Former pay chief says Parliament stopped him investigating expenses

Sir John Baker, ex-chairman of the Senior Salaries Review Body, revealed on BBC Radio this lunchtime that The Fees Office had been forbidden to co-operate with an investigation into expenses.

In an extraordinarily revealing interview on Radio 4’s The World At One, Sir John Baker shed light into a hitherto dark corner of the MPs’ expenses scandal. Sir John was chairman of the Senior Salaries Review from 2002 to 2008. He called the scandal an “unmitigated disaster” but said that its severity was a direct consequence of Parliament refusing to face the problem earlier.

“On the whole our recommendations on pay were always detuned by ministers and, as a result, Parliament was always given a nudge and a wink to reject our proposals for tightening up on the expenses side. Although I have to say that the depth of the problems around the Second Homes Allowancewas not transparent to me at the time I was with the SSRB. we knew there was a problem. But effectively we were warned off from getting into it.”

“Parliament was always given a nudge and a wink to reject our proposals for tightening up on the expenses side.” – Sir John Baker

The interviewer, Martha Kearney, clearly surprised, asked him how this was done. “The last time the SSRB under my chairmanship formally tried to review pays and allowances, The Fees Office were told by Parliament that they should not co-operate with us in relation to some issues. As a result,we put in our report that there should be a formal review of the Additional Costs Allowance… It was our belief that that review was required because we had suspicions that all was not well with the way that allowance was being administered.”

“The Fees Office were told by Parliament that they should not co-operate with us in relation to some issues.”

And who exactly was behind this? “How the house organises itself is a mystery. but it will have been a combination of the MPs’ Estimates Committee, the then-Speaker, maybe ministers, who knows? You’ve got to remember this is about the same time that MPs were also looking to exempt all this from the Freedom of Information Act, a pointer if ever there was one that all was not well.”

We’re told that the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority will be independent. Sir John isn’t so sure. “One has to have one’s doubts. We have a long history now of bodies being appointed to deal independently with MPs’ pay and expenses… Each time, the independence has been whittled away under a combination of government as well as parliamentary intervention and I fear the proof will have to be in the pudding. It remains to be seen whether the IPSA is really up for the job and can deliver what we all need. which is clearly, recognisably independent judgements which cannot be appealed ad infinitum by other various layers of MP-appointed bodies.