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10 pm
Mr. Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield): My message to the House is that it should show courage and do what it believes to be right, however inconvenient that may be. As many hon. Members have said, it is ridiculous for the Government to set up a Senior Salaries Review Body, with support from hon. Members in all parts of the House--including a large number of Back Benchers--only to disregard it with gay abandon. The right hon. Members for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) and for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris), my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) and the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) have done the House and the country a service by presenting such an excellent case.
I have been in the House for a quarter of a century. Every time the Top Salaries Review Body--or its present-day equivalent, the Review Body on Senior Salaries--has reported, I have supported its recommendations religiously, believing that experts have been asked by the House to rule on what they consider to be the right level of remuneration for Members of Parliament. We would be ill advised to disregard the recommendations of such experts, as the House did--with very unfortunate results--in 1983. We have heard what the level of our salary would be today if that stupid, irresponsible decision had not been made. I believe that it was influenced by a number of people with large private incomes.
I intend to concentrate on one issue--the car mileage allowance. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said that he was unaware that any statistics, such as illustrative vehicle running costs, were available from the RAC's motoring service. It may not be precisely the same formula as that relating to Members of Parliament, but I have here illustrative vehicle running costs from the RAC, copyright 29 November 1995, relating to all petrol-engine cars from 1,000 cc to 2,500 cc.
Having looked at the two volumes of the review body's report and its surveys and studies, I believe that virtually no evidence was taken about true motoring costs and maintenance. That seems extraordinary. [Interruption.] I have studied the report, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley). The recommendation that there should be one standard rate of mileage allowance whatever the car, wherever the Member lives and whatever the size of his or her constituency, discriminates against Members who represent constituencies many miles from London. My constituency is only 180 miles from London, but other hon. Members represent constituencies twice that distance, or even more, from London. In addition, Members such as my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) represent large constituencies in England, involving large constituency duty mileage.
It is not right that the House should legislate to force people not to travel by car, which they rightly choose to do because of the distance that they have to travel.
They should be allowed to travel comfortably, to arrive rested and to travel safely on some of the country's more difficult roads and motorways. They should not be expected to subsidise their parliamentary and constituency travelling.
Under the report's proposals, Members with smaller cars will make a huge profit. Those with vehicles under 1800 cc will make a huge profit from the scheme, but Members who need to travel in cars over, shall we say, 2000 cc will lose out. I make no apology for the fact that I travel in a Range Rover, at the top of the range. I choose to do so.
I first bought a Range Rover when that company was threatened with takeover to show my support for what is the best four-wheel-drive vehicle in the world. Having bought it, why should I dispose of it? I am on my fourth Range Rover and I am proud of it. It enables me to travel safely. I arrive here and back in my constituency rested, and I work seven days a week for the majority of the year.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
Would not the hon. Gentleman be even more rested and would not it be a little environmentally better if Macclesfield had used the railway?
Mr. Winterton:
Yes. In an intervention that I have just heard--I will not say from where--an hon. Member has said that we do not have a station. We have quite a good station and I am trying to get it improved by the new authorities that run the rail service, but, unfortunately, the timing of trains does not make it possible for me to undertake the range of engagements that I wish to undertake and that my constituents wish me to undertake. It is not possible for me to travel by rail or from the excellent international airport at Manchester. I care to travel by car. I respect the hon. Gentleman greatly for his experience of the House. More often than not, another Member of Parliament happens to travel with me and the taxpayer gets damn good value for money as a result. [Hon. Members: "Name her."] I refer to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton).
It is immoral, illogical and without justification to introduce legislation that positively discriminates against Members of Parliament who have chosen the right vehicle to travel to and from their constituencies, and to travel within their constituencies. Little or no evidence was taken for the report. I submitted an amendment that, sadly, was not selected. It proposed that the matter should be submitted to a special Select Committee of the House so that it could take proper evidence and come up with the right figure.
Mr. Doug Hoyle (Warrington, North):
The House would be badly advised to try to interfere in the married bliss of the hon. Members for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) and for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton).
The right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd) made a dangerous suggestion. The House would be condemned if it continued to set hon. Members' salaries. That would be to go down the wrong path. I hope that the Leader of the House and the Prime Minister will not try to make this a party political issue because, as the right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) said, the matter has the strong support of hon. Members in all parties in the House. There is a strong feeling that we should put an anomaly right that has been with us for 20 years.
It is ludicrous that the House has fudged the issue in the past. In 1975, it did not accept the recommended amount, but allowed it for pension purposes. That lasted for four years. In 1981, we thought that we had caught up, but in 1983 we again fell behind and again fudged the issue. The review body was right to say that if its 1983 recommendation had been implemented and kept up year by year, lo and behold we would now be drawing a salary of £42,300.
After examining our pay against that of other public servants such as head teachers, police superintendents and civil servants, the review body recommends a salary of £43,000. There are 114 employees in the House who earn more than hon. Members and it is time that we put right that anomaly as well.
There will never be a right time to raise the pay of Members of Parliament, because the media will always be against it although, as we have heard, some people in the media earn more than Members of Parliament. I agree with the proposal of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore), that when journalists criticise us in their columns, they should print the salaries.
I was surprised to note that we were criticised by Christine Hancock, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, and by David Hart, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. If a comparability study had been carried out among their members and an independent body had reported, I do not think that either of those two worthy people would have recommended that their members should accept less than the body's recommendation. I took the trouble to find out what they earn. I could find the salaries only up to 1994, and in that year Christine Hancock was on a salary--wait for it--of £74,262. For the same year, David Hart had a salary of £68,640. I do not think that we should be lectured by either of those two.
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