Travel Expenses: Lords' Spouses (Hansard, 27 November 1996)

Viscount Cranborne
My Lords, I beg to move the third Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. It provides for the spouses of Members of your Lordships' House to make two journeys per year in order to attend parliamentary occasions. This will be an extension of your Lordships' existing entitlement and the rules and procedures will be the same.
This facility was recommended by the Senior Salaries Review Body in its report last July. The review body recognised that there are parliamentary occasions when your Lordships might expect to be accompanied by their spouses, and that it is therefore reasonable that they should be reimbursed for the cost of their journeys. The Motion before the House today does not seek to define for your Lordships what is a parliamentary occasion. Like a number of things I can think of, we would expect to recognise it when we see it!
We in this House who hold ministerial or other paid office are already reimbursed in this respect on the same basis as Members in another place, and so will not be eligible for this new provision.
I welcome the proposal before your Lordships today as a useful and justifiable improvement in arrangements and I commend it to the House.
Moved, That this House approves the following proposals—

(1) The facilities available to a Member of this House in respect of journeys made in connection with attendance at the House shall be made available in respect of journeys made by the spouse of a Member in connection with attendance at a Parliamentary occasion.

(2) A Member may not make claims under this Resolution in relation to more than two Parliamentary occasions in any year (beginning with 1st January).

(3) This Resolution does not apply in respect of journeys made by the spouse of a Member in whose case paragraph (4) of the Resolution of 25th July 1983 applies.—(Viscount Cranborne.)

§ Lord Dean of Beswick
My Lords, I welcome the new concession, small though it is, but wish to know what is meant by "a parliamentary occasion" and who determines it. Does it mean a specific event such as the opening of Parliament, or does it mean any day of a parliamentary sitting at which the Member is present?
Will the noble Viscount the Leader of the House explain paragraph (3), which states that the Resolution does not apply in respect of journeys made by the spouse of a Member and refers to a Resolution of 20th July 1983? Does that mean that certain Members can claim in excess of two visits? If they can, what is the business for which they can claim them?

Viscount Cranborne
My Lords, I am sorry if I did not make the point clearly to the noble Lord, Lord Dean. In retrospect, I do not believe that I did. I referred to the 15 journeys a year for which spouses of Members of 274 another place can claim and for which Members of the Front-Bench qualify. That is what the third paragraph refers to.
As regards parliamentary occasions, I had thought that I had tried to answer that question in my introductory remarks.

§ Lord Dean of Beswick
My Lords, I am sorry to come back briefly on this point, but there is not a full category of those for whom Members in another place receive travel warrants. Each year they receive a number of travel warrants for their children and secretaries to make visits to the House of Commons. Therefore, if a Member's wife is his full-time secretary he has a glut of travel warrants. For that reason, I believe that we are treated tardily, even though we are now granted two.

Viscount Cranborne
My Lords, I do not wish to prolong this discussion too much, although I recognise the noble Lord's concern. The two cases are not identical. The conditions attached to the use of 15 journeys per annum by Members of the Front Bench in your Lordships' House and the Government Front Bench are similar to those in force for Members of another place. The two journeys a year which are the subject of this Resolution are clearly drafted in order to implement the recommendation of the SSRB in full in this respect. Your Lordships have accepted in principle that it would be wise in matters of expenses for us to refer to an outside authority if only to deflect accusations of self-indulgence, however ill-founded, which unfortunately could all too easily come our way.

§ Lord Taylor of Gryfe
My Lords, I am sorry to pursue this but, like the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, it would be very helpful to Members of the House if the parliamentary occasion provision was more clearly defined. Those of us who travel long distances to come to this House are away from home a great deal in pursuing our duties in the House. I do not know why it is regarded as unsatisfactory simply to provide for travel expenses, which are considerable if you live 600 miles away. I do not know why this should not be granted in the interests simply of good, civilised marital relationships.

§ Lord Taylor of Gryfe
One's wife should be able to come down here without a clear definition of a parliamentary responsibility. I urge the noble Lord the Leader of the House to provide a clearer definition. The vouchers that are applied next door do not define that the spouse of a Member of Parliament would qualify for a voucher to come down here only on a parliamentary occasion. It is regarded as sensible that vouchers should be supplied.
If two vouchers are supplied, I do not think we would be overdoing it to ask that travel arrangements for one's wife could be made without the necessity of the parliamentary occasion provision.

§ Lord Richard
My Lords, I am getting a bit lost. I read this and it seemed to me to be quite simple 275 and self-explanatory. A parliamentary occasion, as I understood it, was an occasion which takes place in Parliament.
Who decides what is a parliamentary occasion when they put in a voucher to claim for their spouse's attendance will be the individual Member himself or herself. In other words, if I am asking a Question on a Tuesday afternoon and I decide that that is, for the purposes of my wife, a parliamentary occasion that I wish her to attend, as I understand it she will be entitled to a voucher in order to come and listen to her husband make a fool of himself in public.
That applies to all Members of this House, in the same way as it applies to Members in another place. The difference is that we get two and they get 15. That can be a matter of grievance and irritation, not only for my noble friends behind me but for other Members of the House. As the noble Viscount the Leader of the House said earlier, Sir Michael Perry and the Senior Salaries Review Body are now looking at this whole matter again. The sensible thing for noble Lords to do at this stage is to grasp with both hands the opportunity of getting their spouses here on two occasions and allow those of us who will be going back to Sir Michael Perry to say to him: "Look, the House is grateful for two, but in the interests of the marital relations of their Lordships we think it should be more than two".
If that is the position—and that is how I understood it before this discussion started this afternoon—I have no hesitation in commending it to the House. If that is not the position, and we have to define a parliamentary occasion, that would be fraught with the most immense difficulty and is not a process through which I would care to go.

§ Lord Hughes
My Lords, I am particularly pleased to see this Resolution before us. The noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, was sitting opposite until a few minutes ago, and I was reminded that many years ago, when he was Leader of the House, I led a delegation of Scottish Peers on this subject. We were very kindly received by him and strongly supported, and we thought a result was accomplished then. Unfortunately, the leadership changed and his successor did not feel able to pursue the matter. I am reminded that if one lives long enough the apparently impossible can be accomplished.