House of Lords Reform and Size of the House of Commons

Steven Paterson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman, so I will try to make a bit of progress and come back to him later if I have time.

We are reducing the number of Members of this House to save money, but at no point do we look at what is going on down the corridor. As I said earlier, the cost of the House of Lords is now a cool £100 million—that is the operating cost for a year. Members of the House of Lords get £300 just for turning up or £150 for working from home, and these are tax-free allowances. That figure of £100 million works out at about £100,000 per peer. For the same cost as these 800 part-time peers, we could have 300 democratically elected and accountable peers on an MP’s salary.

[Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)]

Two of my constituents, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, sit along there in the House of Lords. Last year, Lord Forsyth cost £46,346 and Lord Robertson cost £19,708. I was on the front page of the local paper because of how much it costs for me to come down here and do my job and employ staff. I wonder when newspapers will print that kind of information about how much our Lords are costing us.

[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that brings me on to my next subject—value for money.

We know how hard we work in this place. We have constituents whom we have to represent and make sure that their interests are brought to this House. The Lords have none of that. Some of them barely turn up. Some of them have barely been in for a debate or made any parliamentary contributions at all. Yet we are prepared to have this huge expense to sustain that place while the number of Members of Parliament who come down here and work hard for their constituents day in, day out is being cut.

I want to say a couple of other things about the reduction in the number of Members of Parliament. The Government are in the process of taking us out of the European Union, and when the 73 Members of the European Parliament, who have significant powers, are no longer there, we will be expected to take up that work. An increased workload will fall on a smaller number of Members of Parliament when we no longer have Members of the European Parliament working for us in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Although the Government intend to reduce the number of Members of Parliament, they have absolutely no plans whatsoever to reduce the numbers in Government. Instead of attempting in any way to reduce the size of Whitehall, they have made sure that there are more Departments, more special advisers and more civil servants. If there is to be any reduction in the number of Members of this place, surely there should be a reduction in the number of people who serve in this Government.