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Mr. Miller: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the Committee would also like to ensure that the connection to constituency offices is made at no cost to Members?
Mr. Allan: Our Committee holds that view; it is for others to decide. We are not allowed to go into the office costs allowance, although we continually touch on it. We are a group of Members of Parliament in a formal setting who are interested in the subject, and that is the view that we are putting forward. Without the strength that that formal structure gives the argument, we might lose something. I am not engaging in special pleading for me or for the Committee; I am merely pointing out that the structure has a valuable role. That is down to the membership of the Committee.
Domestic Committees sometimes have an unfair reputation. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) is one of the star performers on the Committee, but there are many others who come along on a Tuesday afternoon for very little recompense. They get actively involved in letting officers know what Members of Parliament want. That would not happen with a user group or a less formal structure, when only people with complaints would come. Complaints have to get through, but it is important to have a group of people who are actively involved in policy formulation. I am pleased that members of my Committee are able to do that with the dedication that they show.
Ms Oona King:
Many Members of Parliament want IT support. Has the Committee considered that? In any other company that I have worked for, if my computer broke down, I could contact someone who would fix it. I find it astonishing that, as a British Member of Parliament in the 21st century, if my computer breaks down, I have no recourse.
Mr. Allan:
This morning, I was speaking with a senior officer from the Parliamentary Communications Directorate about the possibility of setting up a Members' support service. That is on the agenda and a report will be produced. We welcome any input on that.
We are looking for a clearer line of accountability with the Commission. That many also help other domestic Committees. We would like the Commission to come to us with its ideas and ask us, as a group of IT and information specialists, to give our views and do some of the work that it cannot do, because its members do not want to don anoraks and go into such detail. We would also like to have a proactive role and be able to ask the Commission for permission to investigate ideas that have come from Members, such as the radical thought of wanting to use computers in Committee Rooms. Braithwaite recommends clearer two-way communication. We believe that we have such a role, but we would like greater clarity.
We welcome Braithwaite's reference to a formal statement of costs and benefits. We are not responsible for the detailed budget setting, but we can give a view on whether a proposal is good value for money. As specialists, relatively speaking, we can say whether an idea will provide value for money in the service that it will deliver in a way that the Commission might find difficult. We entirely accept that implementation is down to officers, but we believe that we can act as a useful sounding board and a source of ideas and feedback from Members.
We accept that Departments should move to a corporate approach on IT. That has been a problem, but we have had a good example recently of how it can work. The IT convergence strategy and the Y2K issue brought all the Departments of the House and all the IT specialists together. The staff of the House are to be congratulated on their success. That should also be a pointer to how we move forward. Indeed, Braithwaite suggests that we move in that direction.
It is useful to put on record the two small points on which we disagree with the Braithwaite recommendations. He suggests, first, that domestic Committees no longer have specialist advisers. My Committee uses an academic with strong IT expertise. It would feel the lack of any
external expert advice. When the issue is considered further, we hope that our particular requirement for expertise will be borne in mind.
The second point was a suggestion that no departmental paper should come to a domestic Committee before being approved by the Board of Management. We feel that we have a useful role in seeing things early. When something is to be implemented, it should go through the Board of Management, and we do not want to interfere with that executive role. However, we feel that Departments such as the Library should be able to bring things to us at an early stage and get some views before finalising a paper to go to the Board of Management.
Mr. Christopher Chope (Christchurch):
When I was the Minister responsible for privatising the Property Services Agency, I had the discussions with Sir Robin Ibbs that led to the Ibbs report. The recommendations in the Braithwaite report are rather woolly. It is an informative report, but it is not clear whether the recommendations are as crisp as I would wish.
Robin Ibbs was keen to emphasise the importance of value for money, and made recommendations about a lot of value-for-money studies. This report makes it clear that those studies were never really carried out. That is gravely disappointing because, if anyone in this country should be keen on establishing their belief in value for money, it should be this House of Commons. We take it upon ourselves to criticise Government Departments, Ministers and the public sector for the use and priorities of taxpayers' money, and yet it seems that we are still lax in scrutinising our own expenditure.
The report says that the Members of this House are, in effect, 659 small businesses. One thing is certain--if we were, we would know a lot more about our costs than we do. We would know, for example, what the cost of office accommodation for our secretariat was per square foot. We do not know that and, as we know, if one cannot measure it, one cannot control it. I would like to see more transparency and accountability.
The report asks what will happen when somebody gives in to the pressure for the office costs allowance to increase. It may mean that people will take on more staff, with more demand for accommodation in the centre of Westminster in one of the most expensive office environments in the world. What can we do about that?
I would suggest that the costs of Members' office staff accommodation should be included within the office costs allowance. I suspect that, if hon. Members were given an allowance for office costs to include accommodation for secretaries, research assistants and so on, many would decide that it was more economical to employ those people in their constituencies, as the labour and
accommodation costs are lower. At the moment, all the incentives are the other way, and all the pressure is to have the extra staff employed in or around Westminster.
Mr. Forth:
I would not want to undermine my hon. Friend's argument, but he should bear in mind that, as ever, London Members are an exception to that. I hope that he recognises that fact.
Mr. Chope:
I am sure that, if the recommendation were to be taken further, a special case could be made for London Members. However, Members with constituencies like mine--about 100 miles away--will agree that, if I employ a secretary in my constituency, the office accommodation costs, the costs of the photocopier, the costs of the photocopier paper and the costs of the telephone calls and faxes all have to be borne out of my office costs allowance. That is one of the reasons why many Members choose to employ staff at Westminster. If we increase the office costs allowance, and that results in an increase in the number of staff employed by Members, who then expect that those staff should be accommodated at Westminster, there will be no limit on expenditure in the future. If we want a rational approach to dealing with that, perhaps the Commission should consider the method of transparency and accountability that I have suggested.
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