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Mr. Michael Stern (Bristol, North-West): Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Newton: I will give way, but for the last time, I think, remembering what you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, said about the number of hon. Members wishing to speak.
Mr. Stern: My right hon. Friend has referred to the SSRB package as a balanced package. How can he possibly justify that description when changes in salary will be evenly felt across the House while changes in the car allowance are totally random in their effect on individual Members, depending on the size of their constituency and the distance from London?
Mr. Newton: I simply quoted from the SSRB's report--its own description of the basis on which it had made its proposals, taken as a whole.
Mr. Joseph Ashton (Bassetlaw): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Newton: May I make this other point?
Mr. Ashton: The right hon. Gentleman has been giving way to Conservative Members.
Mr. Newton: I have given way to several Opposition Members. Many hon. Members want to speak and I do not wish to speak for a length of time that prevents many of those Members from speaking.
Before I respond to any more interventions, I should like to make this point, which is of some importance. Either way, whatever the House decides on the motor mileage allowance proposals, the House should accept the SSRB's associated recommendation for the system of controls for vehicle mileage allowance claims to be reviewed and strengthened, because the plain fact is that, whatever the allowance level, it must be right to ensure proper accountability.
Mr. Ashton:
I wish to make just one point. When the allowance was fixed--I was in the House at the time and the right hon. Gentleman may have been too--the Committee simply asked the Automobile Association and the Royal Automobile Club, as independent bodies, to fix an allowance. Until then, we had been claiming the train fare. The agreement was that if hon. Members used their cars they got what it cost for a railway warrant. We then went to a system in the early 1970s where the RAC and AA fixed the mileage, which has since gone up, index linked. Why has the report changed it to a market rate during a depression when employers are screwing it down to what they can get away with? That is the yardstick that they have been using. They have changed the yardstick.
Mr. Newton:
I am of course aware of the work of the Peyton committee in the early 1980s, which led to the allowance in its present form. As it happens, the RAC ceased some years ago to publish the relevant index, which is why I found myself with the difficulty of not being able to uprate the allowance at all.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt, but my right hon. Friend is incorrect. I have a copy of the RAC's illustrative running costs--
Mr. Winterton:
From November 1995.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman is a member of the Chairmen's Panel. He should sit down immediately. He can make a speech later, if he catches the Speaker's eye.
Mr. Newton:
The last thing I would wish to do is to mislead either my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) or the House. We are simply at cross-purposes. As I was told repeatedly as I tried to find a new way of uprating the motor mileage allowance some two or three years ago, the index on which the allowance was based had ceased to be published by the RAC. It may be that it publishes a different sort of index of motoring costs, but that calls into question whether it had not revised the basis underlying the 1983-84 arrangement.
Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset):
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Newton:
I will, but I shall take far too much time.
Mr. Bruce:
My right hon. Friend will know, if he looks at page 100 of the appendices given by the review body, that it quotes the RAC rate for 2000 cc motor cars as
Mr. Newton:
As I expected, this issue is clearly a matter of considerable contention in the House. I have sought to set out what the Government believe to be the right approach, but if the House wishes to accept the SSRB package, it should be willing to accept the whole package. If, however, the House accepts the Government's advice to be much more restrained, it would be reasonable to take a different view on the matter. Beyond that, it would be sensible if hon. Members would develop their arguments in the debate.
Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale):
As my right hon. Friend knows, I have one of the largest constituencies in England. I simply want to ask him this: what evidence did the review body take from individual Members as to their motoring needs in their constituencies? I believe the answer to be none, in which case, regardless of what the House decides tonight on pay, this matter should surely be referred back for proper investigation because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) said, it impacts differently on Members across the House and will create injustice.
Mr. Newton:
My hon. Friend is introducing a further line of argument. I respect that, but I do not think that I am in a position to add to what I have said.
I come now to the SSRB's main pay recommendations. As the House knows, the review body recommended a salary of £43,000--an increase of just over 26 per cent. on the present figure. It also recommended that Ministers and office holders in the House of Commons should henceforth receive a full, rather than a reduced, parliamentary salary--the abatement now is 25 per cent.--and that after the next election there should be large increases for Cabinet Ministers, the Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister. As was made clear last week, the Government think that those recommendations are too high and instead propose an increase of 3 per cent., which would lead to a salary of £35,108 per year for Members.
On that basis, the Government also propose to continue their policy of giving Ministers the same percentage increase as Members. We have therefore proposed increases of 3 per cent. for Ministers and other office holders. Ministers would of course also move to an effective date of 1 April for increases, like Members, and receive the same percentage increases that Members receive under the proposed new arrangement.
Members will have their own views about the merits of the SSRB proposals considered in isolation, and of the surveys, comparability studies and judgments on which they rest, but the plain fact is that they cannot be considered in isolation, either by the Government or, in my view, by the House. Inescapably, such recommendations have to be considered in relation to their impact on the wider aims of public policy, and in particular in relation to the overriding importance of maintaining progress towards our economic objectives--
with firm control of public spending, in which public sector pay is an important ingredient, playing a crucial part in that.
Mr. Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough):
If the Government intended to give Members a 3 per cent. increase, in line with their other policy objectives, why did the right hon. Gentleman have this review in the first place?
Mr. Newton:
The background to the review is that, unhappily from my standpoint, the linkage system which I thought that I had put in place two years ago had, to put it bluntly, fallen apart and we were left with no basis.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
You broke the linkage in 1992.
Mr. Newton:
For once, the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) is not on the ball. In 1992 or 1993--I forget which year--the Government decided to match the freeze that we had asked for in other areas. In moving the House out of the freeze I re-established a linkage related to civil service pay rates and it proved to be less than durable due to continuing changes in the way in which civil service pay is settled.
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