Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) on his excellent speech and on the way in which he introduced the debate. I hope that he continues throughout his life in Parliament to feel as much affection for all hon. Members as he expressed today, although I doubt that that will continue as time goes on. However, I appreciated the opening words of his speech.

I had my whinge last time round when we had the first debate in Westminster Hall. I also got very angry, and I still feel angry that, because of the activities of a few Members in the past, we have all been smeared. We continue to be smeared by the belief that we are all crooks, and after 26 years in Parliament I resent that immensely. We all found during the general election campaign that whether we had done something or not, we were all considered to be crooks. Someone came up to me during the campaign and shouted, “Thief!” If I had been a man, I would have run after him and punched him in the face, because I feel about this so strongly. I am not a thief and I have never been a thief. I object to Members being considered as thieves, because the vast majority of people in this place are nothing of the sort, and it is not right that we have been smeared by the activities of a few.

A member of my staff uses the online expenses system to fill in the forms on my behalf. I had not thought of the idea of one of my colleagues, who told IPSA that his finger was in plaster and he was unlikely to be taking it out of plaster, which meant that IPSA officials had to go to his office to fill in expense claims on his behalf. I wanted to look at the problems as dispassionately as possible, so I asked my member of staff about his experiences and to outline the difficulties he had encountered. He said:

“Although after the MPs expenses fiasco there was a genuine desire to create a new and more transparent system to pay Members’ expenses, I do not think the system put in place by IPSA is the best alternative”—

he was also aware of the previous system. He continued:

“The new system is in no way more transparent than the system it replaced, the main difference is that rather than submit paper claims Members must now submit them online. It seems as though rather than looking for a simple solution”—

several colleagues have suggested such a solution today—

“(such as daily allowances or issuing credit cards to Members for their expenses) an expensive all consuming bureaucratic monster has been created.”

Several issues have arisen after six months of the new system. Inevitably, Members allow their staff to fill out and submit claims forms on their behalf. The previous system did not allow anyone except the Member to sign the forms before they were submitted, but the new system places a lot of trust in the hands of a non-elected proxy. The way in which the travel card statement is sent to the proxy’s IPSA account, not to Members, is very time consuming and confusing. The Member travel card has the potential to simplify the way in which Members claim, but the way in which it operates only adds to the problems of the online system.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend also recognise that the new travel card system is far more complicated than the old system? Under the old system, we had a statement once a month that we had to go through to check that the information was correct. We then ticked it and signed it ourselves before sending it back. Under the present system, we have to provide the information in paper form and then put it back online, as well as sending in the individual rail tickets. Frankly, that is complete nonsense.

[Ann Clwyd]

I thank my hon. Friend. That is a very good point.

During the first few months of the new system’s operation, Members faced huge delays in getting any claims reimbursed. They accumulated large amounts of debt at the beginning of a new Parliament, and a great deal of time and manpower has been spent trying to balance the books ever since. This unnecessarily takes time away from other parliamentary duties, as has been pointed out. During the past six months, IPSA has twice lost or not received the receipts we have sent in the post. IPSA is adamant that all claims must be accompanied by original receipts, but no contingency plan has been put in place to deal with lost receipts. The old system allowed Members to send in photocopies of receipts, while we filed the originals for our own records. Members are now at risk if they do not take photocopies of all receipts before sending them to IPSA.

Communicating with or contacting IPSA is not easy. There is only one general phone number and e-mail address for Members to contact. We have all been put on hold for more than 45 minutes while waiting to discuss issues with IPSA staff and, due to a lack of replies, we have all but given up trying to contact IPSA via e-mail.

I am sure that there would have been many more Members here today if they were not still fearful of the press. We all know that whatever we say here today will be picked up and used in one way or another. Some Members who would have liked to be here to make similar points to the ones we are making are not here because of a certain amount of fear. It is ridiculous that elected Members of Parliament, who often have to stand up for their constituents, find it difficult to stand up for themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). May I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) not only on bringing this debate to the House today but on the considerable amount of hard work he has put in over many months to seek to redress what indubitably has been and remains a wrong? My hon. Friend has studiously given IPSA, perhaps appropriately, until all fools’ day to come back with a better scheme. Personally, I would prefer to see a change now, but I shall support his motion in the Lobby, if necessary, later.

I want to pay tribute to the staff of the former Fees Office, many of whom have been reviled—shamefully, sometimes in this House, but more particularly in the press—because of the systems that had developed. Those staff, known to many of us in previous Parliaments, were in the main diligent, courteous and careful and did a very good job. Some are now working for IPSA, but I happen to know that some of them are acutely disturbed by the climate of mistrust in IPSA that has been inculcated into them and imposed on them from the top. By the top, I mean the chairman and the interim chief executive. Let us now call a spade a spade and understand what we are talking about.

The hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) said it was up to those of us who have knocked around for a bit to speak up for the newer Members of the House. It will not have escaped your notice, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I am practically halfway through my parliamentary career—[Laughter.] Did I hear somebody say “shame”? On that basis, I believe that some of us have a duty to say things that young men and women who entered this Parliament for the first time in May need to have said for them but do not feel able to say for themselves. There has been a climate of fear and of mistrust. There is a feeling that if we complain our constituents will not understand and the local and national press certainly will not understand. There are some things that we must get on the record.

In introducing the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor said that he was trying to stimulate a measure in the interests of our constituents and in the interests of saving money. He is absolutely right. The system that has been imposed on us is wasteful, costly and bureaucratic and it is failing. We have to get that right. The interim chief executive of IPSA, in one of his many issued statements, said that

“the core of our mission is to support parliamentary democracy.”

Mr Churchill might have used the phrase “round objects”. I am sorry, I do not accept that. Our job goes to the core of parliamentary democracy, and parliamentary democracy is being interfered with by the scheme that has been imposed on us.

Let us be absolutely clear about this: not just in the last Parliament but probably in the two or three before, things went very badly wrong. Some former Members behaved in a way that can only be described as less than honourable, and we all need to understand that there was, and remains, a need for change. But change for the sake of change, on the basis of “My shirt is hairier than yours”, is not a way of taking the House forward.

The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) asked how many Members had been consulted before the new scheme was devised. The answer is none or very few. We have to accept that IPSA found itself faced with a well nigh impossible task, and I do not demur from that at all. It had to try to put together a scheme within the time scale that our Front Benchers on both sides of the House demanded—we need to be clear about where some of the responsibility for that lies. That was very difficult, but having said that, the people at the top of IPSA have chosen—I believe partly through arrogance—to ignore the fundamentals and not to do the groundwork and research necessary to put in place not just a scheme, but a scheme that worked.

I have invited the interim chief executive of IPSA, courteously and on three separate occasions, to visit my parliamentary office. It is located in my constituency, but it is not a constituency office. That is a fundamental difference. I have chosen to locate my entire business in the constituency. I have tried to impress on the interim chief executive the point that if a Member of Parliament has his or her office based within the parliamentary estate, and if all their staff are based there, all their bills for telephone calls, office equipment, heating, lighting, cleaning, office rental, rates, fire precautions—the whole kit and caboodle—are paid for by the House authorities. That represents a difference of about £17,000 a year between that Member and another Member with his or her parliamentary office in the constituency. That means, of course, that the information published today is hopelessly distorted. My telephone bills for my parliamentary office will be much higher than those of colleagues who use the phones here.

The interim chief executive wrote back to me and completely missed the point, saying, “Well, if you’ve got a problem with this, we’re quite prepared to review the amount that you’re allowed.” I do not want the amount that I am allowed reviewed, and I do not want to spend any more money. Over 27 years in this place, I have already subsidised my office costs to the taxpayer to the tune of a quarter of a million pounds, and I have done so uncomplainingly. However, I do not want to be misunderstood by people who have devised a scheme without taking the trouble to get out there, visit offices and really understand what the job of a Member of Parliament is about.

I asked when the interim chief executive had visited a constituency or a parliamentary office in a constituency, how often and where. Hon. Members may be dismayed to learn that the answer, which came after a freedom of information request because I was not initially told, stated that the chief executive’s first visit to any office was on 9 July, the election having been in May. That was to the office of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), where he spent two days. More recently—very recently—the man who told me that it was not possible to visit my office visited South Thanet, which is four miles down the road.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the hon. Gentleman also agree that a good example of IPSA completely misunderstanding how an MP’s office runs was its early diktat that it would pay only 85% of our phone bills, on the basis that the other 15% related to our personal use?

[Mr Gale]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I shall discuss the costs of IPSA now, because I am conscious that a lot of hon. Members wish to speak and I must not take up too much time.

I want to address issues such as IPSA’s extravagance and waste. The office costs issue is important. IPSA’s chief executive says that plenty of people in the public sector pay their bills and then reclaim the money. I am sorry, but I do not believe that IPSA’s chief executive pays any part of the rent for his office in Victoria—or his phone, heating, lighting and cleaning bills—and then claims it back. I therefore asked how much IPSA was spending on that. The rental for those offices, which are not on the parliamentary estate, as the hon. Member for Walsall North said, costs £348,000 a year over the life of the lease.

I am still waiting—IPSA is out of time on this—for a freedom of information follow-up to tell me how much IPSA is spending on business rates, heating, lighting, cleaning, service charges, depreciation and all the other costs. That figure has to be in excess of £500,000. I note that Mr Speaker has said that he wants IPSA’s costs cut to £2 million. If just the building costs £500,000, even before we have put any people in it, and if we now have to pay for the gold key online expenses submissions system, £2 million will not be enough, despite the fact that the old Fees Office did the entire job for that money.

Funding of the online key scheme is discrete; IPSA will not give the answer under freedom of information legislation because the information is commercial in confidence and providing it might prejudice future negotiations. What I can tell the House is that IPSA has entered into a five-year contract. I suspect it has done so at very considerable expense and with no break clause. So if we do revise this scheme, the taxpayers will find themselves paying the bill up to the full five years.

We asked the chief executive what the purpose of all the duplication is. Our staff spend six hours a week online, filling in forms on the screen, item by item and line by line. That is fine, but they then have to print the whole darned lot, back it up with receipts and send it in. IPSA’s chief executive does not consider that to be duplication, but if doing something twice is not duplication, I do not know what is.

Finally, I wish to discuss an issue that has been raised and is of grave concern to new and younger Members, particularly those with young families: the living costs allowed to Members of Parliament to maintain the necessary accommodation—I emphasise the word “necessary”—in the constituency and in London. It appears to have escaped IPSA’s understanding that Members of Parliament do work in the House of Commons and in our constituencies.

I know colleagues in Kent who represent quite large constituencies that have only one station, which is perhaps just within an hour by train from London. We need to understand that that is just under an hour platform to platform, not door to door. They do not receive any London weighting, any London living allowance or any accommodation allowance at all, so they find themselves, having come into this place believing that they have come here to do a job of work on behalf of their constituents, either having to pay to get home late at night or having to travel home before the vote at 10 pm. Where is the sense in that? I do not know of any journey time that starts when the train arrives at the platform and ends when it arrives at the platform at the other end, but takes no account of the time it takes someone to get from their home or office to that platform to wait for the train, to catch the train, to be delayed, to get off at the other end and to get back home or to their place of work. That is arrant nonsense. When I told IPSA that those people were being unfairly treated, I was told:

“IPSA did not consider that eligibility for accommodation could reasonably be decided on the basis on where the MP elected to live. This would have created a perverse incentive for the MP to opt to live further away from Westminster, in order to be eligible for accommodation. The decision was therefore taken on principle that eligibility should depend on the constituency’s proximity to Westminster. It is then down to MPs whether they elect to live close to the station within their constituency which has the fastest links to Westminster”.

In other words, if Members do not like it, they should sell their houses and move closer to the station.

I have been in this place for a long time, and I want to leave it one day knowing that it is in safe hands—the hands of good people who have come here for the right reasons and who want to do the job that they were elected to do. If they are going to be able to do that, they have to have the resources. The people who are denying them those resources are the people who are currently running IPSA. We have two choices. This House—this democracy—will either be the province of the very rich or juvenile anoraks with no experience of life, business or anything at all, or we will sort this problem out. As far as we are concerned, IPSA has until 1 April. It had better get it right.