Solicitor-General's Salary Order 1997 (Hansard, 24 June 1997)

§ Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Deputy Chief Whip for the way in which he introduced the order. I shall keep the House for only a few moments. It is an interesting order. It is the first time that we have had an order of this type in this Parliament, which is not surprising. It is also interesting because of the introduction of the Solicitor-General to this House. I might add that I find it a very wonderful thing that after the result of the general election, with the enormous number of new Labour MPs who entered the House of Commons, among that great bulk they could not find their own Solicitor-General and had to come to the unelected House of Lords to fill that particular post. That must say something about the role of this House.
1538 The order is to come into force on 27th June 1997. Does that mean that the poor Solicitor-General will be rather more poverty-stricken up until that date than he otherwise might have been, and that he will not receive any pay between his appointment and 27th June? If so, I admire his selflessness. Perhaps the noble Lord will be able to advise me on that point.
I had intended to ask how the figure had been reached. However, the noble Lord explained that by saying that the Solicitor-General was to he paid at the same level as the Lord Advocate. My question then is: how is it that the Solicitor-General for England and Wales is not being paid at the same level as the Solicitor-General for Scotland, who is being paid only £66,811? That strikes me as rather bad luck for the Solicitor-General for Scotland. Considering that the Government says they are a Unionist party, I am sure that this debate should be drawn to the attention of the Solicitor-General, who may have something to say about it.
Both the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor-General are paid more than the Lord Privy Seal in this House. Some may think that that is fair enough. No doubt the noble Lord the Deputy Chief Whip has a justification for it.
More worrying is the fact that before 1st July 1996 the Lord Advocate, and therefore the Solicitor-General had he been in this House, was paid £57,241. Ministers of State in the House of Lords were paid £50,328, a difference of some £7,000. Ministers of State in he House of Lords are now paid £51,838, and now the Solicitor-General and the Lord Advocate are to be paid £78,000. The House will realise that there is a substantial gap between the two. The party opposite will know more about differentials than I do. However, it strikes me that these figures are more out of kilter than they should be.
I am also aware that Sir Michael Perry has been reviewing the position of the pay of Ministers in the House of Lords. I wonder whether the noble Lord might indicate how that review is going; whether or not Sir Michael Perry has reported; if he has not, when he hopes to report; and what the likely view of the Government would be if he recommended an increase. The Labour Government having bitten the bullet on paying the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor-General substantially more, I should be sorry if noble Lords who sit on the Front Bench opposite did not also receive a fair crack of the whip.
I am conscious that in saying this I may have an interest to declare. I believe that my own humble salary is somehow tied to that of a Member on the Bench opposite. I am not quite sure which one; and in any case it is very lowly. Having declared that interest, I hope that the noble Lord the Deputy Chief Whip will be able to answer some of the questions that I pose. I have no objection to this order going through in order for the Solicitor-General to be paid.

§ Lord McIntosh of Haringey
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments and for the constructive way in which he approached the order. I can readily dismiss the argument that there is nobody 1539 in the House of Commons suitable to be Solicitor-General. Nothing in this order, or indeed in the appointment of a Solicitor-General in this House, should give the noble Lord that impression. It may well be merely a matter of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton being eminently well qualified for the post and it is entirely appropriate that he should be in this House.
I am afraid the noble Lord is quite right in saying that my noble and learned friend will have to wait until 27th June—it is only this Friday—to receive his higher salary. I understand that he is bearing this burden with equanimity.
The noble Lord said that the salary for the Solicitor-General for England and Wales should perhaps be consonant with that of the Solicitor-General for Scotland. He may or may not be right. However, that is not what the Top Salaries Review Body and the Senior Salaries Review Body recommended. Their recommendation on more than one occasion has been that the two posts of Solicitor-General for England and Wales and Lord Advocate should be the ones that are made equal.
The noble Lord then turned to the wider issue of ministerial salaries in this House. If he is to declare an interest, then I must declare the same interest, as must all of us on this Front Bench. I do not believe that under our rules it is one that disqualifies us from considering the matter. Indeed, it would be an absurdity if that were the case.
The noble Lord is quite right in saying that the Senior Salaries Review Body in its report of July last year did not consider the position of Lords Ministers. It deferred for further consideration the matter of the salaries of Lords Ministers, describing it as a development recommendation which should be considered by the Prime Minister. It was not considered by the previous Prime Minister, and I believe the noble Lord will agree that the present Prime Minister has had rather a lot of urgent business on his plate during the past seven weeks that would make it quite difficult for the matter to be referred to him.

§ Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt at this stage. My understanding is that the Senior Salaries Review Body has considered this subject and has taken evidence. Presumably as a result of that evidence it will make recommendations. My question is: does the noble Lord know whether it has completed that review, when it is likely to report and what the attitude of the Government is likely to be? The noble Lord may have answered the question as to what attitude the Government will take. He indicated that they have accepted its recommendation about the Solicitor-General, and therefore I assume that they would accept any recommendation that came from the Senior Salaries Review Body on ministerial pay in the House of Lords.

§ Lord McIntosh of Haringey
My Lords, I do not think that the noble Lord is entitled to make that assumption or to tempt me into making it. As I was 1540 about to continue to say, as he and I know—at least I gave evidence to the board when I was in Opposition—the Senior Salaries Review Body has been considering the issue of salaries in the House of Lords. I do not know when it will report or what its recommendations will be and therefore it is impossible for me to say what the Government's response would be to any recommendations it makes.
The noble Lord said that this would make the Solicitor-General's pay greater than that of the Lord Privy Seal. It is true that the Lord Privy Seal has, in common with other Cabinet Ministers, restricted the salary that he draws to £58,876, but he is entitled to £77,963, which is very much in line with the salary now recommended.