§ Mr. Charles Wardleasked the Lord Privy Seal whether he will make a statement a bout the four-yearly review of the Members' office, secretarial and research allowance and the arrangements for the 1986–87 uprating.
§ Mr. BiffenI have today written to the chairman of the TSRB, inviting the TSRB to carry out the four-yearly review of the level and structure of the allowance (the terms of the letter are as follows). The TSRB will be making arrangements to ensure that the views of individual Members are taken into account.
In respect of the 1986–87 uprating, the House agreed in it resolution of July 1984 that the allowance be uprated from 1 April 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 uprating of the allowance, and I have asked the TSRB to take this anomaly into account in its current review. Meanwhile, I shall he putting to the House 228W 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. Certain of their Lordships' allowances are similarly affected; a similar resolution will be introduced in another place.
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 MP's 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 TSR.B 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 recommendations I said that the Government accepted the TSRB's proposal that every four years there should be such a review.2. I am writing to you to ask the Review Body to conduct a review of MP's 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.