I beg to move Amendment No. 6, in page 6, line 33, leave out

'before 16th October 1964'.

With this Amendment we are to discuss the following Amendments:

The three Amendments have the same principle, which is that we should grant to Members of Parliament, irrespective of who or what they are and where or how they serve, all their service to the House for pension purposes. Under the Clause, service before the 1964 datum line, with the 10 years given, is excluded. It is true that Lawrence made a mistake, and my Government at the time made a mistake because they only partly implemented the report. But I hope the Minister will not say that the proposal in the Clause is Boyle and that it is a case of Boyle, all or nothing. If the Boyle Committee slips up, as did Lawrence, I hope that we shall try to put the mistake right. The Amendment seeks to deal with a genuine mistake.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) and the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) have given a lifetime's service to the House. They are not now political figures but are both House of Commons men, parliamentarians. I remember canvassing for my right hon. Friend when I was a boy of 16, but he still looks as young as ever. All his service before 1964, plus the 10 years, is ignored, and I do not see why. People in local government and the Civil Service and those with private pension schemes have all their service counted towards their pension, provided they meet the requirements of the scheme. Because Lawrence wrongly decided that right hon. and hon. Members who were here before that time should not receive a pension, we have been depriving them of it. The Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker receive a pension for all their service, even if it is for only a day. I cannot see why any hon. Member should not be able to claim as of right for all his or her service to the House.

I should declare an interest, because I have been here for nearly 27 years. But for pension purposes I came here only in 1954. I do not know where I was for the first nine years. I thought I was a Member from 1945. I remember I was quite active in attacking the Labour Government, but according to the pension rules I just could not have been here.

I am only a relative junior. There are some who have been here for 30 or 40 years. One of the greatest men I love, admire and respect, as does everyone in the House, is the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, whom I affectionately call Manny Shinwell. That is what he will always be to me. He gave 40 years' service to the House. I do not think it was consecutive service, but that does not matter. He was a good House of Commons man, though he was also a bit political on occasions. Because according to the calendar, and only the calendar, he had reached what was supposed to be an old age, 85 or 86, some of his local people wrongly thought he was too old, and eventually he left his seat. He was not too old. In heart, vigour, strength, ability and everything else he is still like a man of 50.

When he retired from the House after 40 years' service he was told, "We shall only count the years from 1964, plus the 10, for pension". Therefore, his official pension, the pension he could claim by right, was about £900 a year. I am glad to see the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington here, because I pay tribute to him and his colleagues, through whose trust fund arrangements have been made to do the right thing in seeing that Lord Shinwell does a bit better than he would otherwise have done. But that is a kind of charity affair—I say that in no derogatory sense—provided only through the generosity and good-heartedness of the trustees.

I do not mean it offensively when I say that probably my right hon. Friend the Member for Lambeth does not need the pension, but I am not concerned with whether a Member is in need. He should be able to claim his rights for the time he has served here. Whether my right hon. Friend would claim it would be up to him.

We had an hon. Member some time ago who was wealthy and said that he did not want to draw his extra salary because by the time he had paid surtax on it, it would have been worth only £15 a week extra to him, which did not matter to him. But my case is that the fact that that hon. Member had millions was no reason why he should not get the same salary as others. I say that such hon. Members should get the same salary. But, of course, if a wealthy hon. Member does not want to draw his salary, leaving it for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that is up to him. The same goes for the pension. If there are hon. Members who do not need it, they do not have to draw it. But they should have the right to draw it.

The Amendments would ensure that every hon. Member who has given service to the House would get pension rights. I appreciate that there is a point of difficulty. Some have left the House; some have gone to another place—I mean the Upper House; some have gone to yet another place. We cannot deal with them, obviously. But we can deal with those who have gone to the other place and those who are still with us. There are, of course, still a number of these older Members still with us, but not many.

There was a method in my madness in putting down the Amendments. Do not let us have the argument—I am afraid that it will be used because I have heard a whisper that it will—that we cannot deal with those who were Members because they will not have contributed. No doubt it will be argued that because they have not paid contributions it would be wrong to pay them a pension and that we cannot ask those who are retired now to pay. That does not meet the point because we wrongly precluded these Members from having their just rights. They are the people who have suffered over these years.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington know more about this than I do, and I have been here since 1945. They will confirm that these old, retired Members worked here in shocking conditions. When I first came here I was accused of being—but perhaps I can put it a better way and say I was proudly proclaimed as being—the shop steward of Members of Parliament. I was always putting down Questions on Members' salaries and conditions. But I came here as a trade union official and I found that my conditions were far worse than those I have found outside as a union official.

These poor devils—I assure the House that I am being respectful—had to pay all their own expenses. They had to pay their own rail fares, and their living away from home expenses. They had to pay for their secretaries, for their postage and for their note paper. They had to pay for everything needed to do their job. It was only during the wartime period that the salary went up to a few hundreds pounds a year. I do not know how they managed, and even if there had been a contributory scheme not many of them could have afforded to contribute.

Therefore, they were precluded from having these rights which they should have had. They were shabbily treated over their wage, income, salary—call it what you will. I would call it an inadequate expense allowance. They were not able to take out private pension schemes. They are now deprived of a pension. Indeed, we could not give back to them all that they have lost.

I do not see why we should not get out a list of such old Members. The Minister can do it. Let us for once not allow the Treasury to tell us what we should and should not do just because it does not like what we propose. Let the Minister tell the Treasury to work out how many ex-Members there are and amend the Bill accordingly. Let us so organise it that every Member who has given service to the House has his service recognised for pension purposes.

I am not asking to go back over the years. These old right hon. and hon. Friends of mine on both sides of the House have lost the period gone by, but let us make the last few years of life at least that much better for them. Let us work it all out and say that as from April, 1972, every past Member will be able to claim for the service he has done.

Do not let us use the argument that Boyle did not recommend it. I am not concerned with that. Do not let us use the argument that Lawrence did not recommend it. He made a mistake. Do not let us use the argument that these old Members did not contribute. If Mr. Speaker, the Lord Chancellor and the Prime Minister get pensions although they have not contributed, I see no reason why these old Members should not be told that as from April, 1972, they will have their pensions adjusted to take account of the years during which they were deprived. They were robber for years. They were robbed by both Governments. At least let us try to put right the injustice which they have suffered.

I have a great deal of sympathy with what the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) has been saying in pleading for his Amendment. I will deal first with the old retired Members who have not benefited.

Before I go on, I would like to point out that, although I said on Second Reading that we contributed only £6 a year, the subscription was, in fact, £6 a month to the original benefits fund. That is the fund we have used to take care of the needs of many of those to whom the hon. Gentleman has referred. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) will confirm that about 74 individuals are beneficiaries of the fund, and they are divided roughly between former Members and the widows of former Members. Therefore, we have largely taken care of that need.

I, too, think that Lawrence's decision on contributions was mistaken. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned Lord Shinwell, who came to the House in 1922—it seems almost another age. He was indignant that he should be given a credit for only 10 years. I feel a bit indignant myself. The right hon. Member for Vauxhall and I are contemporaries and we now have more than 30 years' service in the House, which is a long time, but not all of it counts for pension purposes.

In answer to our representations asking that the scheme should be extended, the Prime Minister of the day, the present Leader of the Opposition, said that he was proposing not to accept all the Lawrence Committee's proposals because of the economic needs of the time. There were proposals for increases in salary for Ministers and other officers of State, but he proposed to recommend to the House that those increases should be cut in half. Because of that he was not prepared to go beyond giving 10 years' credit.

I do not disagree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. The former Prime Minister may have been right or wrong, and I am not much concerned. What I am concerned about is that, whether there was an economic crisis at that time or not and whether or not ministerial salaries should have been cut, injustice was done by the Lawrence Committee, and we now have a chance to put it right: let us put it right.

I do not want to delay the passage of the Bill, but let me say that if I still have the privilege to remain Chairman of the Trustees, the first time that the Review Body meets—and I hope that that will not be too long—this is one of the recommendations that I would make to it, subject to the agreement of my fellow trustees. At the end of this Parliament the group of Members in which I am included will have a credit of 20 years, but my service in the House will be 30 years. There will be a long period of my service which will not be accountable and for which I shall not have credit. I would ask the first Review Body to look at the position again with a view to increasing the average number of years of service able to count for an individual Member.

The Committee will have been interested in what the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) had to say about his intention that this matter should be likely to be the subject of discussion by the Review Body when the next occasion comes.

This proposal will ultimately affect all hon. Members. It follows the Boyle Report. Hon. Members are constantly embarrassed by being obliged to ventilate their financial difficulties in public, by having to wash our dirty linen in public. I well understand the Prime Minister and other Ministers and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) wishing to press on and to get the matter over and done with, to regard the proposals as a complete package.

My first inclination was to regard the Boyle Report as a package. I did not get as steamed up as some of my hon. Friends about the disparity between salaries for Ministers and those for ordinary Members. I do not regard such incomes as hereditary rights. I am not so affected by that as, for instance, by the income of the Royal Family, and in that matter I have some sympathy with the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton).

I regard it as a package, but there is a fly in the ointment and it concerns pensions. I do not know what we may expect from the Parliamentary Secretary. He may stick to his guns and ask the House to accept the package, but he will have to address his mind to the logic of the situation.

I hope that the hon. Member will not use the argument that there has been no contributory element, because when in opposition hon. Members opposite agitated on behalf of people who were over 80 and were not receiving pensions, and on entering office they enacted legislation to remedy that position. We welcomed that legislation, but it was recognised that there was no contribution element in the pension entitlement. The reason was that the benficiaries of that legislation had not had the opportunity of contributing to pensions during that time.

I have been a Member of the House only since 1966 and I shall plainly have a better deal than many older Members, because I suppose my electors are likely to continue to send me here. That is a supposition, of course, but I am sure that I deserve to be returned to the House! However, it was with some trepidation that I entered the last General Election having voluntarily severed all my pension rights from my old employment, which, incidentally, was with the TUC, so that if I lost the election I would be in some difficulty—unless someone was prepared to recognise my other talents and snap me up and give me a similarly salaried employment. One has the embarrassment of not being able to line a job up before the election. However, I had a reasonable hope of being returned, and that, of course, is what happened. This does not mean that I do not have compassion for those who have been here much longer than I have and for those who are retired. I passionately seek a service basis for the pension.

Many progressive employers conduct periodic reviews of the occupational pensions that they operate so that their former employees can live in retirement on a reasonable retirement income. The Government introduced the White Paper "Strategy for Pensions", which pays much attention to the concept of earnings related occupational pension schemes; but that does not mean that we should not recognise the entitlement of existing old-age pensioners on flat-rate pension and the Secretary of State has said that he does not exclude that consideration from his mind.

I, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West, will, in Committee on the National Insurance Bill, be arguing in favour of a better deal for old-age pensioners, and I hope that the Minister will accept our proposals, some of which I adumbrated in the speech I made when introducing my Ten-Minute Rule Bill. I hope that these matters and my proposals can be related to what is owed to the previous generation of old people who did not have an opportunity of contributing to occupational schemes. In that sense, both sides are committed to these principles, and I therefore hope that this debate will have a similar bearing on our attitudes to our former comrades in the House.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) is temporarily absent from the Committee, because I had hoped to explain to him that, having intervened previously—helpfully, as he said—when he was propounding his earlier Amendments, I propose now to be equally helpful in my support of these Amendments.

I can well understand that hon. Members on both sides believe that there is much justice in these Amendments. It is true that neither Lawrence nor Boyle has gone so far as to recommend that the pension benefits should be calculated over the whole years' service of hon. Members. However, as other hon. Members have pointed out, neither Lawrence nor Boyle is infallible. Judging by the utterances that some of our bishops make, even the good Lord can be in error from time to time; and we can, therefore, believe that even Boyle can be fallible, particularly in this respect.

The hon. Member for West Ham, North referred to the conditions under which Members have worked in the House of Commons over past years, and he referred particularly to the very low salaries and the almost non-existent expense allowances some years ago. Although I speak as a junior Member of the House of Commons, having been here for only 20 years, in relation to the much longer-serving Members who have spoken so far, I can remember coming here at a time when the salary was spent almost entirely on meeting the expenses inseparable from the proper work of a Member. Only Members who were able to supplement their incomes outside were able to be free from financial worry unless they had private incomes. This is one aspect which should be taken into consideration when calculating what pension should be paid to Members now, and over what length of service it should be calculated.

12.45 p.m.

I imagine that in making recommendations to the House of Commons the committees which have been responsible for studying this problem have taken into account the practice which is common outside the House of Commons. Generally speaking, a company or other organisation wishing to establish a superannuation scheme for the first time rarely provides for past-service benefit for a period of longer than the previous 10 years' service. The reason is predominantly the cost. A company which provided a past-service benefit for all its employees would, on introducing a scheme for the first time, find the cost in many cases prohibitive and might be discouraged from introducing the scheme. I imagine that this is one of the main reasons why the committees have recommended that past-service benefits should be limited to 10 years.

This was exactly the consideration of Lawrence. We have two schemes. Lawrence told us that we should make the greatest use of the benevolent scheme as well as of the new contributory pension scheme; and that was confirmed by Boyle.

I appreciate that helpful and absolutely correct intervention. However, that consideration does not solve the problem, because a person should not have to depend upon a supplementary fund—the original Members'Fund—to make up a pension to which he is entitled by reason of his years of service. However, I will not stress this, because everything has been said already which gives support to the Amendment.

I urge my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to give further thought to this. I am sure that his brief tells him to reject the Amendment. If I were a betting man, I am sure that this would be one of the few occasions on which I should win a bet. I urge my hon. Friend not to close the door completely but to leave it open for further consideration so that an Amendment can be tabled in another place. There is great justice in the Amendment. That is why it has been tabled. Further, it does not run contrary to custom generally followed outside the House of Commons.

The position of a Member is very different from that of persons in pension schemes in other walks of life or occupations. Special conditions apply to membership of the House. My hon. Friend should take that into account when answering the debate and leave it open to himself to be able to introduce an Amendment in another place, even though his brief tells him to resist the Amendment now.

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that out of the Members' Fund pensions are paid on a very generous scale to a very large number of people who were here long before 1954? It is not just a small sum which they get. They get substantial pensions—though not more than is paid under the Contributory Pension Fund, it is true. It would be wrong to suggest that the money they get is trivial.

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate also that this goes back a long time? We are paying a pension to the widow of a gentleman who was a Member of the House of Commons in 1908? There is no time limit. It would be wrong to consider that because those who were here before 1954 are not included in the Contributory Pension Fund they are severely handicapped; as a result of the liberal and generous deliberations of the Pensions Committee, they get a very generous provision in reasonable cases.

If I suggested that the amounts being paid out of the Members' Fund are necessarily trivial, it was inadvertent. I had intended to suggest that the pension should not be dependent on what amounts to a means test; it should be paid as of right.

This is a substantial Amendment compared with some of the things we were discussing earlier. What on both sides of the Committee we have to bear in mind is that this Bill is a pretty faithful reproduction of the recommendations of the Boyle Committee. When my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) were speaking earlier on pensions of Ministers, and so on, they rightly referred to what people outside think, to public opinion; and the railway men are part of public opinion, and they and other workers looking at the conditions of service of Members of Parliament in comparison with their own comprise an important section of public opinion. It is because the House is so sensitive to public opinion that we gave up taking the main responsibility ourselves for fixing our own conditions of service.

We tried it before, as the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) will remember. We tried it by appointing a Select Committee in 1953 to try to do it for us, jointly on a non-party basis reflecting the opinion of responsible Members of the House. What happened? We made recommendations which the Government of the day felt unable to place before the House; the Government felt unable to put down a Money Resolution to provide for them; and that was because of public opinion outside, of electoral opinion, and of the possibility that Members' pay would be a political football.

Does my right hon. Friend remember that the most violent attack on the modest increases proposed by the 1954 Committee came from The Times?

I do not remember anything of that, but I was a member of the Select Committee and I remember having wasted a lot of my time, along with a lot of other Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss).

It was four years before the Government of the day had the nerve to put to the House proposals on Members' salaries. We all realised that this was no sort of way to fix the pay and conditions of Members of Parliament, and so in 1963 it was agreed between all the parties in the House that it was time that we grasped this nettle and referred the matter to an independent body, then the Lawrence Committee, to bring outside opinion to bear. The Lawrence Committee and the Boyle Committee represented outside opinion. That is what we asked for, and that is what we have got, and that is what we are up against in looking at the Boyle proposals.

I think I ought to say something more about the Lawrence Committee. It was agreed on all sides that after the General Election, which we all knew had to come in 1964, whichever party would be in power it should implement the recommendations of the Lawrence Committee. That was the understanding reached between the political parties, and so no Government who came in after the General Election in 1964 could be accused in this matter of doing something off their own bat. It was a responsibility laid upon them by the House of Commons; a responsibility and a duty to implement the recommendations of that Committee.

I regret to say that the Government of the day in 1964 felt unable to implement in full the recommendations of the Lawrence Committee. They did not improve on Lawrence: they worsened it. I was a member of the Government at the time and must take my share of responsibility. But this is the problem which confronts a Government when a report of this kind is received: should they implement it or should they not? Should they modify it? Should they bow to what they believe to be politically expedient at the moment, or to the psychology of the economic situation and to the attitude of people outside? Should they give way to that?

The Labour Government did give way to it by reducing the improvements which the Lawrence Committee recommended in the salaries of Ministers. We did not interfere with any other part of the Lawrence Report, except to reduce the increases which the Lawrence Committee had recommended, but it was bad in principle, I think, to have interfered with the recommendations of an outside body. If the House thinks it can do the job better itself, it should do it itself, but never again, in my judgment, will the House attempt to deal with this matter itself. We have now established, I think, the clear understanding that there will be a review body in the middle of every Parliament of normal length, and it is to that body all these things will be referred, as they were referred, of course, to the Boyle Review Body.

There is no doubt that the point of this Amendment, which derives from the Lawrence Committee, has been a very sore point from the beginning, and it is perhaps an even bigger grievance now because of the recommendations of the Boyle Review Body. It would improve the pensions based on reckonable service. We had in paragraph 81 of the Lawrence Report, what were the Lawrence conclusions.

We have to bear in mind that before Lawrence we had no pension scheme as of right. We had the Members' Fund, which is often described as on a means test. It is subject to means. There is no doubt about it. When I first came into the Members' Fund I deeply resented having to submit to a compulsory deduction from my remuneration to the Fund from which I could never draw any benefit. That seemed to me extremely hard, but that was the position we were in at the time of the setting up of the Lawrence Committee. The Lawrence Committee brought out the first as-of-right pension scheme. It had many flaws, and I shall refer to some of them a little later when we reach another substantial Amendment, but one of the things which the Lawrence Committee did was to deal with back service, as the hon. Member for Wycombe has pointed out.

The Lawrence Committee had to deal with the absorption of Members into a new contributory scheme—Members who had not made contributions up to the time the new proposals were recommended. How far should it go back? To what extent should past service be blanketed into a contributory scheme? The Lawrence Committee decided to go back 10 years. It seemed reasonable to bring into immediate benefit in the proposed pension scheme those who had served 10 years, even if they had not made contributions. That is what was recommended. It ignored service prior to 1954, and it excluded those who were not Members of the House on 16th October, 1964.

There is no doubt that some noble Lords in another place feel acutely that their long service in the House of Commons has been completely ignored for the purpose of reckoning pensions for them. There are many noble Lords who served long periods—some have been referred to already—in the House of Commons and who get no pension as of right because they were not serving in the House of Commons on 16th October, 1964.

The question is, what shall we do with Lawrence? This was referred to Boyle, and Boyle came out with an answer. Even if we do not like it, it came out with an answer, and that was in paragraph 69 which says:

"We do not feel able, however, to modify the recommendations on these points of the Lawrence Committee. The inclusion of former Members would be contrary to normal pension practice, while the changed retirement benefits we are recommending will greatly enhance the pensions payable to those Members who have reckonable service prior to October 1964."

That does not overcome the grievance of those who have had substantial previous service which does not count for the reckonability of pension.

It may be that another review of this scheme would lead to a different approach to the provisions for retirement of Members of Parliament. I will suggest one later. The importance of what we are doing today is not in the hope that we shall persuade the Government to amend the Bill but in putting on record some considerations for the next review. That, I think, is the important aspect of what we are doing today. There is no doubt that the grievance created by ignoring previous service is bound to persist so long as our pension scheme is literally related to actual years of service in the House.

1.0 p.m.

There is a very strong argument for not regarding actual length of service as an important criterion in providing pensions for Members. Length of service is not the criterion in fixing pensions for Prime Ministers, Lord Chancellors and Speakers. The fact that they hold office is regarded as sufficient justification for an adequate pension on retirement and it might be that the principle could be applied to ordinary Members. If an hon. Member has a reasonable length of service, that should justify ensuring that his retirement is free from hardship and financial worry. This may be a principle which another review body might adopt, having regard to the difficulty of relating the pension strictly to all Member's reckonable service on the principle of the vocational pension scheme. Later we shall see the difficulty which the Boyle Committee acknowledged, of relating the service of a Member of Parliament to the normal service of people outside this House who are in occupational schemes. There are important distinctions which must be taken into account.

What do we do about the Amendment? It would be a good thing if it could be accepted. It would sweep away considerable grievances that are felt not only by hon. Members here but by previous Members now in the House of Lords who put in long service in this House. Are we justified in demanding of the Government that they should make this change here and now, notwithstanding the recommendations of two outside bodies on the matter? I doubt whether we are, much as we would like to. But I think we are entitled to suggest to the next review body, which I understand will deal with pensions as well as with pay and allowances, that it should make an entirely new proposal about the problem as it affects hon. Members, probably adopting a new principle, so that we can get away from the literal application of the principles of vocational schemes which are so difficult to apply to us.

The House must face the fact that it deliberately remitted its domestic problems to an outside body hoping for an answer which would relieve it of the need to assume immediate responsibility for fixing conditions of service and pay for hon. Members. If we reject the verdict of outside bodies we may imperil chances of getting any outside body to look at the problem at all.

We may also expose our own conditions of service to the caprice of political expediency or economic stress and all the other factors which have led Governments to refuse to act and to say, "We cannot do that now because of what the public will think. They will say the first thing that MPs did was to improve their own conditions of service. What about the old-age pensioners?" We faced this in 1964 and 1965. Whichever party won the 1964 election was under the honourable obligation to implement Lawrence. It was to start with that cross to bear, whatever other difficulties it encountered. But we shrank from it then and future Governments might shrink from it again.

The whole thing has turned into a shambles and become a political football. It is of supreme importance to uphold the authority of review bodies. In which circumstances are we justified in proposing to change pensions? A change downwards is our greatest fear, having regard to the political considerations which have always beset the problem.

We are putting on record some considerations for the future, but I doubt whether any of us would advise the House to divide on the Amendment.

I should like to support all that the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said. The debate gives the House the opportunity to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) for everything he has done over many years in helping those hon. Members for whom no benefit was available. There is a distinction between the benefits which the hon. Member has under the scheme and those which are due to him from the House as of right.

I agree with everything that the right hon. Gentleman said but we have already handed over responsibility for determining the terms of service and pension matters to an outside body and I do not believe that we could be accused of furthering our own interests if we implemented its recommendations because we are speaking for those who are not present and who are unable to speak for themselves. That is the only difference of view I have with the right hon. Gentleman. The only result I can see from this discussion is that perhaps in the future a review body will take into consideration those large numbers of hon. Members who, through sheer ill luck, have been unable to benefit in any way financially except through the scheme which my hon. Friend the Member for Withington has administered so adequately over the years. Perhaps the body will consider that service to this House is rather a unique service and that people should not be deprived of benefit literally because they have served half a Parliament too little.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will make a point of assuring the House that a future Review Body will be asked to consider the matter.

Several hon. Members have anticipated what I was going to say, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) said that my brief was marked "resist". It is marked "resist", but I would not want the Committee to think that I have not considered the matter carefully. I have considered it carefully and I have taken note of the comments by the hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Bidwell), the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) and my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Dr. Glyn).

In moving the Amendment the hon. Member for West Ham, North said, fairly, that a small technical point was involved. The Amendment does not cover hon. Members who left the House before the 1964 General Election, but hon. Members speaking today have clearly had these people in mind. I appreciate very much that this is a matter of some sensitivity because we are discussing friends and former colleagues of many present hon. Members, and some of them are by no means well-off after retirement.

The Government appreciate that this is an issue on which there is considerable and strong feeling. Needless to say, the Lawrence Committee went into this with great care. I must correct the record here. Lawrence recommended deliberately and not by mistake that 10 years of service from 1954 to 1964 should be included. It did not pluck 10 years out of the air, meaning to make the period 20 years.

I should explain that I said that 10 years was not morally justified or right according to the principle. I am not suggesting that Lawrence made a mistake, only an error of judgment.

It may be an error of judgment, but that is the hon. Member's subjective personal view.

The Lawrence Committee recommended that full credit for past service before the beginning of the scheme should be granted up to a maximum of 10 years for those still in service in 1964, but that any years of past service in excess of 10 years should be ignored. This recommendation, which Lawrence did not find ungenerous, was adopted and included in the 1965 Act.

I was asked whether I based my objection on the ground that the pre-1964 people did not contribute. I would not do that because the 1965 Act made provision for a substantial Exchequer subsidy running at the rate of £132,000 a year to make up for the fact that Members serving in 1964 had not contributed for the previous 10 years. Normally this kind of issue is settled once and for all when the pension fund is set up, but a re-appraisal of the scheme afforded an opportunity for second thoughts. This is what happened under Boyle.

The Boyle Committee explained in paragraph 69 its reasons for not changing the Lawrence recommendations. It had been asked to consider certain issues, which included the possibility of providing for full credit for all service in the years up to 1964 in place of the present limit, and concluded that it did not feel able to modify the recommendation of Lawrence on these points. It pointed out that the changed retirement benefits which it was recommending would greatly enhance the pensions payable to Members who have reckonable service before 1964 and whose pensions would ultimately be payable under the scheme.

The Lawrence proposal involved a rather strange calculation. It meant so much for 15 years and so much for the rest of the time; it meant that there was a bias in favour of those who had a short parliamentary career. To take the two periods concerned, the rate of accrual for the first period of 15 years under Lawrence is l/54th, but for the second period it is 1/135th. These anomalies have been ironed out in the present scheme. But it was not felt by Boyle that it could go further back and make provisions for those excluded or those existing Members of the House of Commons who cannot count more than their 10 years, although they must have had service of 20 or 30 years.

I refer briefly to the Members' Fund. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) for the work he has done for the Fund and for many Members of the House over the years. Despite the introduction of a contributory pension scheme massively supported by the Exchequer, the Members' Fund, which also receives Exchequer support, has continued in existence providing fallback facilities for those whose parliamentary career ceased before contributory pensions were introduced.

Although increased only a year ago, the maximum grant payable from the Members' Fund is to be increased by 10 per cent, as soon as the Parliamentary and Other Pensions Bill is passed. Total income limits are to be extended by a greater amount, giving a more extensive discretion to pay higher grants, subject to the overriding limit on pensions payable from the contributory scheme in respect of similar periods of service.

I sum up by saying that I cannot accept the Amendment, although I appreciate that hon. Members feel strongly about this matter. This subject has been well studied by Lawrence and Boyle. I emphasise the point made by the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), that it is better for us to accept these reports in to to. Secondly, by giving back-credit to Members when a pension fund is set up it is normal practice in the private sector that this is a once and for all adjustment. One does not keep on looking at it. Having decided on a period of 10 years, one does not in a few years think that it should be 15 or 20 years. It would be a retrospective element which would be out of character with other public service pension schemes and would be more generous. We would treat ourselves more generously than we treat many public servants. I also have responsibility for public service pensions, and I am concerned that we do not incorporate into our own scheme as Members of the House of Commons provisions which in certain circumstances can be held to be more generous than apply to many of the people to whom I have to write and say "I am sorry, but I cannot give you back-credit". This is a continuing problem.

Is this not the basis of some of the misunderstanding of the problem; namely, a comparison of Members' salaries and pensions with those which obtain in outside organisation whether they be the Civil Service, commerce or the professions? The two are not comparable. We cannot support an argument on the basis that we are doing something that is not done for other people outside the House.

I would not claim that our pension scheme is comparable, and that was the basis of my argument on an earlier Amendment—namely, that to some extent this is a unique scheme. What I am concerned about is that we should not be seen to be giving ourselves, despite our unique career pattern, privileges and advantages which I in the day-to-day administration of my Department have to resist for other public servants. I find it exceedingly difficult to do that. I shall revert to this point on the next Amendment, which is probably the most substantial Amendment before us. I shall elaborate on this matter fully then.

I end by saying that I am sure that when the next Review Body is set up it will look into this debate and will take on board and appreciate the views of hon. Members on this point. I cannot predetermine what it will say, but I am certain it will look at the point again.

I am very disappointed with the Minister's reply and particularly his tone of voice in saying that the Review Body will perhaps consider the matter later and then, in effect, telling the Review Body that the Government will not recommend it to accept the suggestion set out in the Amendment.

I accept that the Amendment may not be properly worded in a legal sense, but that is not the point. The point about Amendments is that they involve discussions of principle. The Minister has not dealt with the principle.

There is no question of our trying to ally ourselves with the Civil Service or public servants, because there is no comparison. The Civil Service and public services have always had reasonably adequate salaries; the Civil Service unions have been able to argue and negotiate these salaries.

I do not know of one civil servant who has ever had to pay for the postage he uses for his letters, or who has had to pay his secretary out of his salary, or pay money out of his salary for his phone calls, his train fare, or for his hotel, lunch or dinner when staying away from home overnight. Certainly no civil servant pays a penny towards his pension since he is on a non-contributory basis. There are perhaps very few who may have had non-recordable pension service, and the unions have been rightly arguing that even those civil servants should be included. There is just no comparison between them and Members of Parliament.

The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) is right to say that we are dealing with Members of Parliament who have in the main left the House. With great respect to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), I am not so much concerned about the noble Peers who were Members of this House. I am more concerned with those who were here and who are not now noble Peers. They are the people who were treated shabbily for years. They are the people were were precluded from getting their rights. We are saying that because of that, and because Lawrence and Boyle have said that they will not do anything for them, it is wrong for the Government, with the agreement of the official Opposition, to say that they intend to do nothing to upset the arrangement because Boyle and Lawrence agree with it. My right hon. Friend at least said that the Review Body should consider it. But the Minister went a little further and said that he would tell the Review Body beforehand not to interfere with the present arrangement since it would create problems for him.

There is another point which has not been mentioned and I want to draw attention to it because it has slipped out of public focus. I want to get it back into focus. Those concerned have also lost on the reduced rights that they have had over the years, when one considers how shabbily they have been dealt with in not having their pensions reviewed. I am glad that there is to be a review in depth. In a Written Question on 25th May I asked the Lord President of the Council about the erosion that had taken place in these pensions which in any event had not been fully paid. I was supplied with full details. They have lost £638 in their pensions. They have never had their pensions put up as a result of the Pensions Increase Acts which have applied to those public servants for whom the Minister is so concerned.

What is the pension to which this fall in value relates?

I am willing to give the hon. Gentleman details. However, we do not want to waste time. He will find them in the Written Answer to which I have referred. The purchasing value of a £600 pension has depreciated to £480, and the cumulative loss over the period from 1964 to April, 1972, is £638. That takes into account the 20 per cent, adjustment made last year. But my point is that they have lost these sums cumulatively each year, and they will never get them back. Some of these people will not be here for the next review. It is no good suggesting that we will look after them. My right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) mentioned the case of the widow of the Member in 1908. I do not know who she is. She must be a ripe old age. God bless her. I hope that she lives to see the next review. But is it right to say that because she and her husband were deprived over the years she must still be deprived because Lawrence and Boyle say so and we must not interfere?

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) and his fellow trustees. My right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall said that generous treatment is given. However, it is on a means-test basis. Like my right hon. Friend for Sowerby, I have had to contribute to the fund over the years knowing that I would never draw anything out of it. I do not mind that, because I know that some poor devil who needs it will get it. Now we have a chance to put matters right, not on a means-test basis but on the basis that every man or woman who has given service will of right be able to get his or her pension on the basis of the time served.

I do not know of any person, whether an ordinary member of the public or anyone in industry, who would object if a dear old Member of Parliament who had given a lifetime of service and had been underpaid in the past were now to get back what he had missed in past years. There would be no objection from the public. I do not believe that even civil servants would object. The Minister has tried to use Members of Parliament as his whipping boys in respect of the Civil Service. But if a civil servant had given 40 years' service and was only to get a pension for the last 20 years, I would support him in any protest that he made, and if the Minister cared to introduce a Bill to put the matter right I should not oppose it. Therefore, that is not an argument, and it was unfair of the Minister to introduce it, because it will load the scales when the Review Body next considers the position.

I do not want to be thought to have implied that the Government will make any recommendation to the next Review Body. It is not the Government's function to do that. The Review Body sits and it calls evidence. It would be inappropriate for the Government of the day to submit that sort of evidence. I am sure the Review Body will take note of the arguments deployed this morning. However, in my capacity as a Minister I am neutral vis-à-vis the Review Body's next meeting and the way that it treats its evidence and takes various arguments into account. The Government do not have a view, as the previous Government did not have a view while the Lawrence Committee considered its recommendations. The Government take a view only after the Review Body has reported and they have considered its recommendations.

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I withdraw what I said before. I am very pleased to hear that. When the Review Body reads this debate, it will be able to take cognisance of the fact that the Government are not telling it that in deciding whether or not to put this matter right it should bear in mind the position of civil servants and others. I should prefer all that I have said about it to be deleted from the record. I am glad to hear that the Review Body will judge the case on its merits.

Notwithstanding that, I shall not withdraw my Amendment. I prefer to wait and see how the debate proceeds.

I apologise for arriving in the middle of the debate. However, I want to support what the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) and others have said. At the moment we are dealing with the past and in the main with people who have left the House. The provision made in the past has been derisory, and the only reason why we believe the provisions in the present bill to be satisfactory is that we are comparing them with the absurdity of the past. I should prefer to see a proper pension scheme with more substantial contributions but finishing up at a different level from that proposed in the Bill, which is absurd.

My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has been talking about the Review Body. However, I do not take the view that this is a matter for the Review Body. The purpose of the Review Body is to keep this scheme up to date as events change. Consideration of how the past should be dealt with is for the House, not for the Review Body looking at future changes. This is the moment for the change to be made and to say that all past services should be reckonable. After all, does this come within the remit of the Review Body? It might by a great stretching of it. But it is not the job of the Review Body at all.

The Government should take a view about this matter. How can we be neutral about this matter? Do the Government need to be advised on how past Members over the years should be treated? Do we need advice about that from some outside body reviewing future changes? The Government should make up their mind and say what they think, and the House should decide.

I am glad that the hon. Member for West Ham, North will not withdraw his Amendment. I hope that he will press it to a Division. There is no point in moving Amendments if one does not do so. The only way one can ever get anything out of Governments of any complexion at any time in any century is by taking matters to a Division, and then they have to take one a little more seriously.

I beg to move Amendment No. 9, in page 7, line 41, leave out 'sixty-five' and insert 'sixty'

With this Amendment it will be convenient to take the following Amendments:

This is a small but vital point. I will travel as quickly as I can. If I do not go into detail I still think hon. Members will get the point.

As the Clause stands, it will be possible for a Member at 65 to go on to pension subject to the details and qualifications, which I shall not go into as they are in the Bill. On a voluntary basis a Member can go at 60 on a pro tanto reduced benefit basis.

The object of the Amendment is that the 65 should be reduced to 60. That means that a Member would automatically have the right of pension at 60—whether he wanted to go or not would be entirely up to him—and have the right to opt for a reduced pension on a pro tanto basis at 55 instead of 60. The Amendments vary, but they are all consequential. Basically they have this one point in mind.

I need not go into the facts of the situation, because I have already said there is no comparability with Members. It is now generally accepted in almost every pension scheme of which I know, private or public, that the pensionable age is 60. Most of them are asking to be reduced to below 60 where it can be taken on age provided that the qualifications have been met.

I am asking the Minister to give consideration to this matter. In this instance, as it will not vitally affect anyone who is liable to become too adversely affected, if the Minister can assure me that the Review Body will consider this matter at its next review I should be happy.

The Committee may be interested to know the cost of the proposal to reduce retirement age from 65 to 60 on a voluntary basis. It would raise the cost of the scheme, and the total new entrant contribution rate would rise from 13½ per cent, to 16 per cent. That is the total of the Government's and the Member's shares. The Boyle Committee recommended sharing the costs as to three-eighths and five-eighths by Members and the Government respectively. That would require a Member's 5 per cent, contribution to be raised to 6 per cent., and there would be a corresponding increase in the deficit payment falling upon the Exchequer in respect of past service.

However, I do not rest my resistance to this proposal on the basis of cost. The Boyle Committee looked at this matter carefully and specifically and in paragraph 60 said:

"A lowering of the normal retirement age would, however, enable Members to enjoy more favourable terms in this respect than those available under the National Insurance Act, as well as the great majority of occupational pension schemes."

The Boyle Committee rested its argument not on comparability with the Civil Service, which received rather dusty treatment under the last Amendment, but with the great majority of the electorate for whom the male retirement age is 65.

Although it is perfectly true that the majority of the schemes to which the Parliamentary Secretary refers have 65 as the retirement age, certainly those established by the major undertakings have a lower age. The age is coming down all the time. Most of the big companies have 62 or 63 as the age of retirement.

My hon. Friend has anticipated my next point. I was about to comment that a good deal of thought is going on at the moment in all parts of the country about the retirement age. For example, the unions have made certain recommendations in recent months. There is a most interesting and well thought out pamphlet by some Tory Members of Parliament published this week which advocates that this matter should be looked at again. I am talking about the national retirement age being reduced from 65 to 60. As a Minister I am not allowed to make personal observations at the Dispatch Box, so I have to leave it at that. However, there is a great deal of feeling in the country that this is one area where social improvement should be made.

I am concerned that our pension scheme should not run ahead of the field. That would be giving ourselves a special position. Many schemes have other facilities that are not in the Bill, but we cannot act as Billy Bunters in the tuck shop of the constitution and pick out the currants from the buns we see in front of us and ignore the rest of the buns. I think the public would resent it if we gave ourselves a special position on earlier retirement.

I do not find amongst my colleagues a great desire to retire early. The Amendment assumes there is great pressure by Members, that they are just waiting to go at 65 years of age.

Sixty.

Nor I believe at 60. I have yet to meet hon. Members who want to do that. The House seems to act as a magnet, and the magic age of 65 or 60 is not a demagnetising figure. Indeed, hon. Members hang on not with indifference but with tenacity. I do not feel that this would be helpful. However, I assure the hon. Member for West Ham, North, once again, that the Review Body will look at the matter and take cognisance of the debate that we have had in the last quarter of an hour.

I appreciate the facetiousness with which the Parliamentary Secretary spoke about Ministers hanging on.

Members.

"Hanging on" is the operative phrase. I will come to Members in a moment. However, this would not be compulsory. Hon. Members would still have the right to stay on after 65 if they wished. The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) know that in recent years a number of Members literally did hang on because they could not get a pension unless they completed the time.

I declare an interest here. I have been a Member for 27 years. God forbid that it should happen—I say this not for my sake, but for the sake of my wife—but if I were to have a heart attack, or for some other reason not be able to carry on as a Member, I should have to wait until I was 65 in order to get a pension. I know that my right hon. Friend and the Chief Whip would be pleased if I had to leave the House before I was due to retire, but there may be others who would not be so pleased about it. I should have to wait for another 11 years before getting a pension.

Fortunately for me, I have had a reasonably easy life. I was a trade union official for the best part of my life, and I was well looked after. All good trade unionists look after their officials, and I was all right. It was only when I came to this place that I began to suffer. That was in the early days of 1945.

There are many poor, hard-working miners who come to this House when they are 40 or 50, or perhaps even a little later. I have known some Members who would have liked to retire at60. I have in mind one of our colleagues who had pneumoconiosis. He used to walk around gasping for breath, and a number of his colleagues asked him why he did not pack up. His answer was simply that even if he had the necessary service, he was not of the right age and would have to wait until he was 60. That is a terrible situation. Men like him give perhaps 20 or 30 years service but they cannot retire even if they want to. Some hon. Members may not want to hang on, as the Minister puts it.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby laughs. I might be bribed by the Patronage Secretary opposite, and the future Patronage Secretary, who is now on this side of the Committee, to pack up and go because they want to get rid of me. My first response would have to be that I cannot go because I am not 60, even though I have the qualification of time, and there are others in a similar position.

The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) said that most pension schemes are trying to bring down the retirement age. Certainly most of the progressive schemes have that in mind. I know that the Civil Service and local government are doing it. I am not against a Member staying on in the House if he wants to. I am not against someone like Lord Shinwell continuing to serve here until he is 90, so long as he is fit and capable of doing his job. By all means let someone in that situation carry on. But I want to give Members the right to retire at 55 if they are physically disabled enough to make them feel that they would like to opt for retirement even at a reduced rate or to retire automatically at 60 and to go on full pension. I do not think that the Minister has answered the point of the Amendments.

One of the small improvements made by the Boyle scheme meets some of the hon. Gentleman's arguments. Under the Lawrence scheme there could not be a reduced pension at 60. A Member had to wait until he was 65 to retire. It is fair to say that review bodies of this sort are very much aware of feelings of that nature.

Perhaps I may now deal with the point made by the hon. Gentleman about somebody aged 50 who feels ill enough not to be able to carry on and has to cease being a Member. Boyle does not provide for sickness benefits, for the simple reason that a sickness pension can be effectively adjudged only by the person employing the man who falls sick. We are not employed by anybody. It would be difficult to assess when, because of sickness or infirmity, a Member was unable to fulfil his duties as a Member. It is that kind of demarcation line and that kind of decision with which I should not want to be concerned.

I was trying to hurry, and I used sickness only as an illustration. There may be hon. Members who want to pack up for various reasons. I used the sickness illustration because the hon. Member for Withington knows the hon. Member to whom I was referring.

A Member may want to pack up for any one of a number of reasons. He may feel that he has had enough, but he will not be able to retire. He may want to retire on other than health grounds. He may just be tired and feel that he has had enough. I accept that there has been an improvement by lowering the age from 65 to 60, but I ask the Minister to be more progressive and to reduce the age by five years and bring us into line with what is happening outside.

I beg to move Amendment No. 11, in page 8, line 5, leave out 'one sixtieth' and insert 'one fiftieth'.

With this Amendment we are to take the following Amendments:

I do not think that we can hurry our debate on these Amendments because, not only are they important, but for the first time I see that I have the support of 40 or 50 right hon. and hon. Members.

These Amendments raise the question of the entitlement of pension rights on a contributory basis for various periods. I have chosen periods of one-fortieth and one-fiftieth, but the Minister knows that Amendments such as these are tabled for the purposes of debate and that the hon. Member who tables them is not necessarily wedded to the form of words.

I pay tribute to the improvements made by the Boyle Committee in salaries, conditions of service, pensions, and so on. I pay tribute, too, to the Lord President of the Council who has kindly carried out his promise on Second Reading and sent hon. Members a circular pending the issue of the booklet which he has promised to send out, and which I assume is in the process of being prepared.

In his memorandum the right hon. Gentleman gives details which I do not think are good enough. I refer to the annex and the statement of facts. Because of the limited time at our disposal I shall not go into the ancillary benefits for widows, and so on, because if the Minister is prepared to accept my principle for the pensions of Members I assume that the principle for widows' pensions will also be accepted.

I want to upgrade the amount of the pension based on the qualifications laid down in the Bill. When the 1965 Act started, it was provided that after 10 years' reckonable service a Member would get a pension of £600 a year. Under the Boyle scheme, that figure will be increased to £750, which means an extra £150 a year. On the surface that seems reasonable, but then one realises that quite rightly, the Member has to pay increased contributions, and it is said that the contribution will go up by about £75 a year. I do not think that one can regard that as an adequate return on the extra money.

Has my hon. Friend noted the footnote in the annex which shows that, under the Boyle Scheme, these benefits were increased by 20 per cent, in April, 1971, which raised them to £600? Adding another 20 per cent, to them would make £720. The gap between Boyle and the previous limit is much smaller.

I thank my hon. Friend. I hope that I can call him that, in the same sense as that in which he referred to me—personally if not politically. I was about to say that the contributions have rightly been increased. I was saying that we have to pay about £75 a year.

The benefits have been increased.

Yes, but, as the hon. Member says, the differential has been lessened.

I think it will be agreed that my Amendments have been an effort to be helpful and not obstructive. I want to leave my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) the whole field in which to put his case, because on this at least he agrees with me and the 50 or 60 of my hon. Friends who have attached their names to the Amendment.

I should like to make one party point. I am pleased to see a number of able parliamentarians here on a non-political basis. But we have no representative of the Liberal Party. Even one of the six could and should have been here.

I put the question to the Leader of the Liberal Party yesterday whether we could have a Liberal representative here. He said, "I have only six Members. I shall try very hard to find someone who is free of engagements to be here". Obviously, he did not succeed.

I am grateful for that information. This affects every Member of Parliament and there are three parties. I should have thought that one Liberal could have been here. But I will leave it at that.

I should like to leave my right hon. Friend time to intervene, but if his contribution is not as vigorous on this Amendment as it was on the last, I may want to return to the subject.

I feel almost that I should apologise to the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) for preventing his right hon. Friend from entering the debate straight away after that challenging approach.

After having heard a fair part of the debate, I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for West Ham, North. I have not always felt that his Amendments have been as constructive as today. The Committee owes him a vote of thanks for allowing us to discuss these very important matters.

Having said that, I cannot support these Amendments, which I believe miss the mark. We must not underestimate the tremendous movement forward represented by the pensions and other proposals in the Boyle Report. It is a major step in the right direction, which, for the first time, gives us something approaching a reasonable occupational pension scheme. In all these circumstances, we have to be careful not to give the impression of ingratitude or of running before we have started to walk.

Why do I think that the Amendments are ahead of their time? Hon. Members—I am conscious of the considerable number who have put their names to the Amendments—have overlooked one thing. They are not comparing like with like. They are saying, "If we are only to get sixtieths, and are therefore liable to get only a quarter of our final year's salary, that compares very unfavourably with what the employee in the average private occupational scheme can expect."

Of course it does, but this difference arises for very important reasons. We are here over only a part of our working lives. The average age of entering this House, I should think, is between 35 and 40. Most of us have earned a living of some sort before we enter the House. Many of us—this will be so more and more as time goes by—have been involved in private superannuation schemes before coming here. Whether we like it or not, most of us have already earned some sort of retirement income.

On what evidence does my hon. Friend say that a large number of Members already have payable to them an existing pension from their previous occupation?

I was careful, I thought, to say that this could be assumed to be more and more so in the future, if for no better reason than that the Government document "Strategy for Pensions", which it is hoped to enact later in this Parliament, will almost certainly mean that, either through the reserve fallback scheme of the State or through an occupational scheme, this will have to be so. But even if we did not look to the future, we might reflect that the House of Commons is a microcosm of society. The number of people in the past 20 years who have entered occupational pension schemes is considerable and growing all the time. Although most of them are white collar workers, again over the last few years pension schemes for non-white collar workers have become much more predominant throughout British industry. When most of us enter this place, because we have had a job, we have earned part of our future pension income.

What my hon. Friend says may be true, although much of it is hypothetical. But it is not enough to say that the majority—that is the best that can be said—will have some pension arrangements when they come into the House. We must legislate for all.

I am glad that my hon. Friend raised that point, because I was about to move on to it. I have said, and I repeat with conviction, that a number of us have already earned a pension from our previous employment when we enter the House. I take the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall). It may be said that a great many people could not earn a pension in their previous employment for the simple reason that no pension scheme existed in the firms for which they worked. But where they have had no pension scheme they have had the opportunity to effect self-employed retirement annuities, not because they are necessarily self-employed but because they have been in a firm where no pension arrangements existed. Nobody could have told them how to spend their money, but they could have chosen to take advantage of that opportunity. Whether or not a Member was employed in a firm with a pension scheme, he nevertheless had the opportunity between the ages of 20, or whenever he began work, and the age of 40 or so when he entered the House, to build up some sort of pension entitlement before entering Parliament.

There is the other aspect that a sizeable number of Members choose to earn some additional income outside the House. Under the same regulations, stemming from the Finance Act, 1956, they were allowed for many years to put up to 10 per cent, of such earnings into the same self-employed retirement annuity, and that percentage has been increased to 15 per cent. Even when we are here, very few of us have to rely on the one source of pension income alone.

In view of the likelihood of an average service of 15 years, the average pension is likely to be one-quarter of the terminal year's salary under the new rules. I accept that that does not seem at all good when compared with the half or often two-thirds which an employee is likely to take home if he is a member of a private occupational pension scheme. But that is not comparing like with like.

I have some sympathy with my two hon. Friends who have intervened. An hon. Member who gives 15 years' service here will receive a quarter of his terminal salary, plus what he has earned before entering the House, plus what he may earn in pension if he retires or is defeated in an election before he is 65, plus the opportunity he has of effecting a 1956 Act retirement annuity from the additional earnings over and above his parliamentary income while he is here. For that reason alone, what is provided for in the Bill is not as unfair as the hon. Member for West Ham, North tried to suggest when moving the Amendment.

One or two other points must be borne in mind. There are in existence some very respectable occupational pension schemes where the pension is based not upon one-sixtieths but one-eightieths. Of the occupational pension schemes with which I have come into contact—a fair number over a long professional career—the number with one-eightieth as the final retirement basis is still quite considerable. Therefore, we are at one step going far better than quite a number of private occupational pension schemes. For that reason also, I beg the Committee to think very carefully before moving too far forward. We must be a little careful about running ahead of public opinion, about running ahead of what the great mass of the public still receive, particularly as we move towards a gradual development of the occupational pension scheme, or the State fall-back, as we legislate on the basis of "Strategy for Pensions".

For all those reasons, the House must go very slowly. We must be grateful that we have managed now to introduce a pension scheme with as many modern features as that which is before us contains, and we must be very careful not to run ahead of public opinion, ahead of a great many occupational pension schemes outside.

On the publication of the Boyle Report I fixed on the question of pensions as one of the respects in which I thought the Committee had made a mistake. I wrote a letter to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, and subsequently had a long conversation with him on the subject. I then said that I thought that it was on the issue of pensions that the Committee had not put forward an entirely appropriate scheme.

The Committee states in Chapter 2 of its report:

"The average ape at which a Member entered Parliament in 1970 was 40".

The average retiring age was 57 and the average length of service was 17 years. Therefore, if we base the pension entitlement on a sixtieth, no average Member will receive even a third of his final rate of pay as his pension. It would be necessary for a Member to complete 30 years before he was entitled even to half pay on retirement, which is roughly what I had hoped the pension proposals would bring about.

A Member entering the House at the average entry age of 40 would be 70 before he was entitled to half pay on retirement. Actuarially, the number of years for which one can expect to enjoy from the age of 70 whatever pension one has earned is not very great.

We should like a little guidance from my hon. Friend the Minister on what the actuarial reductions are likely to be for those who retire before 65 or draw the pension before that age. The figure is quite startling to some of my hon. Friends.

The Amendment has been supported by over 70 Members, and I am sure that many more signatures could have been obtained if efforts had been made to obtain them.

I did not ask one Member to add his name to the Amendment. I do not know how they were added. There could well have been a number of others if there had been the usual lobbying.

For the reasons I have given—the average age of entry, the average age of retirement and the average time spent as a Member—I have felt that a fortieth or perhaps a fiftieth was the most appropriate basis. It may well be that some of the newer Members come straight from the office desk, or wherever they have been working, with accumulated pension rights. But many of us entered the House from the Army. We were trying to build up our careers and were not thinking too much about our pensions at the time. I should not be happy about a young chap going after a job at the age of 20 whose first question was, "What is the pension?" Other things are more important in the early stages. If, when I started work in the City, I had been more concerned about what my pension would be, I probably would not be in the House. I was determined not to worry too much about the pence in those days but to try to move forward.

We should make an exception because we are individuals, we are private enterprise people. We should not be here, on either side of the House, if we were not. Members have struck out along an independent line and have not worried too much about future security and pensions because of their anxiety to come here. We make a mistake if we try and model our pensions of a scheme whereby people enter at 18 or 20 years of age and stay right through to the age of 60, accumulating 40 years, and setting a two-thirds pension. A junior official at the Foreign Office finishing up as ambassador does well if he gets two-thirds of his final pay. But we do not come in on that basis. It is difficult for anyone here to accumulate 40 years' service. Indeed, it is almost impossible under our system. Very few people, on the figures I have quoted, of 40 years average service, average retirement at 57 and 17 years' service in the House of Commons, will retire on one-third of permanent salary when leaving this place. That is why I support the Amendment.

I support the Amendment because I believe that there is justice in it and that no one could sensibly argue against it. The right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said that there may be faults in the reports we have had, including the Boyle Report. I agree. I can see the force of the argument that he put to us—that we should take this as a package and not fix our own arrangements. But it is disturbing and difficult to do that when we know that this aspect is wrong. I believe that the Amendment must therefore be right.

There is another important aspect. My hon. Friend the Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson), when he spoke about hypothetical cases, suggested that a majority of hon. Members may get other pensions from some other source. That has nothing to do with it. Our job, as he rightly said, is to put the matter right on its own merits here in this place and on the facts as we know them. It would be quite wrong to have an arrangement suitable only to a majority, even if he is right in his argument.

But there is even more to it than that. I understand from the Treasury that the arrangement for self-employed persons which is favourable to private pension insurance—that is, 15 per cent, being allowed for premiums on one's earned income as a self-employed person—is not applicable to Members. This is a vital factor. Did the Boyle Committee ever take this into account? If it did not, the whole situation has changed and clearly the Boyle Report is not acceptable.

If one is fortunate enough to have employment outside, as I and many others have—infinitesimal though it may be—one can invest 15 per cent, of one's income tax-free because one is self-employed in that capacity. But although we are classed by the Treasury as being self-employed in this place, that rule does not apply to Members and to our salaries as Members. Thus, we do not get the 15 per cent, allowance on our earned income here. We can get only 5 per cent., which is the amount we contribute, and nothing more. We are at a great disadvantage, and this is a serious factor on the kind of figures about which we are talking. I should like the Minister to tell us why we are not allowed to invest the 15 per cent., why we cannot top up our 5 per cent, allowance to 15 per cent. There has been a reference to fees in this connection, but the Treasury says that the 15 per cent, tax allowance is for self-employed only.

Is my hon. Friend saying that, in addition to having the pension we are discussing, with deductions from the income which we are paid, we should also be able to invest another 15 per cent.?

No. The Treasury rule is that one is allowed to invest 15 per cent, if one is self-employed. We should be allowed by the Inland Revenue the additional 10 per cent.

The hon. Gentleman is saying that we are allowed 5 per cent, for tax purposes, whereas if we were self-employed outside we should be allowed 15 per cent. He is saying, in effect, that the differential of 10 per cent, should also be allowable for tax purposes and that this would cover the point.

Certainly. That is exactly right. I shall be interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary says. Perhaps we ought to have the Chancellor of the Exchequer here to tell us why this situation is as it is. The Finance Bill is still in Committee, and if there is an injustice, let us put it right there if we cannot do it in this Bill. But in any case this is a side issue. It only aggravates the situation but does not detract from the justice of the Amendment.

I am told that there may be a review in 1974, but how long will that take to reach us? Might it not take up to 1976? I suggest that the earliest date for that would be 1975–76, and this is quite wrong. I am disturbed by the Boyle Report. I want to know whether the question of the 15 per cent, allowance was taken into account by the Boyle Committee. If not, why should we not adjust the matter by this Amendment? If we cannot do it in this Bill, let us do it in the Finance Bill.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) for his co-operation in facilitating the business of the Committee today. I am sure that the Committee appreciates it. It seems to be very much his day, and if it were not that we do not like commercials in this place I would say "Why go to Lewis's when you can come to the House of Commons?"

I hope it is not presumptuous of me to say that it would probably be in the best interests of the House if we could dispose of the Bill this afternoon. Time is running on and we still have some business to do. Having said that, it would ill become me to occupy the Committee for too long.

Nevertheless, this is a very substantial matter and we are speaking, so to speak, for the record, for the guidance of those who may come after us to consider this matter afresh, rather than with any immediate hope of writing a new Members' pension scheme now. There are one or two observations that may be valuable.

Again, we have to get the matter into perspective. We had no pension scheme as of right before the Lawrence Report in 1964. Within six years of the first ever pension scheme as of right for hon. Members, we sent it to another Review Body to consider, along with other conditions of service.

It is a rather speedy review of a superannuation scheme, as the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. McCrindle) will admit. Here we are with the product of that review after only six years. I join with the hon. Member in saying that we must not under-estimate the value of the improvements that have come from this review, for they are substantial. Nevertheless, the climate of superannauation and occupational schemes is changing rapidly all the time.

The Lawrence Committee was considering the matter in a different epoch in superannuation terms in 1963 from 1971, and the next Review Body in several years' time will find that things have moved more rapidly still. Nevertheless, there are some things about the present proposals which it is important to consider, while not under-rating the speed of progress and the value of changes now proposed.

In proposing the first scheme on a contributary basis the Lawrence Committee naturally gave deep consideration to what type of scheme it should be. When the Boyle Committee was asked to review that scheme, it must have thought even more deeply about what changes should be made in a scheme which had been in operation for only six years. The Lawrence Committee devised a scheme which in important respects appeared to have no clearly recognisable relationship with occupational schemes. It took fixed amounts of £60 and £20 as the multiples on which to calculate a pension. It gave more credit to the first 15 years of service than to service after 15 years, another remarkable feature.

The Lawrence Committee provided for a maximum pension of 60 per cent, of salary after 45 years. That length of service is almost unobtainable, as the hon. Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson) has pointed out. I will not comment on what hon. Members might think of one who had been here for 45 years. I once saw an hon. Member celebrate his 90th birthday in the House, but I am not sure that we should think him deserving of an even greater affluence in his retirement than other hon. Members. It is all a matter of opinion, but at least the Boyle Committee brought the maximum qualification for pension down to 40 years. In paragraph 55 of its report it acknowledged the difference between service here and service in an occupational scheme.

Another important feature is that the Boyle Committee's proposals evidently bear the mark of Civil Service change. Some proposals reflect changes being brought about in the Civil Service, too. The change in the assessment of pension on an average, and on the remuneration of the final year, and the calculation of reckonable service by reference to days instead of years as formerly, are changes also being made in the Civil Service. The death grant is a feature being brought into our scheme which looks very like that being introduced into the Civil Service.

The factor of 1/60th of salary for each year of service is a feature of public sector schemes. The hon. Member for Billericay said that in many occupational schemes the factor was 1/80th and not l/60th. That is true of the Civil Service, but the Civil Service exchanged 1/60th for 1/80th in 1909 when taking a lump sum tax-free gratuity on retirement. It was a useful exchange at the time, and it has never since been reversed.

One feature of the Boyle Report misses an essential characteristic of service in the House. There is only one hon. Member who has completed 40 years of unbroken service in the House, and that is the Father of the House the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton). There are other right hon. and hon. Gentlemen who are getting very near to 40 years' service and some who have been here for more than 40 years with a short break. However, owing to the disregard of service prior to October, 1954, a matter which we were debating a few moments ago, none of those Members can possibly qualify for a full pension under the Boyle Report. Indeed the earliest day at which any Member can qualify for full pension rights will be October,1994. This shows the significance of the combination of the total service requirement to get the maximum pension with the fact of disregarding service prior to October, 1954.

No scheme based on an expectation of 40 years in the House is realistic. We have different ages of recruitment, and anyway there is no career expectation in the House. One might say that 25 years, with a limit of 30, was about as long as the general run of Members would serve before retiring, and even that length of service might well have a break because of electoral changes which send hon. Members into the wilderness at intervals.

A pension of two-thirds' pay after 40 years is not of real interest to the general run of hon. Members because it is unattainable, and it will be unattainable even if every year of service counts towards 40 years in the House. What we need is a scheme related to the average length of service in the House, or even something more than average, something reasonable, something substantial, and 25 years may be the sort of basis upon which a pension scheme should be devised.

Even 25 years is a long time. A Member has to be politically lucky and keep in good health and strength to spend 25 years coming to retirement age. We have to remember that there is no provision for a breakdown pension and no one gets a pension on retirement on the ground of ill health. A scheme giving half pay on retirement at 65 after 25 years' service would be better and more realistic. The Boyle Committee suggests half pay after 30 years' service. It is on the high side. If the qualifying period for half pay were somewhat lower than 30 years, we should be within sight of a more realistic superannuation scheme for hon. Members.

An additional pension for service beyond 25 years may be important to a few, but much more important to the general run of Members is to buttress the pension scheme for service between 15 and 25 years. This is the service which has to be regarded as the material band for the appraisal of an adequate provision on retirement.

2.30 p.m.

I know that this could be regarded as exceptional in comparison with many schemes outside, but I do not think that it is when considered in the perspective of the life work of a Member of Parliament. Most Members have put in a good deal of service in one field or another, often in public life, before coming here.

I take the point made by the hon. Member for Billericay, who made a very thoughtful analysis of the situation, that some hon. Members may come here with accumulated pension rights. Those rights may be frozen or, presumably, they may be transferred. The hon. Gentleman said that cover for previous service might in a number of cases be part of the ultimate reckoning of provision for retirement. I doubt whether that for a long time to come will be the general experience of Members. Many Members come with too short service in the occupational scheme to have earned any accumulated rights worth having. Others are in schemes that are not transferable. Others are not in schemes at all.

What we are considering, and what we would like another Review Body to study very carefully, is how to provide for the retirement of Members at the end of their public life with a reasonable amount to live on, adequate but not generous.

Although a general sense of the fitness of things requires a reasonable period of service as Member of Parliament to justify the provisions that should be made, there is another aspect of the matter. There is in the case of Prime Ministers and Ministers an acknowledgment of the position they have held. That can reasonably enter into the appraisal of the retirement conditions of Members. We do not regard ourselves as comparable with high officers of State, but we are Members of Parliament and we are, along with high officers of State, the leaders of the nation. We are the institution in which the people are asked to put their faith in democratic and parliamentary Government. We have a high responsibility, and we are entitled to reasonable respect and generosity from those who send us here.

Although we would not dream of asking to be pensioned off on the conditions of Prime Ministers and Lord Chancellors, nevertheless if we have put in a reasonable period of service the criterion for appraisal of our pension expectations should be: what sort of retirement should a Member reasonably have when he leaves the House of Commons on the ground of age?

Late entrants into the Civil Service are now to have the opportunity to buy themselves in—on a transfer value basis and on an instalment plan—to make up for their loss of pensionable service. This is in the case of civil servants who have previously been undergoing a period of training to equip themselves for their professional life. After all, those who come here usually undergo some experience to equip themselves to be a Member of Parliament. We do not get the opportunity of buying ourselves in for service we have not put in. We do not get an opportunity of buying ourselves in for the service we have put in if it is prior to 16th October. 1954.

Nevertheless, there is something unseemly in any country in which Members of Parliament appear to be greedy or grasping or to be acquiring for themselves conditions which are substantially out of scale with those of the people generally. So we must be modest in our claims in this regard. The nub of the problem is that we are late-age entrants into a vocational pension scheme. What provision is to be made for late entrants in the circumstances? Members are, after all, recruited after the normal age.

It may be thought, returning to what the hon. Member for Billericay said, that those who have accumulated pension rights from other schemes and who might, if they get the benefit of this more liberal pension scheme for Members, cumulatively have excess provision for their retirement. I would not be averse to some limitation to the overall provision for the retirement of a Member in those circumstances, but it would be a difficult question of scaling pensions to individual circumstances. I do not think that any such possibility need arise for quite a long time to come. This may be a point that will have to be considered by a future Review Body.

We cannot demand from the Government today that they should depart from the Boyle recommendations, favourable in many respects as they are, and make provision for the extra benefits as the Amendment proposes.

This is probably one of the most important, from the point of view of the likely benefit to Members, of the various Amendments we have been discussing. I am grateful to the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) for the brevity with which he moved it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Skipton (Mr. Drayson) asked what would be the actuarial calculation for drawing one's pension earlier. I am advised by the Government Actuary that it could be as much as 6 to 7 per cent, for each year reduced. The matter is somewhat complicated. If the hon. Gentleman would like to take it further, I should be pleased to write to him.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) raised the question of tax relief. No one is eligible to claim tax relief under the self-employed pension provisions while being in pensionable employment. The law is that a person cannot get both. One can get tax relief for up to 15 per cent, of one's pensionable salary if one makes a contribution equivalent to 15 per cent.

In our scheme we make a contribution of 5 per cent, and the Exchequer makes a contribution of 8½ per cent. If my hon. Friend wanted to increase our contribution to 15 per cent., pro rata the Exchequer contribution would have to rise and it would be very costly. I am not sure that I understood the point. Again, as this is not so germane to the Amendment, I will write to my hon. Friend if he wishes to pursue the matter. I am advised that the Boyle Committee was aware of the tax relief provisions because it took advice from the Inland Revenue.

The effect of this group of Amendments would be to change the accrual rate of the scheme. The Boyle Committee considered this matter with care. The Boyle Committee was bound to start afresh, as it was confronted by the somewhat strange differential accrual rate under Lawrence. Under the Lawrence provisions, there was £60 accrual for the first 15 years of service and £24 for each of the next 30 years. As I said earlier, that gives an accrual rate for the first 15 years of l/54th and for subsequent service of 1/135th. This was the Lawrence attempt to meet the point raised by the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) that some emphasis should be placed upon the shorter parliamentary career rather than the long one because the long ones are something of an exception.

This was clearly an undesirable system, and the Boyle Committee thought that this clear discrimination in favour of shorter service was inappropriate and it chose sixtieths, explaining its reasons for doing so in paragraph 64.

Hon. Members may be interested to know what the cost of the change proposed in the Amendment would be. It would increase the total cost of the scheme—the contribution that we and the Exchequer jointly have to make—from 13½ per cent, to 16 per cent. If the split recommended by Boyle—that we contribute three-eighths and the Exchequer contributes five-eighths—were retained, it would mean that our contribution would have to rise to 6 per cent. The increase in the Exchequer contribution and contributions by hon. Members would be in the region of £100,000.

However, I do not rest my argument on the cost—

:I think we are coming to my point in a round about sort of way. I fail to see why Members should not increase their contribution over 5 per cent. I do not see why they should not be able to contribute more as other people can to get benefits thereby, if it is argued that the Treasury and the taxpayer are already paying enough.

I cannot quite see whether my hon. Friend wants to increase the 5 per cent, to 10 per cent, or 15 per cent, and buy higher benefits as a result?

Yes.

That represents a substantial departure from Boyle. It would certainly have the effect—I will not deny that—of increasing the eventual amount of the pension, but it would represent a very substantial departure from Boyle. I do not have the figures before me, but I will try to determine them, and perhaps, if it is not possible to do so today, I can otherwise let my hon. Friend know.

I mentioned that I am not resting my argument upon the cost of this proposal. I cannot pretend to be able to say exactly what was the thinking behind the Boyle committee's recommendations. I was not a party to its deliberations. However, it is my clear impression from its report that it was suggesting that one-sixtieth would give a fair pension. That, as I see it, was the thinking behind it. I will try to interpret the Boyle Review Body's philosophy. Perhaps this will not meet with great approval in this Committee, but I will try to interpret it, if I may.

The thinking was that there is a pensionable career here extending some 40 years and that this scheme should not be solely on the basis of pension for years of service in the House. No committee chaired by Lord Boyle, I am sure, would assume that a Member normally spends a full career in the House. The assumption, as I hope to show, was rather that one-sixtieth would provide a reasonable rate linked with another pension arising from an earlier career and that the one-sixtieth would provide for that part of the career spent in Parliament as a Member of the House of Commons. The assumption—of course, this is the basic assumption—is that a Member, prior to becoming a Member of Parliament, would have had some sort of not dissimilar right to pension elsewhere. This was the argument put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. McCrindle). That, I believe, is what Boyle had in mind, that before entering Parliament a Member would have worked in business or a trade union or a profession, let us say for 10 years, and would have earned in that earlier occupation certain pension rights which he would plug out of that occupation, when he left it, and plug into our scheme when becoming a Member of the House of Commons. Let us suppose that he remains a Member for 30 years. That would give a total of 40 years' pensionable service. If he were to be a Member of Parliament for 20 years and there were 10 previous years elsewhere which he could plug into our scheme, that would give a total of 30 years.

That is the philosophy behind Boyle. Hon. Members may disagree with that interpretation, but I thought it was my duty to the Committee to explain it as I saw it. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) put forward a different philosophy.

I personally happen to be in exactly the situation the hon. Gentleman is describing, with this difference—that one cannot do that. One cannot pluck out what was in my case 11 years' pension rights in a certain large company and then plug them into this scheme. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that an Act should include a section which says that one can do this, that would be, surely, completely the argument which is being put forward today, but since it is not the case the hon. Gentleman is putting forward a beautiful piece of airy-fairy philosophy.

Not entirely, because I understand from the Fees Office that a large number of Members are at the moment, and in the last few months have been, transferring pension rights earned in other schemes. I regret that the hon. Member should have worked for a company which would not accept transfer-ability of pension. Upon a Bill of this kind I could not accept that sort of commitment, to go for full transferability, however much hon. Members, and I in a personal capacity, might like to.

However, the main argument concerned with this Amendment is an argument which was put forward so eloquently by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sowerby. I am asking the Committee to accept Boyle in to to, just as the previous Government asked the House to accept Lawrence in to to. I am not suggesting in any way that the House would be precluded from amending the Bill. That would be a great presumption, because the Committee and the House can amend any Bill.

However, I would remind hon. Members of the very strong argument for implementing the Boyle recommendations on the pension scheme as they stand without variation. Indeed, the whole of the Boyle Report is rather like a jigsaw puzzle. It is very difficult to change one piece and fit it into all the other pieces interlocking. This is the point which was made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sowerby on Second Reading when he said:

"We were all embarrassed about fixing out own pay and determining our own conditions of service."—[Official Report, 22nd May, 1972; Vol. 837, c. 1160.]

It is a difficult and embarrassing task for the House, and we have found a way of having done for us this difficult and distasteful task by Review Bodies.

I refreshed my own mind by looking up the debates that there were on the 1964 Bill and the Lawrence Report. I came across these words of the then Chief Secretary, now Lord Diamond, somebody for whom I had a great deal of respect—indeed, still have. He said:

"Everyone hopes that we are coming to the end of a difficult road when Members were put under the personal difficulty of having to debate our own remuneration. There is only one way out of this difficulty, and that is to invite an outside body to consider what is the right solution … I hope, therefore, that the House will feel, as the speeches have shown, that the wisest course is to rely on the Report of this Committee of such authority which has considered this matter so well and considered the consequences which flow from it."—[Official Report, 18th December. 1964; Vol. 704. c. 810–11.]

My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) made very much this point this morning. I would recommend that principle to the Committee.

Having said that, I will further say that I recognise the strength of feeling in the Committee today and that I appreciate that a large number of hon. Members have supported this Amendment. While I must recommend rejection of the Amendment, I should like to assure the Committee that when the Review Body next considers pensions I will ensure that this Amendment, with the list of the names of Members supporting it, with the record of this debate, is drawn to the attention of that body and tabled as evidence which it will have to examine. I am sure the Committee will understand that I cannot go beyond this without trespassing on the territory of the Review Body.

I would conclude by saying that I am sure the Review Body will take careful note of the debate.

I am very much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his last few sentences, for their content and the manner and tone in which he put them. I agreed hardly at all with any of the forerunning commentary. However, that does not matter, because the main point is that he has given in the last part of his speech what I wanted and I can forget the earlier part.

Having said that, and in the hope that the Review Body will be looking at this debate, I should like to get something on the record, a statement by the Lord President of the Council. I know that the hon. Gentleman cannot answer for him, but he will be aware that the Lord President issued a statement—I think to all Members of Parliament, and if they have not got it their copies are in the post and they will get them. I should like the statement to go before the Review Body, because the Review Body will then see that we really have a grievance which is in the statement which I want to put on the record. It says:

"We shall in the new arrangements be paying £225 a year in contribution as compared with £150."

That is £75 a year extra. The 1965 scheme, the old scheme, was for 10 years' reckonable service. The figure was £720. Under Boyle that would increase to £750. That would mean an addition of £30 a year to the pension for a £75 a year additional contribution, and I do not believe that to be very generous. In the Minister's table of figures where the 20 years' reckonable service is concerned, the pre-Boyle arrangement was a pension of £1,224. That will increase to £1,500, which is £226 extra. But to get this will require an extra £75 a year for 20 years, and the 20-year period does not take account of the fact that it may affect a number of hon. Members who have served perhaps 30 or 45 years.

I hope that when the Review Body examines the matter it will ask the Lord President of the Council to provide this table of figures because if it sees these figures it may produce another scheme.

This is very interesting. No one today has attempted to justify what we are about to do. That includes both the Front Benches. We have had an explanation but not justification.

I take the point. The hon. Member is saying that perhaps Boyle should have done better. He then infers that neither of the Front Benches is prepared to correct what is an admitted fault. But if the Minister will not put it right, there is not much we can do about it, although at least he said that he hopes that the Review Body will put the matter right. That is the best we can hope for. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 21, in page 9, line 35, leave out

'and the amounts of the two pensions shall be cumulative'

and add

'but no person shall be entitled to receive a greater pension in respect of his period of reckonable service than he would receive had he been paid the normal parliamentary salary throughout that period'.

I notice, Mr. Mallalieu, that you were looking at me probably hoping that I would not speak again, and no one wishes for that more than I. I might have been unable to attend to the wants of nature so I will be as brief as I can. The Amendment is designed to limit pensions of Ministers and others to a maximum of their normal parliamentary salary on return. Perhaps the Minister can give me the assurance we want and we need spend no more time on this.

The Amendment goes rather wider than the description by the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis). I am advised that as drafted it would completely eliminate from the scheme the whole ministerial pension supplement, and clearly I could not accept that. Part of the Boyle recommendations was not only that our own scheme be substantially improved, as it has been in many ways, by going to sixtieths by the death grant, and by relating the pension to terminal salary and things of this sort. It also introduces a supplementary scheme for Ministers on the basis that when an hon. Member becomes a Minister he can take on no other occupation but he must take on considerably greater responsibilities and neglect any other form of employment—and I use the term "employment" in a rather technical sense. It seems, therefore, only appropriate that someone who becomes a Minister should be given the opportunity to contribute at exactly the same rate as an ordinary Member on the balance of his salary over and above £4,500 a year and to earn the same number of pro rata sixtieths. That is the intention of the Clause. There for I cannot accept the Amendment.

As I understand the Bill as drafted Ministers will have the same benefits as ordinary hon. Members but they will have the option of additional contributions on their additional salary as a Minister. That is right and proper. This is a valid point because Ministers are precluded from taking other outside employment. They are barred from accepting payment or fees in any way, shape or form which might conflict with Ministerial office. This not only relates to paid employment. If the Prime Minister, God forbid, goes on the radio or television and is offered £250 guineas—it would be 250 guineas overpaid—he cannot accept it.

3.0 p.m.

I accept that Ministers are precluded from accepting any payment other than their normal parliamentary salary, but my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, the Chief Opposition Whip, the Deputy Chief Whip are to have their salaries increased by just over 200 per cent, and all will be able to receive other payments from outside.

The present Leader of the Opposition—and the future one, as the Prime Minister soon will be—will get a salary of £9,500 plus £4,000 or £5,000 in tax-free perks. On top of that he will pay his contribution to a pension fund if he wants to, and later if he wishes to retire he can either draw his ex-Prime Minister's pension of £7,500 or his contributory pension, whichever is the better. He obviously would draw the £7,500 pension rather than the contributory one.

Similarly, the Opposition Chief Whip will receive a salary of £7,500 plus £2,000 or £3,000 on top. He, again, will pay for his pension on a voluntary basis. The same applies to Assistant Opposition Whips. In addition, the Leader of the Opposition can appear on television and can draw his fees from that source. My right hon. Friend the Opposition Chief Whip has recently been on television and he, too, will receive fees for those appearances.

A number of these gentlemen will receive a 187 per cent, increase in salary, which is a pretty good sum. Mr. Richard Marsh knows all about these matters. When the railway men were offered 12½ per cent., he said that it was a generous figure by any standards. I do not know how generous Mr. Marsh would regard an increase of 187 per cent. We all know that Mr. Richard Marsh is about to receive £80 a week on top of his present salary of £400 per week. I do not know whether he would regard that increase as generous. Incidentally, the rise has been held up at the moment because the Government no doubt regard it as a little indelicate to pay him that sort of money when the rail dispute is taking place.

My point is that all these people will be able to claim the best of both worlds. The Prime Minister will have a salary of £20,000, plus his perks. The Leader of the Opposition will receive his official salary and by the time he is paid all the other fees for appearing on television, writing books and articles, and all the other ancillary sums, he will be getting more than the Prime Minister.

If the Minister and I were asked to go on radio or television to discuss this Bill, I hope I should get a fee, and I hope that it would be a good one. I hope that I would take it. I would pay the tax upon it and I would be very happy. The Minister would not be entitled to claim any fee. That is one of the "plums" of office. The same does not apply to the Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Chief Whip. But they would make radio and television earnings only by virtue of the offices that they held. Again, this would be extra money. The Leader of the Opposition could be getting more than the Prime Minister and the Opposition Chief Whip could be getting more than the Patronage Secretary at a time when they were receiving more in pensionable rights than ordinary Members.

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point. It concerns three people—the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Chief Whip—

And the Leader of the Opposition in the Lords.

Yes. As regards the Prime Minister, the position is that when someone becomes Prime Minister he ceases to be a member of the House of Commons pension scheme. He cannot go on contributing to it. He cannot get any benefit from it. If he dies in office as Prime Minister he does not get the death grant of £4 500. When he ceases to be Prime Minister his contributions are returned to him; he cannot then rejoin the Members scheme as a former Prime Minister. So this question does not arise in relation to a former Prime Minister. A person in that position is not entitled to draw the pension due to an ex-Prime Minister while he is in office or if he is Leader of the Opposition or a Member of this House.

The position as regards the Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Chief Whip is interesting, and the hon. Gentleman raised a point which had not occured to me. As I understand it, they are receiving remunerations for the offices they hold and, as a result, they can go into the supplementary pension scheme and get pensionable rights. But they do not bear the restrictions that a Minister bears. They have other chances to earn more money in the way of directors' fees or whatever it may be. That is true. The hon. Gentleman has stated the position correctly.

I am afraid that I can give the hon. Gentleman no hope that I could change the position just for those officers. It might be possible to change it if the hon. Gentleman were to plead with his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Chief Whip to make some self-denying ordinance in this matter. It is an interesting point, and I am sure, again, that the next review body will take it into consideration.

The Minister has not satisfied me at all. I am not interested, with great respect, in my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. I am not interested, with great respect, in the Prime Minister. I am interested in the principle. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition is not introducing this Bill. It is the Government's Bill. What is more, my right hon. Friend will not always be where he is today. Shortly he will be on the Front Bench opposite, and the Prime Minister will be on this side of the House. I am not objecting on any personal grounds I object on principle.

Why should the present Prime Minister or any future one come out of office with a very good pension and make £250,000 on his writings? That might be thought to be fair and reasonable, but he does it by virtue of the fact that he has held that office and received a handsome salary for it. He comes out of office and continues at almost the same salary—and sometimes better—as Leader of the Opposition. As Prime Minister he has been rightly precluded by Statute from accepting any payment by way of fee for a directorship or anything like that. Even if he writes an article or gives an interview he cannot get any payment for it, and rightly so.

But as soon as he leaves office and becomes Leader of the Opposition, receives the equivalent of about £13,000 or £14,000 a year, a lot of it tax-free, he can go on radio and television, take up writing, and all the rest of it, without restriction and probably draw another £10,000 a year so that he is financially better off than when he was Prime Minister. I cannot see how that is fair and reasonable.

It is no good the Parliamentary Secretary saying, "But Boyle will look at it." Will Boyle look at it? My right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said that we had to accept Lawrence. We had to accept the first Boyle Committee Report. We shall no doubt be told, "We shall have to accept this position because when the Bill came before the House on 9th June the House accepted it." Therefore, Boyle will say, "It is now an Act of Parliament." As it affects the present Leader of the Opposition and the present holders of these sinecures, I am against it on principle.

One day not too far distant I shall be attacking the right hon. Member for Bexley (Mr. Heath)—I think he will then be the right hon. Member for Chislehurst—on the same principle. If he had been a gentleman he would have given way. I shall attack him by saying, "Why should this man go on radio and television? Why should he be writing books and getting a salary from the State and be in a position to get a lot of extra money for attacking the Labour Party and the trade union movement?" He will be writing articles and appearing on radio and television. He will be attacking the low-paid workers, calling them blackmailers, and all the rest of it. He will be able to do that without let or hindrance, and the taxpayers will not only have to pay him his salary, but allow him to receive fees for doing it. We can and do restrict the Prime Minister from doing it, but we shall not be able to restrict him as Leader of the Opposition.

This provision should not be allowed to go through. The Parliamentary Secretary said it is a point to which he had not given thought, but that it is a point of substance. I am not asking him to reduce these salaries. I am not asking him to preclude these people from having the right to contribute for their extra pension. I am saying that in another place he should put these persons on the same basis as Ministers of the Crown. Do not let them have something far better than Ministers of the Crown and the Prime Minister.

When we discussed the first Amendment the Parliamentary Secretary said that the Lord Chancellor, Mr. Speaker, and the Prime Minister were cases on their own, and hence they would be treated differently. On that basis and under the present arrangement these people will be far better treated than the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor and Mr. Speaker. They should not be so treated.

This is not a personal matter. I shall want to return to this matter and be able to say, as I did when I opposed Mr. Speaker King's salary increase, when I opposed a lot of this on Second Reading and when I opposed the Common Market, that all the way through I have been consistent. I have not indulged in party politics. It would not make any difference to me who was in office. When the time comes I want to be able to say that I opposed it when I had the chance.

The Minister can prevent my having that opportunity. Let him, without com- mitment, say that he will at least consider this matter before it reaches the other place to see whether something can be done along the lines I mentioned, because he has accepted that I have a point and that this is something that needs to be put right.

I beg to move Amendment No. 22, in page 12, line 43, at end insert:

(2A) No such pension shall be payable to a person in respect of any period during which he holds an office which is for the time being a disqualifying office under the House of Commons (Disqualification) Act 1957.

This Amendment will be very popular, particularly with my hon. Friends, because it prevents what I term State servants, Members of Parliament and others from having the right to receive more than one pension. I am in favour of good pensions being paid. If I had the power I should treble the old-age pension tomorrow, but of course I cannot do that. I am in favour of the payment of a good pension to those who have served the State or the country. Whether it is in private or a public employment does not concern me.

I am a little apprehensive when I realise that someone can become a Member of the House, do his time here and claim a pension, leave the House, get a job as the chairman of a nationalised industry and after a few years get a whopping great pension, and then receive a peerage and collect £8·50 a day tax free in the other place. This is not hypothesis. This is what happens. I could give a whole list of persons in this category. Their names would occupy two or three pages of Hansard. But time does not permit me to do that. None of the peers who were once Members of this House can be regarded as having been the most brilliant, the most able, the most capable or the most diligent of Members. Not one of them did hard graft back-bench work, yet they are now in the other place getting £8·50 per day tax free by way of expense allowances.

A Member of the other place, in addition to what he receives by way of allowances, may be getting a National Coal Board salary plus all the expenses that go with it. I should not like to single out Lord Robens, because I understand that he is now non-party. I understand that he was once a Socialist, but I have my doubts, and always did. One might pick out Lord Boyd-Carpenter, who is more modern and more "with it".

Having done their service in the House, right hon. Members get a pension. They then get a job as the chairman of this or that board for which they are paid a good salary—perhaps £20,000 a year.

Mr. Richard Marsh.

My hon. Friend refers to Mr. Richard Marsh. He has not as yet received his peerage. He is Chairman of the British Railways Board and is earning £20,000 a year, which is £400 a week and he is to receive an extra £80 a week, but the Government do not want to announce that yet because they are afraid that the railway men might object. Mr. Richard Marsh will, quite rightly, receive a pension from this House. He will receive a pension from the Railways Board when he has done his time there. I could pick a number of names out of the hat. There are probably hundreds of people in a similar situation.

This is not right. My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton), who is one of the hardest working Members in the House, knows that, if a miner in his constituency wants to stay on at work after receiving his pension, that pension is reduced. This always applies to old-age pensions but not to the pensions of ex-Ministers or ex-Leaders of the Opposition or to those in the House of Lords—and it should.

My Amendment would ensure that no one—but no one—would draw more than one pension. He can choose which it is, but he should not be able to draw four or five pensions which he gets by virtue of holding office.

Let us not kid ourselves. Mr. Robens, as he then was, would not have become Lord Robens and Chairman of Vickers had he not been a Member of this House. While he may claim not to be a Socialist—I never thought he was—he must appreciate that, while he gets his pension from Vickers, he should not be able to draw a pension from this House as well as his £8·50p a day tax-free expenses from the House of Lords and all the other things.

There is also Lord Kilmuir. I must not only pick out the ex-so-called Labour people. And there is the other one—I have forgotten his name—

There are so many of them.

I have made the point, and I hope that the Minister will reply favourably. I am sure he will because, like me, he is interested in justice.

After this debate, Mr. Andrew Roth will have to bring out a new edition of his Parliamentary Companion.

Clause 12 as drafted prevents a pension being paid to a Member who is currently a Member, a candidate, as defined later in the Clause, or a Minister or office-holder. The scheme thus follows what is becoming the established pattern in public service schemes. Past practice here has varied widely. Within the ambit of the same employment covered by the same pension scheme, an employee would not be allowed to draw pension plus re-employment pay without restrictions. This is the practice in the public services for which Ministers are responsible. There is no Minister with ministerial responsibility for the major staff schemes in the wider public sector—for example, the nationalised industries or private sector schemes. In practice, they will vary, but in general they are likely to be less restrictive than in the public services.

The Amendment would also rule out from receiving pension any Member employed in an office of employment listed in the House of Commons Disqualification Act, 1957—a vast range of employments, covering the judiciary, the Civil Service, the Armed Forces, the police and various boards, commissions and tribunals, including the nationalised industry boards. This would make practice in the parliamentary scheme far more restrictive than in the other public service schemes, which seems to be quite unreasonable.

The purpose of the House of Commons Disqualification Act was to ensure that Members of Parliament are not simultaneously paid as such and also in the pay of the Crown and thus, one may put it, on both sides of the fence at once. This cannot apply to pensioners.

The implication of what the hon. Gentleman suggested is that anyone earning a pension from any public sector source should be banned from, or limited in, earning a salary thereafter from another public sector source. But it would not be desirable or practicable to produce general and equitable rules on the lines the hon. Gentleman wants. It is not desirable, because it seems unnecessary. It is one thing that one employer should not give pay and pension without limit simultaneously, and the Bill prevents this for Members. It is quite another thing to say that no occupational pensioner should be able to earn anything elsewhere in the public sector. It is not practicable to devise equitable rules because there is some difficulty in deciding the barrier between the public and private sector, which would be undermined by the freedom from any corresponding restrictions on those who moved from the public to the private sector, or vice versa, or within the private sector.

Therefore, I cannot agree that we need any general rule which would restrict retired Members more closely than other retired public service pensioners.

I am amazed. I must congratulate the Minister on his admirable reading of his brief. All he left out were the commas, the full stops and the capital letters. He did not attempt to say one word about the points I made. I wish that I, too, had prepared a brief. I speak extemporaneously, but if I had had a brief I could have handed it to the Minister for him to look at and then to answer my points. He did not attempt to deal with one of my points but just read the drivel his Department had prepared before anyone had heard what I had to say.

Is it right for Lord Robens or Lord anyone to be able to draw four or five pensions? That is what can happen if the Amendment is not accepted. Lord Robens can draw his pension as an ex-Member and he can draw a pension as the ex-Chairman of the Board of a nationalised industry. He could also have a pension from two or three sinecures and additionally his private pension, for which he pays, when he retires from Vickers or whatever it is.

I want to see good pensions for everyone, particularly Members of Parliament, but I cannot think that the State should provide two or three pensions for such individuals in the knowledge that they can and do, by virtue of the office they have held, take additional private jobs. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden) was right when he said that we as back benchers are precluded from joining private enterprise schemes with the tax relief, because of the self-employment provision. That does not apply to those who leave the House with their pension rights intact and then join private schemes. It is no good the Minister's shaking his head. I can assure him that that is a statement of fact. Some people can and will be drawing three or four pensions, and if they want a private pension on top they will be able to get it.

Therefore, I ask the Minister to look at the matter again. He is always telling us that the Government want to save money, that he wants to have fairness in industry and throughout the country. This provision is not fair, and cannot be fair. As it is not fair, I must persist with my Amendment. If I could obtain some support, I would divide the Committee on it. If there were more time I would argue at length. I shall sit down now because of the shortage of time and because my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) is patiently waiting to deal with some important Amendments. But I will not withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move Amendment No. 23, in page 13, line 5, after 'man', insert:

"or the widower of a woman'.

It would be convenient to take at the same time the following Amendments, also standing in the name of the hon. Gentleman:

I agree, Sir Robert, although there is a slight difference between the first group of the Amendments and Amendments Nos. 28, 29 and 30. I shall come to that later.

These Amendments substantially are the obverse side of Women's Lib. This is "Men's Lib" and I am particularly glad to put them forward because I have no personal interest to declare in the matter one way or the other. The House of Commons is a monastery, almost. We have fewer than 30 Lady Members—in my view, far too few. I wish there were more, except, of course, in West Fife. It is important to remember also that we have equal pay and have had it for many years.

When one looks at our Lady Members, one sees, happily or unhappily, as the case may be, that some are married and some, happily or unhappily, are still single. But Clause 13 assumes that all Members are men and that when they die they leave dependent widows. But, of course, the reverse can happen—that is to say, a married woman Member could die and leave a widower who had been dependent on her income. I think of two Lady Members in whose case this could happen. I shall not mention their names but hon. Members probably know to whom I refer.

It is true that in Clause 14 there are provisions for a widower, but it says that the widower has to be

"…incapable by reason of age or bodily or mental infirmity of earning his own living and was wholly or mainly dependent on her…"

When a male Member dies, there is no such provision. The widow, even if she is capable of getting a job, mentally and physically, is still nevertheless entitled to the pension. Yet lady Members have contributed in exactly the same way as their male colleagues to the Members' Fund, which was established in 1939, and more recently to the Members' pension scheme, established in 1965.

I come immediately to the question of the widowers, who can be dealt with on a discretionary basis by the Trustees of the Members' Fund. Tributes have been paid to the manner in which the fund is administered by the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary) and his colleagues. They administer it in an extremely generous and humane way. But it is simply not enough. I feel strongly that the families of deceased Members of Parliament, should be treated alike, irrespective of the sex of the deceased Member. That is the purpose of the earlier Amendments.

I should like to refer especially to Amendments Nos. 28, 29 and 30, which concern cohabitation. As drafted, the Bill covers a widow of a deceased Member who is cohabiting with a man at the time of the Member's decease or who subsequently cohabits. If either of those circumstances occurs, the widow loses her pension, except that the Clause goes on to say that, at the discretion of the Trustees of the Members' Fund, if they are satisfied that the cohabitation has been terminated or that there are exceptional reasons for payment, the pension may be paid.

I hope that the hon. Member for Withington will tell us how he and his fellow trustees will satisfy themselves that the cohabitation has ended, or what special exceptional reasons would enable the pension to be paid, unless they are to be allowed to employ, as the Department of Health and Social Security employs, their own professional snoopers to find out whether the cohabitation has ceased in whole or in part. I do not know what "ceasing" means. Does it mean only one night a week? The hon. Gentleman has a great problem on his hands.

No doubt the hon. Gentleman will recall what I said on Second Reading on this subject.

I am pointing to the great difficulty of putting into effect that part of the Clause with which we are dealing.

In any event, there is no similar provision in the Clause for the widower, and a widower might be mentally or physically incapable of work, although mentally and physically capable of cohabitation. There is no provision in the Bill to say that if he is mentally or physically incapable of working, but mentally and physically capable of participation in cohabitation, his pension will be taken from him. There is no justification for that and I should like the Minister to consider the matter.

My imagination ran away with me when I was considering the subject, and there occurred to me the possibility of an example concerning the Prime Minister. Let us suppose that the present Prime Minister marries—it is a possibility; I put it no higher than that. Let us suppose that he marries the right hon. Lady the Member for Chislehurst (Dame Patricia Hornsby-Smith)as her consolation for having taken her constituency from her. Let us suppose that at the next election the Prime Minister loses his seat, but in the meantime the hon. Lady has found another seat and has won it. The Prime Minister would retire on his pension of £7,500 a year and his wife would sit here in the House.

Let us suppose that she then unfortunately dies—I could understand that—and that he then starts to cohabit with another woman. Does he then lose his Prime Minister's pension because he is cohabitating? These are fairly remote possibilities for which the Bill makes no provision.

The serious point is that we should treat Members of Parliament as Members of Parliament irrespective of their sex. Both the men and the women in the House of Commons work equally hard and do work of equal value. Sometimes I have gone home when the House has been sitting all night and I have known women Members to stay here all through the night. In that respect the women Members sometimes do a better job than the male Members. We have accepted that, and our acceptance should be written into the Bill so that lady Members and male Members and their dependants are treated on an equal basis.

I support what the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) said. This is a blow for men's liberation, which is a nice change from women's liberation.

Incidentally, I am a little tired of being referred to as a woman Member of Parliament. We are Members of Parliament on equal footing with the male Members of Parliament and we should therefore have equal rights. Regrettably, there was no woman member on the Boyle Committee, otherwise these problems would not have risen.

We have won one small battle, however, because in reply to a Question from me my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council said this about cohabitation:

"The only difference so far as Members' widows and widowers specifically are concerned relates to the cessation of pension on cohabitation. The Government propose to implement the recommendation of the Boyle Committee so that this difference is removed."—[Official Report, 1st March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 406–7.]

So we have won one small point which will be reflected in Clause 14.

The hon. Gentleman and I are in the same position in that we have to contribute. Our contributions are to be increased considerably, although neither of us benefits. Therefore, we are free to speak on this subject. I am glad to note from the debate on Second Reading that the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) strongly supported this point. The Government have been asked to look at what happens in the European Economic Community countries. We have still had no reply. I gather that in the EEC countries all Members—male and female—are treated alike. I hope that that will happen here.

I therefore suggest that this matter should be looked at again and an Amendment made in another place. This is essential because I gather that on the death of a former lady Member the widower must show that he is incapable of earning a living by reason of age. People's ability at a certain age varies. Lord Shinwell has recently married for the third time and he is over 80. I do not believe that age is any bar.

All lady Members must have the co-operation of their husbands in their parliamentary work. It is not so necessary for a male Member to have the co-operation of his wife, although it is desirable. No woman can become a Member of Parliament unless her husband agrees.

I can think of one Member of Parliament who had to support her husband. It is essential that all Members of Parliament are put on an equal basis. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will either give way now or agree to make a change in another place.

The hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) has explained with his usual eloquence the case for amending Clauses 13 and 14 so as to make identical with the provisions relating to the pensions of widows those relating to the pensions of widowers. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) supported this. This would have the effect of putting widowers of Members in the same position as widows of Members.

3.45 p.m.

The Amendments contain an interesting drafting point, which nullifies the effect that the hon. Member wishes to achieve. Clause 13(4) provides that a widow's pension shall be withheld if, first, she is cohabiting at the time of her husband's death and, secondly, if she begins cohabiting later. That deals with widows, but the proviso enables the trustees to restore the pension if the cohabitation ceases—[Hon. Members: "How do they know?" ] That is not for me to decide; it is a matter for the trustees. The hon. Member's Amendments remove the second alternative, and the trustees will no longer be able to restore the pension in the first case when the widow ceases to cohabit.

I am glad to be able to say a little more about this than I did at the end of the Second Reading debate, when both the right hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) and the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) fastened upon this and called it a Women's Lib point. The right hon. Member for Leeds, West regarded the idea that remarriage should be termed cohabitation as quite unseemly. That is the view of the hon. Member for Fife, West and his hon. Friends.

We start, as ever, from the Boyle Report. It is clear from paragraph 8 in Appendix H that the pattern of Clauses 13 and 14 follows the Committee's instructions. Moreover, as I explained in the Second Reading debate, it would be difficult for us if, faced with the task of settling the issues ourselves without the recommendations of the Boyle Committee, we departed from the usual pattern of public pension schemes. This is not a minor discrepancy; the Women's Lib point is fundamental. It is not so much a moral as an economic point, inasmuch as a person who is likely to lose his pension if he marries again may decide not to marry again on economic grounds rather than on moral grounds. Like many other Women's Lib points, it benefits the men, because the effect would be to give the former husband of a lady Member of this House the right to a pension.

I cannot recommend the Committee to accept the Amendments because it would mean moving ahead of the general practice in the public services and in the country as a whole. Hon. Members might like to have the cohabitation rules changed. As a Minister replying to the debate, I am not allowed to have a view on this matter, but I am sure that the views expressed in the Second Reading debate and in the course of today's debate will be noted. Any such change as this will have to follow changes within the wider schemes.

The hon. Member for Fife, West referred to the case of a senile widower who, because he is senile, draws his pension under the Bill. The hon. Member asked whether, if such a widower cohabits, he has his pension withdrawn, or whether his senility ensures its continuation. I am advised that in this case cohabitation is greater than senility, and the fact that he is cohabiting means that he is in the same position as the widow who is cohabiting. We must observe exactly equality with the widow, and a widow in that position would have her pension withdrawn.

That demonstrates the strange byways into which one can stray in regard to cohabitation rules. I remind the hon. Member for Fife, West of what he said at about half-past eleven today; namely, that we should think very carefully about increasing the division between ourselves and the public. If we implemented these changes without making the necessary changes in outside schemes we should be putting our dependants, or possible dependants, in a privileged position. That is why I recommend the Committee to reject the Amendments.

May I ask my hon. Friend a question about a widower who does not marry again? An hon. Member pays for pension rights. Why should he or she not get them?

Because the principle of widows' pensions essentially is that the great majority of women in our society today are dependent upon their husbands or upon the pension rights which their husbands may have earned for them during their life. It is assumed that the husband of the wife who has earned should make provision for his own pension rights. That is a provision which my hon. Friend may not like, but it is the principle in the pension schemes at the moment, and my argument is that it would be wrong to make the House of Commons scheme run ahead by a change which may become practicable in a few years' time.

My own view and that of a large number of hon. Members I stated on Second Reading. The Minister is being saved by the bell. His principles are strong but his brief is weak. We cannot pursue this matter further this afternoon. It is a pity we have not more time, because this is a very important principle. I think we shall have this out when next we come to the wider issues in the National Insurance Scheme, which is probably where it belongs. The new thinking, and the absurdities of some of these rules, can then be fully examined. I agree that it would be difficult to make an important change of this kind solely in relation to the Members of Parliament Pension Scheme, but I think I can promise the hon. Gentleman that there is more to come on this issue later.

Briefly, Mr Mallalieu, I should like to thank you for your courtesy in presiding over the Committee today, and I should also like to thank those hon. Members who have been here for their interesting contributions and for their assistance in getting this Bill through.