Eighth Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation
Tuesday 13 July 1999
[Mr. George Stevenson in the Chair]
Draft Ministerial and Other Salaries Order 1999
4.30 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office (Mr. Paddy Tipping): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Ministerial and Other Salaries Order 1999.
I am sure that other Committee members will be as delighted as I am to see you in the Chair, Mr. Stevenson--I am sure that you will keep our proceedings in order. I know that you are familiar with payment rates and remuneration packages at different institutions in Europe, which is a subject that has recently attracted press interest. I anticipate that you will help us to exercise sound judgment.
The purpose of the order is to implement increases in salary for various Ministers and certain other office holders in the House of Lords. The increases were recommended by the independent Senior Salaries Review Body in its report No. 43 in March 1999. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced the Government's acceptance of the recommendations in a written answer on 31 March 1999 at column 716. Details of the report and the written answer have been circulated to Committee members.
The procedure is that such changes of salary--by which I mean an increase of salary other than the normal annual uprating--are authorised by an Order in Council under the relevant sections of the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975. That Act requires that the text of the order be approved in draft by each House before being submitted to Her Majesty. I invite the Committee to provide such approval today.
It might be helpful if I listed the several offices in the House of Lords that will be affected by the changes. They are: Ministers of State, Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State, the Government Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip, the Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Chief Whip. I anticipate that the inclusion of the latter two posts will lead to some cross-party enthusiasm. However, I understand all too well any reservations that there may be about giving extra support to Whips. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) will excuse me for saying that.
The SSRB recommended, and the Government accepted, equivalent increases for the Chairman of Committees and the Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees. Although those salaries do not appear in the order, they will be implemented administratively when it comes into force.
The individual increases are set out in the order. The simplest way to think of them is that they will increase the salaries of each of the posts that I mentioned by £8,500, in addition to the standard annual uprating, which other ministerial posts have received. That produces the figures that the order contains.
The increases are quite substantial. The recommendations reflect the SSRB's finding that since the 1996 changes to the pay arrangements for Ministers in the House of Commons, the salaries of the posts in the upper House have fallen behind to an unreasonable extent. The proposed one-off increase is broadly equivalent to the amount by which the salaries of Members of Parliament that are paid to Ministers in the House of Commons were abated before the 1996 changes, and so restores the relativity. The arguments, which the Government accept, are set out in detail in chapter 4 of SSRB report No. 43, which I circulated to Committee members.
The order will implement precisely the SSRB's recommendations, and I commend it to the Committee.
4.34 pm
Mr. Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire): Thank you, Mr. Stevenson. I share the Minister's pleasure in serving under your chairmanship. Today is my first opportunity to do so, and I look forward to future opportunities. We intend to be as constructive as possible and, as ever, I hope that we can reach a ready measure of agreement.
The Committee will be grateful to the Minister for explaining the order's purpose. It may be helpful if I confirm at the outset that, as in another place, the official Opposition support the proposed increases. None the less, I want to make a number of points.
The order and the changes that it will introduce may be regarded as unfinished business arising from changes to ministerial and related salaries recommended by the Review Body on Senior Salaries in its 38th report, published in July 1996, to which the Minister briefly referred. In it, the SSRB recommended that, in addition to their ministerial salary, Ministers should receive the full parliamentary salary, on the grounds that a Minister has the same constituency responsibilities as a Back Bencher. The Minister will doubtless concur that the desire and need to continue to serve one's constituents is a key contributory factor to Commons Ministers' very high work load.
Some members of the Committee, at least, will recall that, until July 1996, the parliamentary pay of Commons Ministers was abated by, according to my calculations, £8,425. After that date, Commons Ministers' salaries rose correspondingly. The relativity of Lords Ministers' pay and Commons Ministers' pay has varied over time. As a result of the 1996 changes and the large, additional increase in MPs' pay at that time, a big gap opened up between Commons Ministers' pay and Lords Ministers' pay. In 1996, the SSRB recognised the need to make further recommendations on those relativities, but did not have time to do so. It set out to remedy the matter in its 43rd report, which was issued in March of this year. The order, which relates to Lords Ministers below Cabinet rank, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lords and the Opposition Chief Whip in the Lords, follows through the report's recommendations with, as the Minister said, the application of an annual uprating.
After taking evidence, the SSRB stated:
``We were persuaded that the responsibilities of Ministers and PUSSs, while different in the two Houses, are on balance broadly equivalent. By contrast, we were not persuaded that the responsibilities carried by Whips in the Lords were as onerous as those in the Commons.''
I am sure that the Government Whip will concur with that. Technically, the Opposition Benches in this Committee are a Whip-free zone, but perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir S. Chapman) is standing in in that stead.
Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet): As acting Whip for the hordes of my colleagues, I feel power coursing through my veins. For the record, I must admit that, in better days, I was a Government Whip for six and a half years.
Mr. Lansley: My hon. Friend reminds me--once a Whip, always a Whip.
According to the SSRB and the views of Ministers in successive Governments, the principal underlying determination of salary should be responsibility. Therefore, the SSRB did not set out to raise Lords Ministers' salaries to the level of Commons Ministers' salaries, because the latter reflects unique constituency responsibilities.
As the Minister said, the SSRB went on to recommend a one-off salary increase for Lords Ministers of £8,500. As the report states, that sum
``is broadly equivalent to the amount by which the Parliamentary salary paid to Commons Ministers was abated prior to''
the 1996 changes. We should note that the total salary paid to Members of this House at that time--1 July 1996--was increased by a further £9,000.
Even allowing for the fact that the salaries of Commons Ministers below Cabinet rank did not increase between January 1996 and April 1998, the relationship between total salary in the Commons and the Lords has shifted decisively towards the Commons. That will remain true, even allowing for the effect of the order. It is interesting that the answer given by the Prime Minister on 31 March 1999, although reflecting the SSRB report, also said that the implementation in relation to Lords Ministers ``restores the relativity.''--[Official Report, 31 March 1999; Vol. 328, c.715.] That is not exactly true, because the relativity that applied before the 1996 changes was a much closer one than will apply now, even allowing for these changes.
I shall give the Committee an example. In January 1996, a Minister of State in the House of Commons would have received a total salary of £56,785 and a Minister in the House of Lords would have received £50,238. Following the proposed changes, a Minister of State in the Commons will receive £77,047, whereas a Lords Minister will receive £64,426. It is, therefore, apparent that there will be a wider differential, both absolutely and proportionately, between a Minister in the House of Commons and a Minister in the House of Lords. That is entirely due to the full parliamentary salary drawn by Ministers in the House of Commons in addition to their ministerial pay.
Of course, those relative salary levels are subjectively determined. There is no objective test to compare the responsibility carried by House of Commons Ministers alongside their constituency responsibilities with the departmental, and wider, spokesmanship responsibilities held by Ministers in the Lords, who often speak to a wider brief than that of their departmental portfolio.
Given the different party balance in the Lords, compared to that of this House, it is arguable that many Members on the Opposition Front Bench in the Lords carry a significant responsibility. of all those who speak for the Opposition in this place, only the Leader of the Opposition--[Interruption]--and the Opposition Chief Whip draw a salary. However, we do benefit from our parliamentary salaries as Members.
Mr. Ian Cawsey (Brigg and Goole): Opposition Members are supposed to share it out.
Mr. Lansley: Yes. Moreover, when I said ``speak for the Opposition'', I was deferring to the proposition that the Opposition Chief Whip's job is not to speak for the Opposition. None the less, if Labour Members wish to correct me, we can debate the point as to whether the Chief Whip is a spokesman.
Those of us who speak for the Opposition in other capacities in the House of Commons draw no other salary than our Member's parliamentary salary. Front Bench Opposition spokesmen in the Lords, other than those affected by this order, benefit only from the per diem allowance, as do Back Bench Members of the Lords. Without over-egging the point, I hope that the Committee will appreciate that a number of Opposition Front Benchers in the Lords carry a significant burden of work, without the kind of recompense attracted by a Member of this House.
The SSRB report recognises that this is a short-term solution for a transitional House of Lords. I shall not prevail on the Minister to tell us exactly how short term or long term the solution will be. It would, however, be a pleasure to draw him on the subject of what respective responsibilities there might be between Ministers and Front Benchers, and between Government and Opposition, in the Lords following this transitional solution, although I suspect that he will not be drawn.
Whatever should happen--and I think that the Minister should respond to this point--I hope that the Government will ask the SSRB to make further recommendations to take proper account of the responsibility falling on the Front Benchers in another place, in the light of further proposals for the reform of the House of Lords.
As I said earlier, there is common ground on both sides of the House in relation to the principle that salaries should be determined in relation to responsibilities. In that respect, the SSRB has, as one would expect, considered the Lords Ministers in general, not in particular. It has not sought to allocate any particular salary to any particular Minister, in the light of a particular Minister's responsibilities.
However, I draw to the Committee's attention the fact that the responsibilities of some of the Ministers in the group to which the order applies have changed recently. I was interested to note, given the importance which the Government profess to give to the House of Lords compared with the House of Commons, that in the departing Administration in 1997 17 Ministers of below Cabinet rank in the House of Lords would have been covered by the order. Interestingly, there are now 20 such Ministers, among whom are Lord Macdonald of Tradeston and Lord Sewel. Lord Macdonald was formerly unpaid, but has drawn a salary since May. Both are in the Scottish Office and held responsibilities prior to 1 July which have since then been transferred to the Scottish Parliament. The question is simple. If those Ministers no longer have substantive responsibilities, on what basis do the Government propose that they should be entitled to draw a full ministerial salary? With that question and with the longer-term issues of ministerial responsibilities in the Lords yet to be determined, on which I should be grateful for the Minister's assurance, I extend the Opposition's support to the measure.
4.46 pm
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