Lords' Expenses (Hansard, 9 June 1981)

§ The Lord President of the Council (Lord Soames)
My Lords, I beg to move the first of the two Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper. I think perhaps it would be for the convenience of the House if I were to speak to both Motions together. The first gives effect to an increase in the Peers' expenses allowance and the allowance for secretarial assistance for office holders in the Lords.
The Review Body on Top Salaries recommended this year that the Peers' expenses allowance be increased by about 11 per cent. and the office-holders' secretarial allowance by about 8 per cent. However, as I said in my written reply to a Parliamentary Question from my noble and learned friend Lord Rawlinson on 15th May, the Government consider that, at a time when pay increases for public servants are being held within cash limits of 6 per cent., increases in parliamentary allowances should be kept within the same limit. We are accordingly proposing that each element of the Peers' expenses allowance and the office holders' 123 secretarial allowance should be increased by 6 per cent. That is the same percentage increase as for the secretarial allowance in another place.
The new rates set out in the Motion are as follows. For Peers who necessarily have to use overnight accommodation away from their usual residence, a daily—perhaps I should say a nightly—limit of £24.40. For day subsistence—that is, to cover meals and incidental travel—the limit will be £11.65. Secretarial costs, postage and certain additional expenses as defined in the Review Body's 9th Report may be met within a limit of £10.60 a day treated cumulatively—in other words, noble Lords may arrange to recover expenditure over a period.
These daily limits together total £46.65 but, as your Lordships know, only those who actually have to incur overnight expenses in London because of parliamentary duties are eligible to claim all three elements. Other Peers are restricted to the £22.25 total provided under the second two categories. As in the past, the various rates are maxima within which Members of this House may claim those sums actually spent in attending to their parliamentary duties. The Government propose that the increase in the allowance will take effect from 1st July 1981. Ministers and office-holders in this House can claim at the moment up to a limit of £1,175 per annum towards the cost of the secretarial assistance needed to deal with the non-departmental correspondence. The Government propose that this should be increased to £1,250 per annum with effect from 1st July 1981.
Before leaving this particular Motion, I should point out that when I first announced these increases in my answer to the Question from my noble and learned friend Lord Rawlinson, I am afraid I incorrectly described the office-holder's secretarial allowance as a Peer's secretarial allowance. The majority of Peers may, of course, reclaim some secretarial expenses as one of the elements included in the Peers' expenses allowance. The allowance of £1,250 per annum is, as it always has been, strictly for Ministers and other office-holders who are not entitled to the Peers' expenses allowance.
The second Motion seeks the approval of this House to the draft of the Ministerial and other Salaries Order 1981. This order has been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments which, in its 22nd report, indicated that it had no special point to draw to the attention of the House.
The pay of Ministers, like that of MPs, has been complicated by the staging of previous settlements. Ministers and the other office-holders referred to in the order have had the salary increases proposed for them by the Review Body in 1979 implemented in three separate stages. The first stage was paid in 1979, the second in 1980 and the third is due this year. In 1980 the Review Body recommended that the second and third stages should be increased by 14.6 per cent. As part of our policy of pay restraint in the public sector, the Government decided to reduce this increase. As a result all Ministers and office holders except Cabinet Ministers and the Attorney General had their second and third stages increased by 9.6 per cent. in 1980. Cabinet Ministers and the Attorney General had only a 5 per cent. increase.
124 Under the terms of the Order in Council approved by Parliament last year, Ministers and other officeholders will automatically receive their third stage increase, as updated in 1980, with effect from 13th June 1981. The Government are proposing a 6 per cent. increase in the generality of Ministerial salaries this year. This will give most Ministers salaries slightly above the levels recommended as appropriate by the Review Body in 1980. Cabinet Ministers and the Attorney General will, however, still be below these levels.
The press and the media generally have tended to combine the third stage increase with the additional 6 per cent. we are proposing for this year, thus claiming that Ministers are getting an increase of over 18 per cent. But the fact is that the third stage increase only brings Ministerial salaries to the levels appropriate in 1980, and in terms of the 1981 settlement—the only matter with which the order now before the House is concerned (the new money, as it were)—the increase is only 6 per cent. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister and my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor wished to continue to be paid at the same rate as their Cabinet colleagues.
There has for long been a special problem, as the House knows well, over the salaries of Ministers in the House of Lords, in that, unlike their colleagues in another place, they do not receive any salary in respect of their parliamentary duties. I told the House that the Government propose to consider what arrangement could be made to take account of this problem.
As things stand, the difference in the total remuneration received by Ministers in the Lords and those in the Commons is out of all proportion to the differences in their duties, and the pay of Lords Ministers is not commensurate with their responsibilities. When this matter has been raised at Question Time, notably by my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter, I have noticed that your Lordships have expressed understanding of this anomaly and a sympathetic desire to see it removed.
We now propose to make arrangements for the Ministerial salaries of Ministers of State, Parliamentary Secretaries and other office-holders in this House to be increased by £3,500 over and above the general increases which I have already described. This addition to their remuneration is rather less than half the amount of the parliamentary salary payable to Ministers in the House of Commons.
The way this will be achieved differs slightly for different groups. In the case of Ministers of State, your Lordships may have noticed that the draft order this year, as in previous years, makes provision for a range of salaries. The Prime Minister proposes to use her discretion under the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975 to secure that Ministers of State in this House are paid at the top of this range, which runs from £19,775 to £23,275, while Ministers of State in another place continue to be paid at the bottom of the range.
In the case of Parliamentary Secretaries, a similar result will be obtained by increasing the maximum salary prescribed under the Act to £18,600. Parliamentary Secretaries in this House will be paid this maximum, while those in another place will get £3,500 less. The salaries of all other paid office-holders in 125 the House of Lords, other than Cabinet Ministers, have been set in the draft order at £3,500 above the third stage levels approved last year, and increased by this year's 6 per cent. The Chairman and Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees will also have their salaries increased by £3,500. I hope that these proposals will commend themselves to your Lordships as a satisfactory and proper way of dealing with this problem. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House approves the proposal to raise, for expenses incurred after 30th June 1981, the limits on the expenses which Lords may recover under the Resolution of 22nd July 1980 so as to make the limits—

(a) for paragraph 1(a) and 1(b) of the Resolution (day subsistence and incidental travel) £11.65 for each day of attendance;

(b) for paragraph 1(c) (overnight subsistence) £24.40 for each day of attendance;

(c) for paragraph 1(d) (secretarial allowance) £10.60 multiplied by the number of days of attendance falling within paragraph 1(a) or 1(b);

(d) for paragraph (3) (office-holders' secretarial allowance) £1,250 in any year.

—(Lord Soames.)

§ Lord Peart
My Lords on behalf of the Opposition, may I thank the noble Lord for his Statement. I think that this will be welcomed and what he has achieved will be important to the efficiency of this House.

§ Lord Taylor of Blackburn
My Lords, I raised a question earlier with the Lord President of the Council regarding the Opposition Front Bench. Again, I am very disappointed that there has been no extra remuneration provided for the Opposition Front Bench as there should have been.

§ Lord Boyd-Carpenter
My Lords, as I have been, I am afraid, from time to time something of a nuisance to my noble friend the Lord President, on the subject of the remuneration of junior and middle-grade Ministers in this House, I think it would be both ungracious and ungenerous if I did not express the gratitude that I think many of us feel to him for the very great efforts which he has made—now successfully—to deal with what was a very real problem.
It was not only a problem that affected certain individuals very harshly and very unfairly; it was a problem that was creating real difficulties for the operation of this House and for the future successful conduct of business here. I have some experience of the difficulties that a departmental Minister faces in getting through a change of this kind—small in financial terms, but involving quite important questions of principle—and I should, therefore, particularly like to thank and congratulate my noble friend the Lord President on his success and say to him that it seems to me he has substantially remedied a considerable evil and, therefore, done this House good service.

Lord Morris
My Lords, I rise to ask my noble friend Lord Soames, as Leader of the House, whether he is concerned that the report underlying his Motion—albeit inadvertently—gives comfort to those who believe that, at best, your Lordships' House is a kind of senatorial annex to the real Parliament that sits in another part of the Palace of Westminster, for this report constantly refers to "Members of Parliament" when, in fact, it means Members of the House of Commons. My concern is that, when official Government publications perpetuate this solecism, as they invariably do, one must ask the qeustion: what hope for the press and what hope for the public?
Your Lordships will have noted that the height of absurdity is reached in the final sentence of the report, which must have astonished my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern as much as it did me. I reads: The present Lord Advocate is not a Member of Parliament". Rightly or wrongly, I believe that the dignity of your Lordships' House, as the upper House of Parliament, is insidiously eroded by this practice.

§ Lord Soames
Well, my Lords, I take my noble friend's point, but I have always been one who does not believe that you increase your dignity by standing on it. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that my noble friend's wise words will be paid attention to by the Review Body when they write their next report. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Peart, and to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Blackburn. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, I would say that those members of the opposition Front Bench who are officeholders are, of course, included in this—it would be a mistake to think otherwise—but only those who are office-holders, as has been traditionally the custom in your Lordships' House. In answer to my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter, all I can say is that I should like to thank him very much for his kind words and that it has been possible to rectify this only thanks to the determination and co-operation of many, both in this House and notably, of course, among my colleagues.