Counting the real cost

Where Westminster had home flipping and duck houses, the Assembly had iPods

Same scandal, different place. Back in December, the furore was about Assembly Members’ iPods, trouser presses, flash tellies and top of the range sofas. Then in May came The Daily Telegraph revelations, doing more to damage the reputation of Parliamentarians than anything else in political memory. Duck houses, moats and helipads easily put AM’s claims into perspective. Same scandal, different scale.

Then last week Assembly Member expenses came back into the news, and in a big way. A public online log of Assembly Members’ expenses claims was launched on the National Assembly website. Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Presiding Officer of the Assembly,  has been at pains to point out that this initiative was planned long before the recent scandals in Westminster and, quite rightly, heralds the publication as setting a new standard for openness and transparency in the way a UK legislature deals with such sensitive matters. Inevitably, last week’s media was directed by trawling for stories and angles on the disclosures. One day it was office rental, another day it was food allowances, and on another it was the probity of individual claims.

Against this backdrop came Sir Roger Jones’ report into the funding and support of Assembly Members this week. It is a broad and far-reaching document: 288 pages and 108 recommendations in all. Last August, the Assembly Commission, which oversees the Assembly building, Assembly Members’ working arrangements and its staff, invited Sir Roger to head a panel looking across the board at issues including second homes, allowances for offices, additional payments for chairing committees and staffing structures. Even before publication, the Presiding Officer had intimated that he expected the recommendations to be accepted in full when the panel reported on Monday. So for all sides the report emerged as something of an ultimatum. No Assembly Member criticised its content, at least publicly. It was subsequently endorsed both by the Assembly Commission and by AMs in plenary on Wednesday afternoon.

As expected, the media response to the Jones report has been favourable. Doing away with meal allowances, radically reducing the number of AMs able to claim for a second homes payment, providing clearer rules on the rental of office space, and ensuring a receipt for every claim was always going to play well with the fourth estate, and with the population at large. Sir Roger himself played to the gallery when he launched the report, describing the situation he was asked to examine as: “like sending kids into the sweet shop with the shelves knee-high off the ground. They were told to help themselves – and they did.” A memorable comparison, but unfair on most of our elected Assembly politicians. It certainly did not help Sir Roger’s charm offensive when the report was launched.

Nevertheless, AMs came forward through their party groups  in broad support of the proposals. They have lauded the report as offering clearer transparency and modern guidelines, while the Presiding Officer stressed that it puts the Assembly at the forefront of UK politics for openness and value for money for elected representatives.  It is undeniable, too, that when the rolling register and some of the proposals in the Jones report are placed together, there will undoubtedly be a benefit in the way that Assembly politicians are perceived.

But that is not to say that every recommendation in the report will necessarily improve the way AMs operate. Let’s take a really well received recommendation first. The meal allowance of over £30 per night for Assembly Members staying away from home has now been abolished. The public will be glad, but surely there are occasions when meals should be claimed? This is not to argue that the old flat rate without expense forms should be reinstated, but rather to pose the question whether AMs on official business should at least have the option of claiming their own food costs back. After all, such an arrangement suits the rest of the public sector.

Further, if you look deeper at the issue of the second homes allowance being scrapped for all but AMs from North or Mid & West Wales, it is not the abolition which is a little worrying but the proposals for what will replace it. AMs from the other three electoral regions will still be able to stay in Cardiff, but only claim for a hotel for 20 nights per year. Considering the Assembly sits for around 35 weeks per year, it is certainly possible to dispute this upper cap. It may look appealing on the surface, but once again surely if the need to stay overnight is legitimate then it is legitimate, regardless of whether any arbitrary quota has been reached. Further, the bluntness of the new proposal means that any AM from South Wales can now claim up to 20 nights’ overnight accommodation per year, so Members representing Cardiff or the Vale of Glamorgan who previously had no access to such allowances can now avail themselves of them. Adding unnecessary perks was surely not what the Jones commission was established for.

As per its remit, the report talks about the way politicians are supported as well as the way they are funded. Naturally, people have been drawn to examine what Members can claim for, rather than the less immediately engaging issue of whether the recommendations will mean AMs are able to fulfil their democratic duties more effectively. Such is life. But that does not mean that some of the recommendations around support functions should not be properly scrutinised.

Some of them relating to staffing merit particular scrutiny as, for example, the ending of the ability of AMs to pay bonuses to their staff. This is proving popular nowhere other than with those keen to reduce expenditure in general. Further, the report recommends that the overall number of staff provided to AMs within parties stays the same but that a transition occurs in which more of them become central party group staff rather than attached to individual AMs.

For Labour in particular this would have real implications and would massively increase the power of the central party machine at the expense of individual AMs.  It could also potentially see the capacity to take an independent line curtailed, leaving government backbenchers less able to scrutinise their ministers. Also, in the case of opposition parties, it would be inevitable under such arrangements that shadow cabinet members would get priority over other AMs in the same group when accessing group staff resources. Some increase in group staff may be helpful, but there are worries about the way this will operate. The new system could very well favour the leadership and the whips by concentrating power and resources in their hands.

Other aspects of the report also fuel this worry. There is a recommendation that AMs now log their holidays with their party groups and that leave days are capped at 25 a year. Such an arrangement is particularly contentious, not least because AMs tend to take fewer holiday days than this anyway, and such an arrangement would be impossible to police. After all, who will check if an AM is working on a Monday, a Friday or a Saturday? Further, a suggestion is made that party groups should develop job profiles for AMs and “use these constructively to identify skills gaps and development needs”. This would be supplemented with a convention that an annual report is published on group AM “training achievements” overseen by a “training champion” from within the party group. Such a move might sound appealing at first, but surely again in such an arrangement there is potential for concentrating power in the hands of the whips.

None of this detracts from the thoroughness with which the Jones report has sought to tackle a series of difficult issues. There is much that deserves to be calmly read in full and rationally debated in detail (the report can be downloaded here) away from the anti-politics culture of recent months. That was surely the intention of the authors, and it is surely the hope of the politicians who will now have to abide by it.