§ Lord Boyd-Carpenterasked the Leader of the House:
Whether he will make a statement about the allowance payable to Lords for secretarial costs, postage and certain additional expenses and about the arrangements for the 1986–87 uprating.
§ The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw)My right honourable friend the Leader of the House of Commons has today, with my agreement, written to Lord Plowden, the Chairman of the Top Salaries Review Body (TSRB), inviting the TSRB to carry out a review of the allowance payable to Lords for secretarial costs, postage and certain additional expenses and the secretarial allowance for Ministers and other paid office holders in this House. I attach a copy of the letter. The TSRB will be making arrangements to ensure that the views of individual Lords are taken into account. We are also inviting the TSRB to carry out their 4-yearly review of the level and structure of the Office, Secretarial and Research Allowance payable to Members of the House of Commons.
In respect of the annual up-rating of the existing allowances from 1 st August 1986, the House agreed in its Resolution on 26th July 1984 that the allowance for Lords and for Ministers and other paid office holders in this House be up-rated from 1st August each year by the increase in the maximum point of the pay scale (excluding allowances and overtime) for a Senior Personal Secretary in the civil service in receipt of Inner London weighting. A restructuring of the civil service secretarial grades in March 1986 had the effect of subsuming a number of proficiency allowances within the pay scale. This has distorted the operation of the formula for the up-rating of the allowances, and I have asked the TSRB to take this anomaly into account in their current review. Meanwhile I shall be putting to the House shortly an amending resolution to bring the operation of the formula in 1986–87 into line with the general 6 per cent, increase in Civil Service salaries. The secretarial allowance for Members of the House of Commons is similarly affected and a similar resolution will be tabled by my right honourable friend the Leader of the House of Commons in another place.
Following is the letter referred to above:
Privy Council Office
Whitehall, London SW1A 2AT
10th July
Dear Edwin.
PARLIAMENTARY ALLOWANCES
When you wrote to me on 16 May 1984 conveying the TSRB's recommendations about the uprating of certain Parliamentary allowances, including the MPs' secretarial, research, and office equipment allowance, you also advised that there should be provision for a periodic review of allowances to determine whether they continued to be appropriate in the light of changing circumstances. The TSRB suggested that such a review should be undertaken every four years, with the first falling due in 1987 In the debate in the House on 20 July 1984 on the uprating recommen-dations I said that the Government accepted the TSRB's proposal that every four years there should be such a review.
575WA2. I am writing to you to ask the Review Body to conduct a review of MPs' secretarial, research and office equipment allowance. The Government does not consider that a wider review of the allowance structure is called for at this time. The Review Body would certainly need to look at how well the uprating formula recommended and implemented in 1984 has worked in practice, and I would be grateful if in addition the review could consider the fundamental structure and level of the allowance in the light of current circumstances. I have consulted the Leader of the House of Lords and we should like the Review Body to look also at the allowance for peers' secretarial costs, postage and certain additional expenses and the secretarial allowance for Ministers and other paid office holders in the House of Lords.
Yours
John Biffen
Lord Plowden KCB KBE
Office of Manpower Economics
22 Kingsway
London
WC2B 6JY