Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill

Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord True, I add my support to this Bill. It seeks to rectify situations that, as Leader, I too sought to address but unfortunately did not succeed in doing so. Namely, it amends the law to ensure that Ministers, whether they are here or in the other place, are paid for the work that they do. That may seem common sense and unarguable but, for too long, legislative restrictions on the number of Ministers have led to a situation where Ministers in the other place have taken the bulk of the paid positions, leaving too many Lords Ministers to perform their duties without salaries.

In my time as Leader, I was involved in numerous reshuffles with the infamous whiteboard and Post-it notes that came with it. When it came to deciding Lords ministerial positions, the Chief Whip and I were given considerable discretion about the appointments, but we too often had to argue for paid positions for our Front Bench rather than see them allocated to Members of the other place. Although we managed that with varying degrees of success, there were simply not enough salaries available, so we invariably had to ask some Lords Ministers to take on their roles unpaid. On occasion, as we have heard, this meant that excellent colleagues either were unable to take a job in the first place or, if they could, found themselves unable to continue in unpaid roles indefinitely, depriving the Government of talented individuals. This wholly unsatisfactory situation is what the Bill aims to tackle.

As has already been recognised in the speeches we have heard, noble Lords across the House are well aware of how hard our Ministers work. We see daily the breadth of responsibilities that Lords Ministers have in not just their specific departmental policy areas but their much broader role representing the Government in this House. The challenges of not having a salary are a particular issue for Ministers, as a key part of their role is the requirement to travel frequently to represent our nation, so they cannot attend the House regularly. To expect people to do their jobs for free due to outdated legislation is entirely unreasonable.

The unfairness of the current situation was made particularly stark to me during Covid, when the House agreed to a proposal from the commission that additional payments be made to Opposition Front-Benchers to reflect fairly the additional work that they were undertaking to prepare for debates and legislation, when the House was sitting virtually and in its hybrid form. However, no such recognition could be or was given to unpaid Lords Ministers, who were leading the response to the pandemic in the most challenging of circumstances.

One of the arguments against the Bill made in the other place is that it does nothing to encourage the slimming-down of government; indeed, it increases the cost. While that is true, the Bill is simply dealing with the reality of the size of government today not the one that we may wish it to be. It addresses the unarguable point that the Leader of the House made: that the consistent losers from the current legal restrictions are Lords Ministers. Passing the Bill would not mean that the number of Ministers cannot be reduced; it would mean that people would be paid for the job that they are doing today. A very modest reduction in the size of the Civil Service, for instance, would more than cover the financial implications of the Bill.

If the Government decide not to make such reductions, the Bill will add a modest uplift simply to reflect what should have been happening in any event. Ministers across both Houses should be paid for the job that they are doing.