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Mr. McLoughlin: The truth is, though, that the way in which allowances are reported will change very
dramatically within the next 12 months. Mr. Speaker has written to us all saying that allowances and the claiming of allowances will be put in the public domain and published. Therefore, the oversight will be not only by an audit committee but, should it be so decided, also by the electorate. That is no bad thing.
Mr. Heald: As my hon. Friend says, the amount of transparency is being increased dramatically.
The measure also improves governance, as did the Speaker's panel itself, and I believe that the new Green Book is an extremely effective and useful step forward. It will help a great deal with the Members' estimate. It will be more accessible to Members as well.
Looked at overall, the package should be supported. It will give us a codified set of rules, a better system for minor changes, stronger governance and an ability to oversee the two estimates and bring their governance closer together.
Finally, the bicycle and motor cycle allowance changes are in line with levels set by the Inland Revenue. The motion making those changes provides a mechanism for uprating in line with Inland Revenue levels, and is useful in terms of transparency, simplicity and efficiency—all the points that the first motion is aimed at.
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Mrs. Anne Campbell (Cambridge) (Lab): I thank my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) for their kind remarks about the work of the Speaker's advisory panel. The panel plays a valuable role in providing a route for hon. Members who are perhaps dissatisfied or feel that the current allowances do not cover their needs sufficiently well. It provides a forum in which Members can voice their complaints, and all members of the panel do their very best to be accessible to other Members and to receive comments, complaints and, occasionally, compliments in the most accessible way possible.
I want to put on record my support for the motions, although I want to voice some concern. I feel that the present arrangements have worked very well over the past two years—as long as I have chaired the Speaker's advisory panel. The panel works extremely well and there is a very high attendance among its members, because they feel that they have real influence and can determine something that is terribly important to most of us in the way that we run our constituency offices and our Westminster offices. I hope that that will not change with the new arrangements because I feel that, if there were perhaps undue interference by the Members Estimate Committee, it could have the effect of making members of the Speaker's advisory panel feel that their work was not quite so valuable as it was hitherto.
Mr. Hain: May I assure my hon. Friend as categorically as I can that that is certainly not the objective? It would not be possible for the newly constituted Members Estimate Committee—especially as it will be comprised of members of the House of Commons Commission—to cover the scope of work
that the panel does so well in consulting and providing an excellent sounding board for opinion in the House. With that assurance, I hope that she will accept the proposals.May I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of the officials in the Department of Finance and Administration and elsewhere who have given very valuable advice and continue to work extremely hard on behalf of all of us?
Mrs. Campbell: I find those reassurances very welcome. Of course, I am sure that the Speaker's advisory panel will want to monitor the way in which its recommendations are accepted by the new Committee. I should like to endorse the remarks made by my right hon. Friend in thanking members of the Department of Finance and Administration for their hard work in administering the allowances and in ensuring that they are applied fairly.
Mr. Heald: May I associate myself with the remarks about the staff? They do a fantastic job, which we all appreciate greatly. Does the hon. Lady agree that, in fact, the Committees that report to the House of Commons Commission, by and large, have a very amicable, constructive and co-operative relationship with the Commission? I am sure that that will be the same with the panel.
Mrs. Campbell: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. I certainly hope that that will be the case; but, as I say, we will monitor the situation.
I should like to take the opportunity to say a few words about bicycle allowances, as I was the Member who, in 1997, urged the then Leader of the House to try to implement them. For many years, I cycled around my constituency with no allowance whatsoever. I always felt that it was desperately unfair that Members who were prepared to drive from one end of their constituencies to the other got very generous allowances—in those days, they were even more generous than they are currently—whereas I was not recognised for contributing to the environment in a different way. So I was very pleased when the House approved the bicycle allowance, which has gone up by inflation over the past few years and is currently—I am sorry that I have not had time to check this—about 7p a mile.
Given my schedule, I cycle about 1,000 miles a year on my bike.
Martin Linton (Battersea) (Lab): That is impressive.
Mrs. Campbell: My hon. Friend is kind, but it is easy to clock up 1,000 miles a year. It is only about 20 or 25 miles a week. In a small constituency such as mine, it is easy to cycle from one end to the other.
I have one of those little electronic gadgets that sits at the front of my bike and tells me how fast I am travelling, how far I have gone and how long it has taken me—all very useful information that helps me to put in an accurate claim at the end of the year. Members will be aware that 7p a mile and 1,000 miles a year will produce £70, if I claim it all. However, buying a new lock
and new lights and paying for a couple of maintenance services a year comes to a great deal more than £70, which does not allow me to put anything aside towards a new bicycle, and as my bicycle is now more than 20 years old, that is getting long overdue. So I very much welcome the raising of the allowance to the Inland Revenue recommended rate, which is 24p a mile, and with £240, my constituents may see me cycling around on a brand-new bicycle in the near future.1.46 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall) (LD): I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) and I want to come back to the role of her important advisory panel in due course, but perhaps I should put on record the fact that I cannot cycle much around my constituency. Not only is it 80 or 90 miles long, but the hills of Cornwall do not lend themselves to that form of exercise.
Sir Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire) (LD): Chicken.
Mr. Tyler: My hon. Friend is kind.
Before I come back to the advisory panel, I want to reflect for a moment on something that the Leader of the House said in business questions about the need for the House to be as accessible as possible to the public in every sense. Our work should be as visible and as easy to follow for the public—the people who send us here—as it is for hon. Members who have been here sometime. The right hon. Gentleman and I spent some time on Monday meeting a group of people from Birmingham who had been brought to the House. Even with some explanation about how the place works, they found it an extraordinarily alien situation. They felt like Martians coming into a different world. I think that he would agree that the way in which we conduct our business does not lend itself terribly well to making what we do here explicable to the general public. I suspect that anyone looking at this afternoon's debate might think that there was more mumbo-jumbo than clarity.
I very much endorse what hon. Members on both sides of the House have said about trying to make our work here more transparent and accessible to the general public. In that sense, I understand the logic and rationale that the Leader of the House has expressed for the motions. The phrase "an improvement in governance for the House" always sounds good. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) referred particularly to paragraph (3), which states that one function will be
- "to codify and keep under review"
My particular concern is that anything that brings back into the parliamentary discussion and decision-making process, or appears to do so, an issue about Members' allowances and remuneration that to a large extent has been seen to be taken out of the parliamentary arena and given to the Senior Salaries
Review Body is a retrograde step. I hope that whoever responds to the debate will be able to say absolutely explicitly that nothing that at present is considered by the SSRB will be brought back into the purview of the proposed Committee. That is my first anxiety. I am sure that there will be a reassurance on that point.
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