Contribution
I apologise for jumping the gun, but the enthusiasm I feel for this amendment from my noble friend goes back to the previous Parliament: I pay tribute to the Leader of the House and to my noble friend for the efforts that were made in the last Parliament to right this wrong. Perhaps I could just make a few punchy points.
There is a limit, as my noble friend has explained, on the total number of Ministers. I was very indebted, in the last Parliament, to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, who pointed out that there seems to be an increasingly inflationary effect on the number of Ministers who are needed to run this country. When I was Secretary of State, pre-devolution, we were responsible for everything, not just the devolutionary matters in Scotland, and we did it with one Secretary of State, four Ministers and two law officers. There are now 29 Ministers in the Scottish Parliament.
I am looking at my noble friend Lord Clarke. He and my noble friend Lord Fowler ran the Department for Transport in 1979 with two Ministers, and in 1979, that department was responsible for British Airways, the ports and the National Freight Corporation, none of which applies to the present or the previous Government’s Department for Transport, just to show that I am being non-partisan. In 1979, there were two Ministers, but by 2023 there were five Ministers in the Department for Transport, with much less to do.
The same was true of the DHSS, which had five Ministers in 1979. The DHSS was then split into two departments: the Department of Health and the DWP. The DHSS had five Ministers in 1979, but the two departments between them had 12 Ministers. You could argue that things have got more complicated, but there does seem to be an inflationary effect which even beats the Bank of England in the ability to create this kind of growth.
I think that it is very important that the principle that my noble friend has enunciated should be upheld: no one should be unable to be a Minister because they do not have the private means to do so. But just to follow up on my point, it looks to me suspiciously as though ministerial appointments in the other place were being used as a means of patronage by the previous Government to make sure that people would go through the Lobbies.
This Government do not really need much patronage —until recently, at least, they had a huge and loyal majority—but it looks as if that is what is happening. If we add to that the appointment of people who act as trade envoys and so on, it looks as if appointments are being used to increase the power of the Executive at the expense of the elected Chamber and this House. I think that my noble friend’s amendment and this principle is very important, because it goes to the heart of the ability of Parliament to hold the Executive to account.
This is not the only anomaly in the way this House is treated in respect of remuneration. Our Select Committees, if they go and do their work outside the House, can claim only half a day’s attendance, yet if people participate in our Questions remotely, they can claim a full day’s attendance allowance. I am sick to death of reading in the newspapers how we in this House are paid £371 for just turning up. No one points out that, out of that £371, people are expected to make a contribution to their overnight allowance and expected to cover their own secretarial and research costs. I point out that in the other place, the allowance for secretarial and other support can go up to £250,000 and the housing allowance up to £25,000.
Yes, MPs have constituents but, in this House, we often sit long after the other place has gone because we are clearing up the mess which is left when Bills have not been properly considered. Ministers in this House—God bless them—are expected to stand at the Dispatch Box, although they do not always do so, and answer questions not only on behalf of their departments but for the whole of the Government. This is an onerous task, and the idea that people should be expected to do that unpaid is, frankly, utterly outrageous.