had been set up, would have decided this. The committee would have received the application and considered whether it was within the criteria it would have laid down. There can be no question of money having been promised, and no question of the travelling expenses of those visits being paid out of public funds. The Government do not have a kitty for doling out money in this way. That is why the Boyle Committee recommended this system, with the establishment of funds.

I emphasise that the Government regard this as essentially a House matter. I do not wish to suggest that we as a parliamentary assembly need be in any way defensive about these proposals to assist hon. Members in their parliamentary duties. That is all I wish to say on the question of travel funds. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and others will take note of what has been said today. We shall probably return to this matter later in the year. I should now like to turn—

Mr. John Mendelson (Penistone)

Before the hon. Gentleman turns to another matter, will be make sure that when the House returns after the Recess the Motions to which reference has been made and which the Government are not abandoning will be put on for debate at a normal time, namely 3.30 after Questions? In this way a large number of hon. Members will be present so that we may have a proper impression of hon. Members' opinions, which has not been the case so far.

Mr. Baker

I cannot make those sorts of promises. As the hon. Member knows, it is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, but I shall draw the hon. Gentleman's remarks to his attention.

The five Members who have been nominated in one of the Motions have borne their potential, though at the moment virtually non-existent, duties very well. I can only say that those five hon. Members who are prepared to undertake the work will have to have broad backs and strong spirits.

I turn to the more substantive point about declaration of Members' interests following the report of the Select Committee in 1969, which has not been debated. I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Fife. West has raised this matter. It is right that the House should concern itself with this topic. The public expect us as Members of Parliament so to conduct ourselves in our public and private lives that our conduct is above suspicion. The conduct of men and women in the public eye must not only be honourable but must be seen to be honourable.

The issue is not whether hon. Members should or should not have outside financial interests, but how those interests should be declared and made known to the world. I cannot agree with those who say—the argument has not been advanced today—that MPs should have no outside interests. One of the great strengths of this House is the wide variety of interests and backgrounds. It is a truly microcosm of the nation; our debates are enriched and enlivened by the experience and knowledge which hon. Members derive from their activities outside the House.

I wish to deal with three aspects of Members' financial interests, namely bribery, voting and declaration. The position on bribery has been clear for many years. As far back as 1695 there was a Resolution that condemned the offer and acceptance by MPs of bribes. The offer of money or other advantage to a Member of Parliament for the promoting of any matter whatsoever, pending or to be transacted in Parliament, is a high crime of misdemeanour. The issue as regards voting is equally clear. No Member of Parliament with a direct pecuniary interest in a question is allowed to vote on it. This derived from a much-quoted and famous ruling by Mr. Speaker Abbott in 1811, who ruled that this interest must be a direct pecuniary interest and separately belonging to the person and not in common with the rest of His Majesty's subjects. If such a matter arose and a Member decided to vote on it, his vote would be disqualified.

I should add that since that ruling there has only been one such disqualification, because it is a very narrow ruling. It occurred in 1892 when the votes of three Members were disallowed because they were shareholders in an East African company which was laying a railway line in East Africa to Lake Victoria.

In the 19th century the House seemed mainly to have been concerned with the question of voting rather than declaration. The emphasis of interest in this century, and particularly in the last few years, has shifted to declarations. The Select Committee was set tin to look into the whole area of Members' interest, but with a particular remit to examing the point of declaration. A practice has grown up—and I call it no more than a practice, because I can find no reference to it in Erskine May—that obliges a Member to declare any direct interest of a financial character before he takes part in a debate. The Committee referred to this as a convention; it is not enshrined in Standing Orders or in the Rules of the House.

Such a declaration is left to the discretion of each Member. As the House knows, it is a relatively frequent occurrence for a Member to start his speech by saying that he has a certain interest in a specific business or company. I remember Iain Macleod prefacing remarks of his when he was shadow Chancellor in general economic debates with the comment that he was a director of Lombard Bainking so that if any question came up about hire-purchase controls, which were of great concern to of Lombard Banking then the House should know that he was a director of that company, though his direct financial interest in the affairs of that company was of a miniscule nature. None the less, this is an excellent tradition.

The Committee examined something more than this. It considered carefully the publication of a register of the interest of members and making such a register mandatory—not obligatory like the Liberal proposal. It examined the whole range of types of register from the publication of individual Members' tax returns, as the right hon. Member for Sowerby suggested, to the partial disclosure of some interests. The Committee saw two main objections to the suggestion of a register, and it may be of interest if I spell those out, so that hon. Members are aware of them. I will give my views on them later.

The Committee's first objection was that it found it difficult to devise a register which reflected the fullness and extent of an individual Member's interests and was fair as between Members. If it must show consultancies, directorships and commissions, should not shareholdings be shown, or perhaps only significant shareholdings? But, then, what is a significant shareholding? In the case of a barrister, should he declare not only the total level of his fees but the specific amounts of some of the larger ones, together with his clients' names? Should an accountant not only declare his total fees, but the names of his major clients? Should journalistic earnings be shown, not just as one total but as separate totals from each newspaper and each television company? Should the ownership of land be included, or the ownership of important assets such as chattels or antiques? Should family holdings be shown? In some circumstances, would not it be more proper to show not assets but liabilities? It might be more significant if an hon. Member were substantially in debt, and possibly in debt to one person or group, than if he owned a modest holding of some Shell shares.

These are many of the questions that the Select Committee examine. It came to the conclusion that … such cumbrous inquisitorial machinery is likely to be evaded by the few Members it is designed to enmesh.

Mr. English

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many hon. Members have certain reservations about that Select Committee's report? The hon. Gentleman said, and I agree, that it would be a pity if one excluded from the House all people with outside interests. But in that case the Select Committee could be said to be a Select Committee which excluded all Members of the House with no outside interests.

Mr. Baker

There were several comments upon the findings of the Committee and about its membership. I do not want to get involved in that today. I am dealing now with the general principles behind its report. As I have said, its first objection related to the sheer difficulty of what goes into the register and in what detail.

The second objection was that, although Members of Parliament are figures in the public eye, they also have private lives. It would be most invidious if it were decided that all their personal tax and financial matters were made common knowledge. Such a wide provision would deter many people on both sides wanting to enter or continue as Members of Parliament.

The Committee also examined at length the possibility of dealing specifically with public relations firms either by asking Members to register their connections with such firms, or by geting the firms to publish payments made to any Member of Parliament. These ideas came to grief on the difficulties of defining "public relatons" and the absence of a professional body which could cover the whole field.

Having rejected the idea of a register the Committee concluded that what was needed was a new code of conduct formally embodied in Resolutions of this House.

This code of conduct had only two points. The first was the formalisation of what is, in effect, a custom of the House, that when a Member rises to speak he should declare his interest; and that this practice should be extended to Question Time and to the times when Members write to their colleagues or to Ministers.

The second was that a Member should not "bring forward by speech or questions or advocate in this House or among his fellow Members any Bill, Motion, matter or cause for a fee, payment, retainer or reward, direct or indirect, which he has received, is receiving, or expects to receive."

This code of conduct raised considerable problems. It has been interpreted that any Member sponsored by a trade union would be debarred from participating in a debate on matters affecting his union or, indeed, on general union legislation. This is one of the difficulties in this matter. If we draw up a proposal which we think is watertight, it will specifically impose upon Mr. Speaker, or whoever is in the Chair, certain rules which he is bound to follow in preventing Members from speaking on certain subjects. Clearly this would have been a great inhibition upon the freedom of debate in the House.

I have gone over the report of the Select Committee in some detail, because I do not want hon. Members to have the impression that this matter has been lightly dealt with by the Government. It is an important matter, and I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said that he would be prepared to look at this question again.

Hon. Members must beware of thinking that there is a simple comprehensive and effective solution. I have always believed that frankness in these matters is the best course of action. I have always made my business interests known, as have many hon. Members on both sides of the House. However, I suspect that whatever rules may be devised, we must depend at the end of the road upon the good faith and integrity of individual Members, which is the point my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely so eloquently made.

I should like to take this opportunity to make clear to the House the position of Ministers. Strict rules are laid down about what Ministers may or may not do. I summarise them simply by saying that a Minister has to cease receiving any remuneration from any body, company or organisation. As the House knows, this is strictly observed. In my case, I immediately resigned all my business interests, directorships and consultancy arrangements. In addition, I had to resign the presidency of a semi-charitable housing association, although I had no financial interest in it or in any of the companies concerned with it. However, it was felt that as a Minister there could be a possible conflict of interest.

The hon. Member for Fife, West has urged us all to be frank. I should like to be frank about the motivation of some people in seeking information of this kind. To be brutally frank, some people are interested in this information out of sheer malicious curiosity. I have always been a little surprised that people seem to be so interested in other people's bank balances. After all, there is much more interesting information about people which, for example, "Who's Who" does not disclose. It is not the custom now to put down whether one is a Protestant, Catholic, Jew, atheist or humanist. Fifty years ago it would have been essential information. Personally, I should find that information infinitely more interesting than knowing what a man earns.

I think that a person's attitude to religious belief and wider metaphysical and philosophical problems of life is more likely to condition his attitude to the problems of today and the causes which he might advocate in this House than the money he has or the salary he earns. The sources of a person's belief and attitude are, I suspect, of more importance than the sources of his wealth.

Finally, I should like to express my profound personal conviction that Members of this Parliament are not in politics for money. I have met no Member of Parliament on either side who has joined this House in order to make money.

I know of several Members on both sides of the House who would be financially very much better off by not being Members. Money is not the spur. I find this one of the most attractive aspects of our political way of life. It is often in marked contrast to the way in which things are done in other countries, and I hope that this debate will not create the impression throughout the country that venality and corruption are characteristic of our public life. They most certainly are not.

4.25 p.m.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook (Orpington)

I apologise to the House for not having been present when the debate started, but I am anxious to contribute to the discussion as it relates to travelling allowances.

I feel that the proposal to grant travelling allowances to Members is objectionable in principle in that it reflects a change which has been going on for some years in the status of Members. We have all been proud of the independence of Members in the past and perhaps we jealously preserved that independence more than we do nowadays, but the fact is that, with the increasing scope for drawing upon public funds for the purpose of doing our duty and the greater opportunities that we now have to seek information to do our jobs through and with the assistance of public funds, we are getting to the stage at which Members are rapidly becoming like paid civil servants.

The truth is that we are becoming like civil servants with sanctions due, not to the wisdom and the desirability or undesirability on that score of adopting a certain course, but to whether one is eligible for the financial provision to do what one wants to do. In principle it is desirable that all Members should be assisted to do their jobs properly, to have such assistance as they require for that purpose. That is why it is sometimes difficult to argue that we should not be remunerated to a greater extent than we are now. We all know that we are under-remunerated if one looks at it from that point of view.

That is why when Members' salaries were being discussed earlier this Session I was against the increase. It seemed to me that what was required was an increase not in salary but in the provision of additional secretarial, office and research facilities so that the functions of Members could be carried on properly without impinging upon the salary which should be paid only for personal needs.

Unfortunately, in recent years—and particularly in the last few years—there has been a subtle change in the status of Members because of the financial provisions of which we are able to take advantage from time to time. This subtle change in the status and independence of Members has been going on with the connivance of the Government and Opposition Front Benches. I believe that it is bad in principle, and that any move which may be made to assist us in doing our jobs properly should be specifically in a way which does not destroy our independence.

There are many odd characters in this House, and I say so without claiming to be one myself, but it would be a far poorer place if we did not have them. They are by nature non-conformists. They are by nature not the sort of people who wish to apply and be considered among others for an allocation of time or money to do certain things.

These people, who make up so much of the richness of our parliamentary lives, and contribute inestimably to parliamentary democracy, are those of whom we should be thinking when discussing what assistance we give to individual Members to do their jobs. It is they who will suffer most if there is any question of imposing regulations and restrictions on the availability of funds to assist Members.

As it is not possible to make travel allowances available to anybody who wishes, there must be some form of regulation, rationing or control of the amount used, and it seems to me that this cannot be realised without discrimination against such odd characters. That would be wholly objectionable, and for that reason I am strongly against the proposal.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock.