The recent work the All Party Parliamentary Group on Insurance & Financial Services has done on referral fees, staged accidents and whiplash claims has helped attract several new members, boosting the total who subscribe to the group to 55 across both Houses.
With Steve McCabe (Lab, Birmingham Selly Oak) and Margaret Ritchie (SDLP, South Down) now included in the membership the group is almost back to its pre-2010 General Election size and scope.
For those interested in the breakdown of membership it pans out thus:
By House
29 MPs
26 Peers
By party
24 Conservative
22 Labour
6 Liberal Democrat
2 Social Democratic and Labour Party
1 Independent
Complete membership list APPGmembersNov11.pdf
With Steve McCabe (Lab, Birmingham Selly Oak) and Margaret Ritchie (SDLP, South Down) now included in the membership the group is almost back to its pre-2010 General Election size and scope.
For those interested in the breakdown of membership it pans out thus:
By House
29 MPs
26 Peers
By party
24 Conservative
22 Labour
6 Liberal Democrat
2 Social Democratic and Labour Party
1 Independent
Complete membership list APPGmembersNov11.pdf
Boundary review is great fun but behind it lies a serious question about what sort of Parliament we need
13 Sep 2011
So, the first part of the Boundary Commission's proposals for reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600 is out and the bun fight has started. The squealing and special pleading is all too predictable and will lead to some bitter rows within all three major parties. As I have pointed out before, alot of this will be so much hypocritical nonsense.
Let's take a step back and remind ourselves why a review like this is necessary.
Too many MPs
Since the university seats were abolished after the Second World War the number of MPs has crept up from 625 to where it is now at 650. It was briefly higher for the 1997 and 2001 General Elections when it peaked at 659 but a few seats were trimmed in the post-devolution boundary review before the 2005 election. This was too timid a nod towards the implications of devolution for the role of the Westminster Parliament.
As the number of MPs has risen we have seen an enormous transfer of powers away from Westminster, firstly to Europe and now to the three devolved parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We simply do not need as many Westminster MPs as we once did. I accept that the reduction from 600 to 650 seems abit arbitrary and would be easier to justify had a proper study been carried out to ascertain what type of Parliament we need as we move into the second and third decades of the 21st century but it is a good start.
Silly sized constituencies
In addition, there is the problem of too big a spread in the sizes of constituencies which seems counter-intuitive most of the time with urban seats in tight geographical areas having fewer voters than more rural seats that already cover large regions, often embracing dozens of small towns and villages. I don't really care whether you think this favours Labour or the Tories - it doesn't make much sense.
Having looked through the Boundary Commission proposals last night I feel it has done a very good job. I am sure there are a few proposals that will need looking at very hard but, overall, it looks very sound. It even solved the 'Devonwall' problem at neatly as could be hoped with the proposed Bude and Bideford constituency. Most of the noise from displaced MPs will amount to little more than a protection of their own interests but the collective impact of the distress this much needed change will cause is that it might unnerve the government and persuade it to postone the review until after the next General Election. I hope not.
Let's take a step back and remind ourselves why a review like this is necessary.
Too many MPs
Since the university seats were abolished after the Second World War the number of MPs has crept up from 625 to where it is now at 650. It was briefly higher for the 1997 and 2001 General Elections when it peaked at 659 but a few seats were trimmed in the post-devolution boundary review before the 2005 election. This was too timid a nod towards the implications of devolution for the role of the Westminster Parliament.
As the number of MPs has risen we have seen an enormous transfer of powers away from Westminster, firstly to Europe and now to the three devolved parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We simply do not need as many Westminster MPs as we once did. I accept that the reduction from 600 to 650 seems abit arbitrary and would be easier to justify had a proper study been carried out to ascertain what type of Parliament we need as we move into the second and third decades of the 21st century but it is a good start.
Silly sized constituencies
In addition, there is the problem of too big a spread in the sizes of constituencies which seems counter-intuitive most of the time with urban seats in tight geographical areas having fewer voters than more rural seats that already cover large regions, often embracing dozens of small towns and villages. I don't really care whether you think this favours Labour or the Tories - it doesn't make much sense.
Having looked through the Boundary Commission proposals last night I feel it has done a very good job. I am sure there are a few proposals that will need looking at very hard but, overall, it looks very sound. It even solved the 'Devonwall' problem at neatly as could be hoped with the proposed Bude and Bideford constituency. Most of the noise from displaced MPs will amount to little more than a protection of their own interests but the collective impact of the distress this much needed change will cause is that it might unnerve the government and persuade it to postone the review until after the next General Election. I hope not.
Change can be painful but is sometimes very necessary. We all know that our political system is broken: electors are disconnected, cynical and untrusting of politicians and the systems and institutions in which they operate. All the parties at the last General Election apparently embraced reform. Now it seems that they are all rapidly finding reasons to run away from those commitments now they have seen the potential consequences. I can think of few things - apart from another major expenses scandal - more likely to turn voters aways from the major parties and from engaging in the political process than a conspiracy of inaction on reform among the political establishment.
The charge sheet gets longer by the week and the latest furore is over the plans to reduce the number of MPs to 600 (from the current 650). An analysis in The Guardian today shows the Liberal Democrats are getting very cold feet about this reform which is already largely opposed by Labour. I'll put my cards on the table: I have always been in favour of reducing the size of the House of Commons and equalising the size of constituencies as this piece from February 2007 argues.
Reduction in the number of MPs is, of course, the other half of the reform proposals put through in the first year of this government, the first part being the referendum on the alternative vote. Having made an horrendous mistake in rushing into holding this, Nick Clegg and his party are now just waking up to the consequences of accepting the remainder of the package.
To me much of The Guardian's analysis rings true. Without the cushion of the alternative vote the Liberal Democrats will struggle to win in many of the new, larger seats but this doesn't mean they should be pushed into a corner and be made to look as if they are now opposing the reforms. As a party they already have enough problems with former leader Lord Steel lining up as one of the leading opponents of reform of the House of Lords.The Liberal Democrats once thrived as the party of reform and if they can't keep hold of that mantle then there will be very little left to enthuse potential supporters.
So, where will the debate over the reduction of seats take us?
At a national level it will be about the government holding its nerve and limiting the rebellions among backbench Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs who find they have signed up to abolish their own seats. Labour seems likely to continue to cast itself as the leading anti-reform party and I expect will vote against the final package.
At a local level there will be all sorts of fun and games as endless reviews of proposed new boundaries are heard. There will be all manner of specious arguments about natural boundaries, community links (or non-links as the case may be) and accusations of gerrymandering bandied about with depressing ease. Most of it will be nonsense. Indeed, it has already started with one senior Labour source quoted today in The Guardian complaining that the 'rule' that Parliamentary constituencies shouldn't cross London borough boundaries will now be broken. The only problem is that Labour and Tories accepted that this rule should go back in 1997 - just look at the constituencies on the edge of east London that bizarrely cross the boundaries of the boroughs of Waltham Forest and Redbridge. Of course, that wasn't gerrymandering and didn't break any imaginary rules. Expect alot more of this hypocritcal nonsense between now and when the final proposals are put to Parliament in two years time.
I still think that the realisation among Liberal Democrats that many will be without seats steadily increases the prospects - still small - of the next General Election being a 'Coupon Election'. This may turn out to be a neat way for the Tories to resolve the inevitable battles where two sitting Tory MPs face each other across the ballot box. It would be a small step for the 'coupon' to be extended to favoured Liberal Democrats who the Tories think have a better chance of beating Labour, returning us to the days of the National Liberals and splitting the Liberal Democrats much as the old Liberals were split in the days of Lloyd George and Asquith.
The possibility of government action over asbestos liabilities seems to edge steadily closer. Two recent exchanges in Parliament illustrate the point.
Last Monday, Baroness Turner, a Labour peer and long time deputy chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Insurance & Financial Services, asked the government what it was doing about the problem of tracing employers' liability insurers and eventually forced the government minister, Lord Mackenzie, to admit that it was looking at establishing an employers' liability bureau - an insurer of last resort - to deal with the still unacceptably high proportion of insurers that cannot be traced. Lord Mackenzie said that a mere 52% of insurers were traced by mesothelioma sufferers despite all the mechanisms put in place.
By Wednesday, this apparently reluctant admission by a government minister that a fund of last resort was being actively considered was replaced by an upfront announcement and a promise to come back with more information soon. This came during a debate initiated by Labour MP Alison Seabeck on asbestos-related illnesses in Plymouth when junior Justice minister Claire Ward promised more information on a possible employers' liability insurance bureau shortly.
She also told MPs that the government had held a meeting of medical and legal experts on 15 October to see if it was possible to hammer out some sort of consensus on pleural plaques and that a decision on this would also be announced shortly. There is a bill being promoted by former City minister Baroness Quin to reverse the House of Lords' judgement that pleural plaques are not a compensatable condition which has all party support and is waiting a date for a second reading debate. A similar bill was making its way through the House of Commons before the summer recess but ran out of time and a judicial review is currently underway in Scotland. There was also an Early Day Motion on the subject tabled in the House of Commons last week.
It does look as if the insurance industry is on the back foot on this one and many will consider that perhaps it is time to give in graciously over establishing a fund of last resort given the dreadful state of employers' and insurers' records. Pleural plaques is a more difficult issue, easy to be emotional about but hard to be objective. I think that it is right that society, through Parliament and the courts, is asked to make a reasoned decision on this and that the insurance industry's viewpoint is heard. The argument may be slipping away from the industry but people do need to recognise that this is not a hard-hearted stance but a logical position to take in the face of the medical evidence.
All Party Group looks at home income plans
10 Nov 2009
It will be an interesting meeting for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Insurance & Financial Services tomorrow (Wednesday 11 November) when it returns to the subject of home income plans, or equity release as it is sometimes still referred to.
This was a real battleground issue back in the 1990s when some Midlands building societies were guilty of dreadful miss-selling of home income plans and it took a landmark meeting of the All Party Group with the building societies and the Insurance Ombudsman (as it then was) to broker a solution to the dreadful problems faced by policyholders who had lost out. Out of that crisis came a concerted move by the market to clean up its act and Safe Home Income Plans (SHIP) is the organisation that the market supports today to help it raise standards and promote best practice. It is SHIP that the group will hear from tomorrow.
The meeting - open to anyone who is interested - takes place in Committee Room 17, House of Commons at 11.15am.
This was a real battleground issue back in the 1990s when some Midlands building societies were guilty of dreadful miss-selling of home income plans and it took a landmark meeting of the All Party Group with the building societies and the Insurance Ombudsman (as it then was) to broker a solution to the dreadful problems faced by policyholders who had lost out. Out of that crisis came a concerted move by the market to clean up its act and Safe Home Income Plans (SHIP) is the organisation that the market supports today to help it raise standards and promote best practice. It is SHIP that the group will hear from tomorrow.
The meeting - open to anyone who is interested - takes place in Committee Room 17, House of Commons at 11.15am.
There are many honest, hardworking MPs. There. I've said it and I know it to be true.
Sadly, there are also far too many who have been exploiting a woefully inadequate system for dealing with the many challenges and legitimate costs of being an MP. What really shocks me is the inability of many of those in that second category to understand what needs to be done to start the very long process of rebuilding respect and trust among the people who elect them. The complaints about the likely shape of the recommendations from the Independent Committee on Standards in Public Life and row over the refusal to allow MPs to vote on them vividly illustrates this gulf.
From what I have seen of the proposals they largely make sense. I think there could be a legitimate debate about whether MPs from outside London should be allowed to buy or rent in London so long as the scope for making excessive profits on property deals is brought to an end. To me home "flipping" has been one of the most distasteful aspects of the whole scandal because it seems to be a very deliberate attempt to make as much money as possible using the public subsidy they enjoy and, in many case, avoid paying taxes that the rest of us have to pay. I still struggle to understand how that isn't fraud.
The rest of what has been rather clumsily leaked over the last week is reasonable. I especially like the idea that MPs who live no further out of central London than I do will no longer be subsidised for second homes in town. It will be a pleasure to see them join the rest of us commuting on most days - remembering that they don't have to go to Parliament on as many days of the year as you and I have to go to our place of work because they often (rightly) have to work in their constituencies as well. I am afraid I don't buy the late night working argument as I, along with tens of thousands of others, often have to work late or attend functions as part of my job. Last night I got home after midnight having attended a City function but I do not feel I need a second home to do my job.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the argument going on at the moment is the feeling that those MPs arguing that they should be able to vote on the committee's proposals next week are trying to have one last hurrah at our expense.
The House of Commons will change dramatically after the next election. With the numbers already standing down and the likelihood of a dramatic shift in electoral fortunes almost half of MPs could be new next year. It will be a great opportunity for Parliament to make a fresh start and it shouldn't be saddled with an expenses system voted in by people who are no longer there. Unfortunately, some of those opposing the reforms are undoubtedly looking to the potential impact on their own pockets and worrying about what they will get in their final few months as an MP and as a severance package when they go or lose.
The government is right to resist all attempts to force a vote on the reform package.
Sadly, there are also far too many who have been exploiting a woefully inadequate system for dealing with the many challenges and legitimate costs of being an MP. What really shocks me is the inability of many of those in that second category to understand what needs to be done to start the very long process of rebuilding respect and trust among the people who elect them. The complaints about the likely shape of the recommendations from the Independent Committee on Standards in Public Life and row over the refusal to allow MPs to vote on them vividly illustrates this gulf.
From what I have seen of the proposals they largely make sense. I think there could be a legitimate debate about whether MPs from outside London should be allowed to buy or rent in London so long as the scope for making excessive profits on property deals is brought to an end. To me home "flipping" has been one of the most distasteful aspects of the whole scandal because it seems to be a very deliberate attempt to make as much money as possible using the public subsidy they enjoy and, in many case, avoid paying taxes that the rest of us have to pay. I still struggle to understand how that isn't fraud.
The rest of what has been rather clumsily leaked over the last week is reasonable. I especially like the idea that MPs who live no further out of central London than I do will no longer be subsidised for second homes in town. It will be a pleasure to see them join the rest of us commuting on most days - remembering that they don't have to go to Parliament on as many days of the year as you and I have to go to our place of work because they often (rightly) have to work in their constituencies as well. I am afraid I don't buy the late night working argument as I, along with tens of thousands of others, often have to work late or attend functions as part of my job. Last night I got home after midnight having attended a City function but I do not feel I need a second home to do my job.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the argument going on at the moment is the feeling that those MPs arguing that they should be able to vote on the committee's proposals next week are trying to have one last hurrah at our expense.
The House of Commons will change dramatically after the next election. With the numbers already standing down and the likelihood of a dramatic shift in electoral fortunes almost half of MPs could be new next year. It will be a great opportunity for Parliament to make a fresh start and it shouldn't be saddled with an expenses system voted in by people who are no longer there. Unfortunately, some of those opposing the reforms are undoubtedly looking to the potential impact on their own pockets and worrying about what they will get in their final few months as an MP and as a severance package when they go or lose.
The government is right to resist all attempts to force a vote on the reform package.
Prime Minister ducks the Equitable Life issue
13 May 2009
The steady rise of Equitable Life up the political agenda continued this lunchtime when the Conservative MP Angela Browning raised it during Prime Minister's Questions. Her question trying to tease out a government response to the damming report from the Parliamentary Ombudsman last week was loudly cheered right across the packed House of Commons.
The Prime Minister's reply made it pretty obvious that he hadn't read it as he referred back to the previous report and the appointment of Sir John Chadwick to look at how a limited compensation scheme could be set up and administered. Perhaps with everything he has had on his plate in the last week, Gordon Brown can be forgiven for not being fully up to speed on this one but he surely must have gone away with some sense of the strength of support among MPs of all parties for doing more - and doing it sooner - to compensate Equitable Life policyholders.
Battle lines drawn on Equality Bill
12 May 2009
Yesterday's second reading debate for the Equality Bill in the House of Commons confirmed just how tough it is going to be for the insurance industry to get the "clean" exemption from the age discrimination provisions that it has been lobbying forEquality Bill_2R Briefing, May09.doc.
As I predicted, it was age discrimination in the travel insurance market that attracted the most sustained criticism of the industry in the debate and it is this area that the Association of British Insurers will have to concentrate on if it is to get the clarity it is seeking from the new legislation. In its briefing document to MPs, the ABI says that it is looking at setting up a clearing house arrangement so that if people have been unable to obtain insurance with their first choice insurer they can be guided to a firm that will offer them a policy. This is similar to the scheme the ABI ran in the late 1980s and early 1990s when there were accusations of red-lining some inner city areas making it impossible for small business to get cover. This dealt effectively with the problem as the ABI was able to find takers for the cases it received. It is, of course, not just a question of availability but also affordability, as highlighted by several of the MPs who contributed to the debate and any scheme must also allow people to refer to it unreasonable terms and rates if it is to satisfy the industry's Parliamentary critics.
Where the industry will find some support is over its desire to see as much clarity as possible in the primary legislation. When it comes to age discrimination in the provision of goods and services alot appears to be left to secondary legislation and ministerial order, an issue that worries many of the providers of specialist products and services such as Saga and also building societies with their silver saver accounts. It also worried MPs from all parties and the government is going to come under pressure during the committee stage of the Bill to put some flesh on the bones of the very lean clauses covering these areas. This may turn out to be to the advantage of the insurance and retail financial services sectors whose trade associations will no doubt have some neatly drafted clauses to hand.
About the Author
David has been a financial journalist for 30 years and is currently Group Editorial Services Director at Incisive Media.
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All Party Parliamentary Group Content
