MEMBERS' OFFICE, SECRETARIAL AND RESEARCH ALLOWANCE (Hansard, 26 July 1977)

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker(Sir Myer Galpern)
I call the Leader of the House—

§ Mr. George Cunningham (Islington, South and Finsbury)
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Do I take it that we are considering Items 4 and 5 on the Order Paper?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
I have not heard what motion the Lord President is proposing to move. I am waiting to hear what he proposes should be taken together.

§ The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Michael Foot)
With permission, and in accordance with your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on 7th July when the House agreed not to proceed with the business before it, I shall in the first instance pro-pose that the House should consider all three motions that are before us.

Hon. Members
No.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
As an objection has been taken to that course, we shall have to leave out Item 6. Does the hon. Member for Islington, South and Fins-bury (Mr. Cunningham) want Item 6 dealt with separately?

§ Mr. George Cunningham
Yes.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
In that case, we can take Items 4 and 5 together.

§ Mr. George Cunningham
I think it would be wise to take the motions on Members' Office, Secretarial and Research Allowance and Members' Salaries and Pensions together.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
That is what I said. The hon. Gentleman has objected to the motion on Parliament being taken with the other two. So we are taking Nos. 4 and 5 together.

§ Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)
But I object to that, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Then we will take first the motion on Members' Office, Secretarial and Research Allowance.

§ Mr. Foot
I fully accept it, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if hon. Members wish No. 4 to 474 be taken separately. However, I think that it would be for the greater convenience of the House at this time of night if we had a discussion on all three matters together—[Interruption.] It is true that my hon. Friend did not table these motions. We attempted to discuss these matters on an earlier occasion and, in view of the representations made from different parts of the House, we said that we would postpone the debate. I still submit that it would be preferable to discuss all three items together, although I know that there are arguments on the other side. I would not seek to deny my hon. Friend the opportunity of arguing the other matters separately.
I know that it is late at night, but that is not entirely the Government's responsibility. We must have this debate before the House goes into recess and I believe that we could cover the matter properly by taking all three items together.

§ Mr. English
I am not trying to be awkward. I want to talk about matters which I think will be in order on the motion dealing with Members' Office, Secretarial and Research Allowance and which I do not think should be mixed up under the terms of my amendment to the motion on Members' Salaries and Pensions.

§ Mr. Foot
If my hon. Friend and other hon. Members wish these matters to be discussed separately, I am prepared to do so. I merely suggest that it would be preferable to take all three motions together, and by so doing we should get through the business more speedily. However, if the House wishes to proceed differently I will fall in with it. But at this hour of the night it is, I think, the duty of other Members as well as of members of the Government to try to ease the difficulties of the House generally.
I beg to move, That, in the opinion of this House, the limits on the allowance payable to any Member of this House in respect of expenses incurred for his Parliamentary duties—

(a) as general office expenses;

(b) on secretarial assistance; and

(c) on research assistance for work undertaken in the proper performance of those duties;

should be replaced by one limit on the aggregate of the expenses so incurred and that limit should be, for the year ending 31st March 1978. £3.652, and for any subsequent year £3,687. 475 The motion increases the reimbursement maximum for secretarial allowance by 5 per cent. This will enable hon. Members to give their secretaries a 5 per cent. increase in line with pay policy. The motion also formalises the present arrangements whereby the allowance can be made to meet any combination of expenditure on secretarial and research assistance.
Paragraph (c) has now been modified to avoid the appearance that it might be otherwise more restrictive than paragraph (b) covering secretarial assistance.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) said the other evening, our aim has been to meet the point about avoiding misunderstanding at some later date. The alteration was made thanks to his representations.
I hope that the House will approve the motion. I know that there are important questions which are of interest to the House about the whole position of the secretaries who work in the House. Those matters have been recently considered by a sub-committee of the Services Committee. The Committee's report will be out very soon, and I hope that as soon as we return after the recess we 'hall be able to proceed to carry the Committee's recommendation's into effect. In the meantime I ask the House to accept the motion.

§ Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South)
The House has spent a considerable time today dealing with the conduct of hon. Members. There is one issue on which I would like, briefly, to elicit some information from my right hon. Friend. It may be that other hon. Members will wish to comment on what I have to say. At the centre of the debate which has recently concluded was the question of the declaration of interests and how open matters relating to hon. Members, their constituents, outside interests and their colleagues should be.
The procedure adopted so far in relation to the payment of secretarial research allowances and the reclamation of those sums has been what I believe is technically called certification. It strikes me, and it has struck others outside this place, that the procedure in vogue is not neces- 476 sarily one which this House or hon. Members might approve of in relation to other bodies if they adopted the same procedure.
It may be that this is being considered by the Committee which the Leader of the House has mentioned. Even if it is not, I hope that the Lord President will consider this matter, perhaps at some later date, if there is another motion of this sort before us, or even earlier. I do not think it right that this House should not put upon its Members a procedure which we would normally expect to be adopted by outside bodies. I hope that the Lord President will refer to this when he replies to the debate.

§ Mr. Jerry Wiggin (Weston-super-Mare)
It is right that we should debate this motion separately from the others because it is the one motion referring to expenses. It is a much-propagated myth outside this House that these expenses are not incurred by hon. Members. I challenge anyone to find a secretary in Central London, with the necessary qualities to deal with a Member's correspondence, at this figure, which apparently represents a 5 per cent. increase on last year. In addition, there is the expense of equipping and maintaining a reasonably modern office. An electric typewriter today costs in excess of £600. Further, there is the expense of a research assistant. This proposal is a contribution towards the cost of paying a regular secretary and no more It is time that we accepted that this burden should be removed from hon. Members, who admittedly can charge the excess to their income tax. I hope that the Leader of the House will make it clear that this is only reimbursement of absolutely essential expenses, and a very niggardly reimbursement at that.

§ Mr. Michael English (Nottingham, West)
I was a little upset to hear the Leader of the House talk about another Committee. We have already had a Committee to consider the whole of this question of secretarial and research allowances. It was chaired by the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. van Straubenzee) and was known as "the van Straubenzee Committee". It heard evidence on the wide variety of circumstances of hon. Members. There are hon.
477 Members who, because of work outside, have secretaries paid for by businesses which are their own businesses or someone else's. There are hon. Members with outside incomes and hon. Members with no outside incomes. There are hon. Members who, quite legitimately, employ their wives. We know, because we see the wives on the premises working as secretaries. There are other hon. Members who claim to employ their wives and we do not see them on the premises.
All of this was in the evidence given to the Committee which suggested that, to start to clear up the rather complex situation that arises in relation to these allowances, we should allow hon. Members the option of having their secretaries paid by the Exchequer. In evidence to the Committee I suggested that we should not try suddenly to clear out the mess of various circumstances but should start by putting in the new system and letting hon. Members take it as an option and see where we went from there. Whether we agree to do it that way or not, it is surely desirable, from the point of view of the secretaries, that those of us who wish to should be able to pay them properly and provide adequate pensions. I do not want to say what I am about to say on the next motion without saying first that the staff who work for us should have proper conditions.
I know of one hon. Member who out of sympathy, I think, employs a secretary who is well into her 70s. One suspects that she is older, but ladies do not admit to their age very easily. That hon. Member frankly admits that she is not the best secretary around but he employs her because she has always worked in this House and she will never get a pension other than a Stale pension. That is a disgrace. I have no hesitation in saying that it is a disgrace.
I suspect that the Treasury has an interesting little habit when it is dislikes anything in that it waits until there is a new Leader of the House and then presses him to set up another Committee to consider the matter. Thus we go on and on considering the matter without actually doing anything.

§ Mr. Francis Pym (Cambridgeshire)
The hon. Member is on them all.

§ Mr. English
I can cheerfully say that I was not on this one. I gave evidence to it instead. I would not have minded being on the van Straubenzee Committee because of the excellent recommendation that it put forward.
It simply asked: "Why on earth should not a secretary of the House of Commons be as well treated as a secretary of the Civil Service? Why should not our secretaries be paid by the Exchequer at the rates fixed for secretaries in Central London who work just over the road in Whitehall? Why should not they get an inflation-proof pension like the secretaries just over the road in Whitehall?"
We can argue until the cows come home about the virtues or otherwise of inflation-proof pensions, but it does not seem fair that 750,000 people should get inflation-proof pensions but not secretaries in the House of Commons.
The simple issue is that we have a recommendation which has never been put to the House. When is that recommendation going to be nut forward? I hope that my right hon. Friend will not tell us that the Services Committee, or another Committee, will deal with this matter and will try to suggest something. When shall we actually deal with the recommendation that we have got?

§ Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Down, South)
I intervene briefly for two purposes. First, I support the hon. Member for Newham. South (Mr. Spearing) in his proposition that we ought to be as scrupulous in accounting for the sums that we claim as the Public Accounts Committee would require all those whom the Comptroller and Auditor General examines to be
I believe that these sums ought only to be paid against duly and properly receipted vouchers and that they should be subject to examination as to the propriety of the expenditure on which the sums thus avouched have been incurred for the purposes set out in the motion.
I am not suggesting, of course, that we are not all honourable Members. I am sure that no hon. Member of this House would claim a halfpenny for any purpose which was not narrowly within the terms of this motion. Not at all. But we ought to he prepared to certify that this is so and submit ourselves to the same régime 479 as the rest of our fellow-citizens have to accept. [Interruption.] We do not submit vouchers. We simply certify on the one signature without returning receipts of any description whatever. No evidence is required from hon. Members of this House that they have incurred the expenditure which they claim.
I am not alleging that sums are improperly claimed. But it remains a fact that we in this House claim sums in a manner other than would be accepted for anyone else to whom public money is disbursed.

§ Mr. Norman Tebbit (Chingford)
I appreciate the meaning of what the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) says, and I am sure the House does also. But, in case it is misunderstood outside, it is only right to make the point that every hon. Member claiming an expense must enter it on his tax return and justify it to the tax inspector. There is every reason to believe that these claims are checked, even though this is not done by the House.

§ Mr. Powell
That is not the point that I was making. The disbursements that are reimbursed under this order are not, to the best of my knowledge, checked by the Inland Revenue. [Interruption.] Hon. Members can speak from their own experience, and perhaps this is a hint to the Inland Revenue, if that is how hon. Members want it. As far as I am concerned, it is the difference between the reimbursed amounts and the sums claimed as expenses which the Inland Revenue investigates.
My second point is that raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English). It is a complete nonsense to talk of conditions and pay of secretaries serving hon. Members. No market is more competitive and open than that for secretaries and shorthand-typists in London. There is no market so free in which a secretary, if she is dissatisfied with the attractions and conditions of one employment, can get alternative employment. The effect of that on those entering this market, or in the early stages of their careers, is, as in other professions and callings, a guarantee of the sums paid to those who are near retirement. It is absurd to suggest that hon. Members of this House can obtain secretarial assist- 480 ance at less than the full going rate in this highly demanding and competitive environment.
But this strays slightly beyond the terms of the motion. Let us beware of being provided with our own assistants by the State. As we accept from the State the assistance for doing our job so we shall become the servants of the State, and we shall cease to be the independent servants of our constituents and independent representatives in our own right.

§ Mr. English
I did not go into details of the van Straubenzee report because of the lateness of the hour. The right hon. Member will recollect that, although it recommended that secretaries should be paid by the Exchequer, it also recommended that they should be chosen by us.

§ Mr. Powell
Yes, indeed. But those who pay are those who choose in the end. The piper and the tune is a fundamental political and financial fact.
Fortunately, we are not confronted with this proposition at the moment. I would just warn hon. Members that when it does come before us we had better beware of accepting it.

§ Mr. Iain Wrigglesworth (Thornaby)
I do not disagree at all with the first part of the remarks of the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell).
I take the strongest possible exception to the use of the word "perks" by the Press to describe the allowances we receive at present as a means of providing our basic tools which, in any other job, would be provided by the organisation for which we worked.
I hope that members of the Press Gallery will take note of my remarks. I believe that by using that term "perks" they are casting a slight on hon. Members, and implying the things that the right hon. Member for Down, South was worrying about in his early remarks. This can only be overcome by providing a system in which secretaries are on the payroll of the Fees Office. Therefore, I hope that the media will stop using the word "perks" to describe Members' secretarial allowances.

§ Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield)
I was interested in the observations of 481 the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). He raised an important matter and I found myself in great sympathy with his overall philosophy, but he did not go on to pose the question and then answer it—namely, whether the secretarial allowance payable to hon. Members is sufficient for them to employ a fully qualified and competent secretary to enable them to do their job to the standard which their constituents and this House would expect.

§ Mr. Powell
I am sorry if I failed to do that. I shall supplement what I said. Speaking from my experience—and I deal with possibly the largest correspondence of any Member of the House—I regard these sums as being on the excessive side for dealing with constituency duties and constituency correspondence. The hon. Gentleman asked for my opinion and I have given it.

§ Mr. Winterton
I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman has given advice to the House. In this case, as in others, he would appear to be unique. Speaking from my experience—and I know my view is shared by many of my colleagues—in view of the amount of work hon. Members undertake, and bearing mind the use of an up-to-date office to deal with research and the employment of a research assistant or part-time research assistant, I believe that the amount of money allowed to hon. Members by the Fees Office is totally inadequate to meet the cost that is necessarily involved if those hon. Members are to do their job properly.
If the country and the House of Commons are not prepared to allow Members a satisfactory sum to pay a competent secretary, a Member of Parliament cannot do the job to the standard he or she believes to be right.
I have just returned from the United States and Canada. I must tell the House that in the United States a congressman—admittedly with a constituency four times the size of the average United Kingdom constituency—is paid $57,500. In addition, he is allowed to employ up to 18 persons, which could cost the State up to $200,000 a year. Furthermore, all his office expenses, including typewriters, photo-copiers and all modern office equipment, is provided to him free. I do not say that this House should vote 482 Members of Parliament that sort of money, but I do say that it is absurd that the Lord President should seek to present this motion to the House.
I should like the right hon. Gentleman to go into the facts and figures and say how the figures are arrived at. I consider that the allowance is totally inadequate if an hon. Member is expected to be able to meet the cost of employing a competent secretary in this capital city of the United Kingdom. If a Member cannot employ a competent secretary, he cannot attend to his duties in this Chamber involving the scrutiny of the mass of legislation that comes before us because he has to spend too much of his time dealing with constituents' correspondence. We know that that is an important factor in the life of a Member of Parliament and what goes on in this Chamber. I hope that in replying to the debate the right hon. Gentleman will say whether he considers this to be an adequate figure for the employment of a competent secretary and also for the buying of a good typewriter and the employment of a part-time research assistant. If he can add up the figures to embrace what I have stipulated, all I can say is that he is a bit of a magician.

§ Mr. Christopher Price (Lewisham, West)
I am glad that the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) has just returned from the United States and brought his experience back with him to enlighten us. However, I feel that two defects have been emphasised tonight, and I consider that there is an important connection between them. First, the secretarial allowance is grossly inadequate to provide secretarial services of the sort necessary to service a Member of Parliament. Second, the certification method which we use is thoroughly sloppy for the disbursement of public money.
I suggest to my right hon. Friend the Lord President that there is a curious connection between those two deficiencies. The House brought in secretarial allowances in the 1960s in a half-hearted and sloppy way, and it was for that reason, because we could not decide whether we wanted to pay secretaries properly or give Members a little more money in their pockets to pay half the 483 salaries, that we were content to have a thoroughly unsatisfactory method of certifying.
The urgency of the need to move over to a proper system lies on both sides of the case, because when we do move fully over to a system under which secretaries and research assistants can be properly paid, with proper accountability, we shall kill two birds with one stone. We shall at the same time not lay ourselves open to the sort of comment in the Press to which my hon. Friend the Member for Thornaby (Mr. Wrigglesworth) referred. So long as we use the certification system, it is open to the Press to use the term "perks" when talking about something which, in fact, as hon. Members have rightly said, is about half what we need to do our job properly.

§ Mr. Francis Pym (Cambridgeshire)
I do not want to get involved in what one might call a fundamental debate on secretarial pay, but I must comment on what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton). One sees that new ideas and inventions in the United States are inclined to find their way across the Atlantic, but I should rue the day when that system emerged in this country, because Members of Parliament would then cease to be Members of Parliament and would turn themselves into office managers.
Second, may I say that if all hon. Members were of the calibre of the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) this would be a pretty fantastic place, and I do not quite know what conclusions we should come to at the end of any given week.
The serious point which I put to the Lord President is this: what is the basis of his 5 per cent.? I fully accept that any increase in salary for a secretary is subject to pay policy. The pay of a secretary, like that of anyone else, is subject to that. But that does not apply to general office expenses or to the level of research assistance. We know that such expenses have risen by about 20 per cent., in round figures, and hon. Members are, in fact, more subject to increasing expenditure which they haw to meet out of their own pockets than is almost anybody else one can think of. 484 I do not, therefore, understand why the figure of 5 per cent. should be taken in relation to all the expenses covered in the motion save that for secretaries. The question of secretarial salaries and whether the general level of secretarial allowance is sufficient is a different matter, but, in so far as it exists and is relevant to the motion, I think that the House would accept the figure of 5 per cent. since that is phase 2, and no one has sought to challenge that. But that does not cover all the items in the motion. General office expenses have risen by infinitely more than that, and there is a strong feeling in the House (hat the 5 per cent. increase allowed for in the motion to meet research assistance is altogether inadequate in the circumstances.
I ask the Lord President, therefore, to justify his figure and explain why he says that hon. Members should not be entitled to claim an infinitely higher increase in the rate of their expenses, which have to cover all the various items dealt with in the motion, apart from secretarial salaries.

§ Mr. George Cunningham
Why did not the right hon. Gentleman put down an amendment, then?

§ Mr. Foot
First, may I offer a brief word of apology to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English). I think that this debate has been of assistance, and if we had incorporated it with the other matters it might have been more difficult. So I acknowledge that my hon. Friend was right to press that the present question be dealt with in this fashion.
The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) talked about giving hints to the Inland Revenue. I am not sure that at this late hour the House should join in that kind of activity. However, if two such hawk-eyed hon. Members join in giving hints to the Inland Revenue I should look carefully to make sure that that was the right course before recommending that the House should follow it too assiduously.
For the rest, there has been some con-fusion in what has been said. I sometimes agree with the right hon. Member for 485 Down. South and sometimes I do not. On this occasion must disagree. I do not think that everything has been satisfactory in the way that hon. Members as a whole have dealt with secretaries—and I do not intend that to reflect on any individual hon. Member.
When I first became Lord President I received representations from secretaries and their organisation. I must say that the case that they put to me seemed extremely strong, and it was as a result of those discussions that we went ahead with a further examination of the matter. It is perfectly true—as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West has said—that the recommendations of the van Straubenzee Committee were never carried into effect. Therefore, over the past month or so we have ensured that we should look again at the recommendations to see whether they could be brought up to date and, much more important, how we could carry them into effect.
It is not, therefore, just a matter of saying that we shall set up another committee to look at the matter. In the light of all the representations that have been made to me from all quarters of the House and by the secretaries, we have agreed that something should be done to deal with the situation and that the system cannot be allowed to continue in the way that it now operates.
A month or so ago an Early-Day Motion was put down by several hon. Members, and that contributed towards enabling us to set up this sub-committee of the Services Committee which has looked at the matter carefully and intelligently. We were hoping that it would report to the House before the recess but that has not been the case. The seventh report of the Services Committee on this subject will be published on 4th August. As I have already said, I am sure that as soon as the House returns hon. Members will want to discuss the matter, and I shall certainly wish to seek to do so.
This is a matter that should be dealt with urgently because, in the main, the secretaries of the House are not properly treated. What the Services Committee has done should allow the kind of proposals that were outlined by the van Straubenzee Committee or an elaboration of them—and I cannot give any specific form—to be carried into effect.

§ Mr. English
I thank the Lord President for his opening remarks. My right hon. Friend has mentioned two reports. I hope that he recollects that in my remarks I carefully stuck to the first report, for which I suspect there is much more support in the House than for the second.

§ Mr. Foot
I ask the House to look at the report when it comes out. Extensive work has been done and the matter has been gone into carefully. The recommendations of the van Straubenzee report have been looked at and representations received from the secretaries and their organisation. I believe that the report will assist the House in dealing with this problem.
The right hon. Member for Cambridge-shire (Mr. Pym) asked whether the amount of money generally provided for secretarial assistance was sufficient. I do not claim that it is but in this motion the 5 per cent. is governed by phase 2 of the pay policy, and that is a perfectly reasonable proposition. If it is said that a considerable increase is required in the other sorts of assistance, I have to reply that this is not included in the motion. We should have to look at that matter after the recess. I am prepared to do that if the House makes representations that further additions are required.
I ask the House to pass the motion as it stands. I assure hon. Members that I regard this as an important matter for the House. It is scandalous that hon. Members' secretaries have been treated in the way that some have. The van Straubenzee proposition is the way ahead, and something on that line will be proposed to the House after the recess.