09/12/2013 Daily Politics

Good afternoon and welcome to the Daily Politics. Work and Pensions

Secretary Iain Duncan Smith faces MPs as he tries to explain why the

Government's flagship welfare reform has been knocked off course.

Christmas has come early to Westminster - MPs are to get an 11%

pay rise - have they really been that well-behaved?

Abuse in Britain's care homes - can the system cope with financial and

demographic pressures? And Parliamentarians prepare to make

their tribute to Nelson Mandela - we'll hear how he inspired British

politicians. All that in the next hour. And with

us for the first half of the programme today is Lawrence

Tomlinson, entrepreneur-in-residence at the Department for Business,

Innovation and Skills. Every department should have one. Welcome

to the programme, Lawrence. Thank you.

This afternoon, the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith

will be appearing before a committee of MPs to answer questions about the

implementation of the flagship universal credit scheme. The new

benefit, which replaces six separate payments, is being gradually rolled

out. But last week his department admitted that not quite everybody

will have been transferred onto the new scheme by the planned 2017

deadline. That seems quite a change from what he said just three months

ago when he insisted that all was fine. Here he is speaking in the

Commons, and then again in an interview from last week.

Unlike the previous Government, who went and crashed one IT programme

after another, no Government minister ever intervened to change

them early so they delivered on time. We are not doing that. I have

taken action on this particular programme. This programme will

deliver on time and in budget. Universal credit, the plan that we

are putting forward, expanding from the Pathfinder and rolling out, it

will essentially be complete and rolling out, it will essentially be

complete under that plan by 2017. We may take a little longer on those

who are already in ESA with no work requirement on them, because they

are very vulnerable and we may want to take a bit more time with them.

They need to be processed and dealt with carefully.

And with us now is the Shadow Employment Minister, Stephen Timms

and the Conservative MP Kwasi Kwarteng, who is on the work and

pensions select committee. Welcome, both. Kwasi Kwarteng, on

time, in budget, those words will come back to haunt Iain Duncan

Smith. In September, he said the scheme was still on-time and on

budget, is not. A man was brought in who did very well at the Olympics,

he suggested that we should take more time, and the reason we are

doing that is, as I understand, people who are very vulnerable will

be exposed to any mistakes made. It is much better that the programme

should be done more slowly and that we get it right than that we should

rush out and get things wrong. At the end of the day, it will be very

vulnerable people affected and harmed. How much longer? I'm not

entirely sure how much longer it will take. Iain Duncan Smith has not

put a date on it, 2017 will not be the final date. It is fine for the

opposition to jump up and down and say there has been a delay, but the

Government is right in saying it is important to get it right than

Herriot and get it wrong. I think there might be a personal reason why

Iain Duncan Smith has said there would be no delay, while the rest of

us have seen there would be and now we can see it. It is a shambles.

Ministers fail to grasp the scale of the project. Public Accounts

Committee made that point. And they fail to decide exactly what they

wanted to build, and started building the IT before they made the

decision. Some of the key decisions have not been made. They need to

work out now what exactly this system is going to be, then to build

the IT to deliver it. It is easy to lose sight of the big picture,

universal credit is much better than anything Labour had. But it has to

work. Of course. We had a period of chronic worklessness, people on

benefits over ten years in the last Government, this is a much more

effective and more simple way of getting benefits to people who need

it most. Labour do not, I understand, oppose the principle.

You support the broad idea? We have always thought the principle was

very sensible, but it has been delayed until after the general

election. The the risk is that it could be delayed longer. We need

action to get it back on track. We have agreed between the two Mark Roe

of you that you are in favour of universal credit. -- between the two

of you. Did Iain Duncan Smith bury his head in the sand when, if we are

to believe Labour, they knew it was coming off the tracks? I think it is

rich for Labour to complain about the implementation, for 13 years

their operating system was inefficient and did not incentivise

people to get a job stop we are all here now, realising it will not be

online by 2017. Is it because it was too big a challenge for the civil

servants meant to be putting it in motion? You don't even know what you

will be putting into action? The initial green paper said it would

not be a major IT project, that was a ridiculous claim. I think that is

fair, it was a huge IT project with teething problems. We had this with

the NHS in the last Government, ?113 billion was wasted. How much has

been wasted on this? There are conflicting reports, the Public

health committee said ?140 million, we dispute that. It is likely to go

up. The suggestion is that ?300 million could be written off so far.

It looks as though they will build two different systems now, the

Francis Maude system and the Iain Duncan Smith system. Goodness knows

how much that will cost. Will there be two schemes running alongside

each other? Two IT systems, but both will be used. The money has not all

been written off. The public health committee did not write it all.

Francis Maude thinks you should go to the beginning and start again. If

that was the case, it would sound like a shambles, if you had to go

back to the drawing board and start again. I think the want about by

extension will be used in the final delivery. IT projects are difficult

for government, is that the same in the private sector, or is their

advice the private sector could give in terms of procurement and finding

the right companies to set up? I don't know, but it is good to see

two politicians generally agree on about the right direction. I am from

the private sector and have worked in Government in business,

innovation and skills for a period of time. People in those departments

work incredibly hard to implement these systems, I am sure the DWP

will be doing the same and will hopefully get to the end of it. Who

is to blame? Should Iain Duncan Smith take personal responsibility?

I don't think so. I think there was a problem with the implementation of

the IT, there were operational issues. And how Shippey has been

brought in as an independent person with good operational experience. We

warned about these problems three years ago. Iain Duncan Smith

emphasised in his response how much he was personally supervising the

project. He was warned it would take much longer than he said, he ignored

the warnings, he should take responsibility. How should he take

responsibility? In my view, he should be considering his position.

That is ridiculous. It is customary for Shadow Ministers to say the

minister should resign, of course he should not. It is the right scheme

going in the right direction, incentivising people to go into

work. Howard Shipley has said that they need to take their time to make

sure it goes on the right direction. Two we are calling for cross-party

talks. How would they achieve this plan getting online? That would seem

to imply that the government does not want to get it online, when they

do. There has been too much secrecy over the last few years, a refusal

to own up to what is going, a good news culture. We need openness, we

need to be able to see what is going on and a target, which we are

confident will be delivered. Of course we need transparency. That is

why the Secretary of State is appearing before a committee this

afternoon, we will be asking questions and there will be

openness. We would like to knows that questions you have post, why it

has taken as long as it has, when he thinks the scheme can be delivered

fully by. It struck us as strange that the announcements came out that

the deadline would be almost on the day of the Autumn Statement, was

that a case of bearing bad news? As you know, there are lots of

conflicting issues with timing. A big issue as a flagship government

programme missing its deadline. We have two and a half weeks to

Christmas, it is probably a good time. The NHS Labour write-off could

be ?10 billion. We all hoped lessons had been learned, sadly they have

not. The old mistakes and words have been repeated. The value is almost

more than 100 times the value that has been suggested we should write

off in this case. Kwasi Kwarteng and Stephen Timms, thank you. Something

a little different now. Time for our daily quiz. Ed Balls is learning to

play the piano. And yesterday, after answering some tricky questions from

the media following the Autumn Statement, he performed in his first

public recital. So what did he play? Was it Chopsticks, Der Dichter

Spricht by Schumann, Angels by Robbie Williams - Ed Miliband's

favourite song - or The Hills are Alive from the Sound of Music? We'll

give you the correct answer at the end of the show.

Now, want to be a wildly successful racing driving entrepreneur like our

guest of the day? Here's how. When he's not hot desk in the

business department one day a week, Lawrence Tomlinson will be found

here at his factory in Yorkshire. I did not realise there was no oil in

there. Is he coming from Spain to test it? Is that a reverse gear?

His company makes sports cars, export them, runs a championship

with them and Lawrence races them. Would be drive that he has two make

sure that car is winning every single race, I suppose you could

say, is phenomenal. Does he ever lose his temper? I have seen it on a

few occasions, luckily never at me. This is Lawrence's own car. You

could have won for just ?68,000. Oh, and there is an 18 month waiting

list. If cars are his passion, here is his mission, a chain of 36 care

homes. Have you heard about Lawrence Tomlinson, the owner?

I know his name and I have met him once. He was very sharp, very quick

and out, but he was very nice. He spoke. That he was like a whirlwind.

Lawrence does not just run these places, he has another firm building

them for other people and yet another providing software for them.

All from fairly humble beginnings. When he was 24, his parents had a

care home adapted from a large, existing property. Somebody came to

buy it, Lawrence looked up the deal and even though he was working in an

engineering job he said, I can see value in that. So instead of a

third-party buying the home, Laurence bought both that home and

the home of the person trying to buy it, which got him into care, he has

never looked since. What got into the headlines was his investigation

into RBS. He accused one of their divisions of forcing customers out

of business so the bank could buy their assets at bargain basement

prices. Some were surprised by the strident tone of the report. Let's

ask his boss. Is there a danger that all those qualities that make a

great businessman make him a live wire in the Whitehall Government

world? I'm not making a character

assessment, I don't know him very well. I have seen his work, it is

sufficiently disturbing that I have passed it on to the regulators and

as them to follow up. I know the bank taking this very seriously.

Their business theory that Lawrence only took action against RBS because

he is an aggrieved customer angry with the bank because they made him

feel like a loser -- there is a theory that. Let's discuss that

controversial report Lawrence Tomlinson wrote about the banks'

treatment of small business. We asked for an interview with RBS, who

bore the brunt of Lawrence's criticism. They didn't want to talk

to us this morning but they did give us this statement:

we are joined by the city analyst, Louise Cooper. First of all, where

is your evidence? My evidence is in the dossier of evidence that I

compiled in the report. Isn't it anecdotal? No, we have done a lot of

analysis, we probably had 200 cases that we looked at, distilled into

the first report. Isn't it the case that the treatment by the turnaround

divisions, the departments that deal with customers in difficulty, it is

no wonder that many of them ended up going out of business, it is a fact

of business life and they would do anything to say their businesses are

fine. I would agree entirely on that point but these are businesses that

we looked at, people we spoke to who were not in that position. Had that

been the case, or had it been the case that this was happening between

2008 and 2010, when the bank was in turmoil and we bailed the bank out,

I would have certainly accepted that. But these are cases that are

different from those you described. What was your reaction? It was a

very serious allegation, to say that firms who were in good health were

deliberately being put on life support, which would benefit the

bank itself. If you look at the statistics from the insolvency

service, you could actually argue, almost the entire opposite. That in

fact, banks have been very restrained and highly tolerant of

business is in trouble. If you look at the corporate liquidation,

companies that have been wound down, in 2002, before the crisis, there

was over 16,000 corporate liquidation is. If you look at every

year since the crisis, only one year where the number has been

significantly more than that. If you look at compulsory liquidations,

where companies are forced to go bust, that is actually now lower. In

2011, 503. 2012, 421. The actual statistics paint a very different

picture. Why does your report not follow the line of statistics? That

is interesting, those are overall statistics for the banking industry.

If you look at RBS geology, only 6% of there's a meeting in London on

if you think that less than one in ten are coming back into normal

banking from GRG, that is really interesting.

When capital is cheap and easy and there is a lot about, the line for

when a company is viable is a generous to the Company, because

money is cheap. Money may be cheap now but it is not plentiful. Banks

almost went bust, they need to rebuild their balance sheets.

Capital is no longer everywhere. Capital is very restrained.

Therefore banks have to react to be in bar and they are in. The

complaint has been that they are not lending to small businesses. RBS

were lending 55 billion to companies, they are now lending 38

billion, so they have shrunk that tremendously. They have shrunk the

whole of their Labour, it is a much smaller than it ever was. They have

reduced the balance sheet by 900 billion. They have gone from 55 to

38. These are businesses that were viable, clearly viable and were sent

down a road... That is what the report says. Who knows, none of us

are fortune-tellers. I am happy to have made a judgement on some of

these cases. I had 200 cases that I put into the report. Since then I

have had another, roughly 300 cases. I am looking at 500 cases. Of which

I reject a lot. I just can't believe that this isn't systematic. In the

report, and this is what I am asking RBS to investigate... And they are

going to. They couldn't ignore an allegation of that seriousness. They

have instructed Clifford Chance and people who have seen the report and

the evidence are also shocked. One of the accusations made in the film

was about your nation ship with RBS and whether that should have been

declared. -- your relationship or the pew do not have declared that

RBS had given you a big overdraft and you were in dispute? -- should

you not have declared? Everybody who came to me asked to be an because

they are so frightened of what they say is happening in GRG. Should you

have disclosed it to Vince Cable? It was clear to Vince Cable and the

department, when I started this job, that that was the case. This

dispute I have is absolutely irrelevant. I wish it was another

bank that I was speaking about, not one I have an ongoing relationship

with. The relationship to banks from the public is hardly good and a lot

of people will say it is totally credible. They could believe that

those practices were going on. Businesses will anecdotally have

strong evidence to say not only were we not lend to, they will not even

answer phone calls. Why are you so sceptical? Banker bashing is a

terribly popular pastime for all classes of our society. It is not

that I am sceptical. I am sure there will be some appallingly bad cases

and that makes me very unhappy. My concern is that we have anecdotal

evidence only, and you are turning that into a trend. Which I can't

quite get there. 450 cases don't follow a trend? Is that

realistically true? The second thing is none of us are fortune-tellers.

We cannot predict the future. Making a decision as to whether a business

is viable or not is very difficult. They will sometimes get it wrong,

there will sometimes get it right. Nobody from the outside can say, it

is viable, it is not viable. The easiest thing, I am happy to sit

down in a room with Louise and show her the evidence, and she will be

truly shocked about what has been going on, in fact. You can go and do

that at a time convenient to both of you. How have civil servants

responded to your report? The civil servants have seen the main body of

the evidence and are appalled by what has been happening. They have

been very supportive. Thank you very much.

There is a meeting in London on Wednesday, bringing together experts

from the worlds largest economies to focus on the growing problem of

dementia. The incurable condition is one that's putting increasing

pressure on care homes - in terms of capacity but also the quality of

care. That was an issue brought into sharp focus by a Panorama programme,

broadcast in 2011, which exposed terrible abuse in Winterbourne View

private hospital. Let's take a look at a clip from that disturbing

programme now, which contains footage some viewers may find

upsetting. This is a residential hospital. It

is supposed to care for adults with learning difficulties. People unable

to care for themselves. But Panorama has been undercover, and found

systematic abuse. Patients suffering. Staff out of control.

Away from their families, these were patients without a voice.

Disturbing footage indeed. Here with me now is Caroline

Abrahams from Age UK, the former Care Minister and Lib Dem MP Paul

Burstow, and Lawrence Tomlinson is still with us - his company runs

more than 50 care homes. We will make the distinction between the

footage from a private hospital as opposed to a care home, as you

brought up with me. The film showed abuse by carers in the hospital

rather than elderly care homes. Generally, for all of us who will

have to rely on monitors, being cared for later in life, out of

their own home, it is a worry isn't it? It is a huge worry. The

landscape going forward is particularly worrying. There is

about a three-year time to build new facilities so even if we started to

date, two built these facilities for people with dementia, you are

talking a big time delay -- if we started today, to build these

facilities. You are talking three years from deciding to build a care

home, from having one care home operating. How big a problem will

that be? It is right that there is that time lag but there is a bigger

issue, a societal one. There is a structural lag in society in terms

of ageing. We are about 20 years behind where ageing really is.

People are living much longer and that doesn't mean we will need more,

but different sorts of care institutions in the future. -- that

doesn't mean. -- that does mean. The -- we have care in people's

homes care homes, and some facilities do enough but we are --

need to see more. We get cases from time to time that we would look into

and investigate fully. Which is what you would expect to do. We give

everyone that works for me, 2000 people, give them all an iPhone,

they have a button and they can contact me directly if they think

there is something going wrong. We would be encouraging whistle-blowing

and we have fantastic staff and great training. It is very difficult

in the current financial environment, with local authorities.

I am dealing with 152 local authorities, it is never easy. That

is the point, finances are important. If you are talking about

the number of care homes and people being paid a reasonable salary to do

a very difficult job, is that part of the problem in terms of cases of

neglect and abuse? It is probably the biggest problem. The inspector

has just done a report on care homes and found there was an association

between turnover of staff and incidence of neglect. If you have an

unstable staff because people can't really afford to be there, you're

going to get problems. How widespread is it? When you see that

sort of footage, it is very disturbing. Is it rare, or is it

quite widespread? The same report I refer to found that one in ten care

homes have an issue they need to address, but not like that, that was

a horrible and graphic situation. But patients not being given enough

help to eat and drink, that is unfortunately quite a lot more

common. You are interesting local authorities at a time when their

budgets have been cut, a lot of them are taking money out of social care

budgets, that is the government's fault Test

this is a sector that is very much the orphan when it comes to how care

is looked at in this country. It has a stigma around it. But there are

good care homes and we don't focus enough on the good, we tend to just

report the bad. You said they are good because you have training and

are paying them a reasonable wage. It starts with physical environment

that people are working in and designing it to be fit for purpose.

Investment is key in the sector going forward. We have to create an

environment where people want to leave hospital, not be pushing

people out of hospital. I am doing some work with them -- with DEMOS

and we want to make sure we close the gap between the perception of

people who work in the sector and those who have erect experience

because family members are already in, who think care in care homes is

better -- who have direct experience. We want to make them

more like homes. We make sure they are genuinely hub is in the

community, where services are provided to not just those living

there but others in the community. And also they have greater

involvement in the community through voluntary work. Would that bring

down the number of cases of abuse and neglect? I think it would.

Everybody knows it is closed environments where abuse can thrive,

where anything can be going on and nobody can see. The more ordinary

members of the public going in and out, the better. If something is

going wrong, it is more likely to be picked up early. How important is

the inspection regime, in terms of keeping control of what is going on

in care homes? We should not relying on CQC. We have internal audits, the

way we look at other quality, then we have external people looking at

our quality before CQC come in. CQC is important, and they are picking

up at the end. Should it be a tougher regime of inspection? It

will be tougher, there can be potential criminal prosecution. One

of those is ranking the level of homes in tables? There will be a

return to the star rating system which the Labour Party scrapped full

stop -- scrapped. Does that improve the standard of care home? People

are understanding more through social media that they can vet where

they want to go. The one line, look at the reports. If you are looking

at placing someone, understand it. Is the Government spending enough?

Whether it is the Government or the local authority, there needs to be a

linking between quality and outcome and the amount they pay, not just a

flat rate. That needs to change across the UK. What about staff?

What do you think should change in terms of staff recruitment into care

homes? Reign we have to pay people more to do one important than

stressful job. At least a living wage, I think. I think many staff

are on minimum wage, which is why we have high staff turnover. People in

charge of the homes are crucial. We know the leadership of an

institution is important, when places have not done very well and

suddenly get better it is usually because someone good has gone to run

the home. Would you be happy to put your elderly relatives in a care

home? That is why I am doing this, to hope that if I have to do that it

would be good quality. It is the right case for people to be

sometimes, but I would like more options for supported care Housing

in between, not just at home or in a care home, lots of stages in

between. With more and more people going to become old over the next

ten or 20 years, do you honestly think the problem will only get

worse, not better? The government needs to put more money into social

care. There are signs of hope. Most older people can stay at home for

longer with the right support. I have got to say goodbye, it has

already got to that point in the programme. Thank you, Lawrence

Tomlinson. ?NEWLINE Now, normal parliamentary business has been set

aside this afternoon as MPs and peers gather to pay tribute to

Nelson Mandela - Giles has two of those MPs with him in central lobby.

Yes, if they finish early they might squeeze a bit of business to the

house today, but most of the time will begin to these tributes to

Nelson Mandela. I am joined by the Conservative -- a Conservative MP

and a Labour MP. Many people are acknowledging the iconic status of

Nelson Mandela and his achievements, but not everybody is

that well-informed of the history of what happened. Not lost on you? No,

I grew up in Ghana in West Africa, the first sub-Saharan Africa and

country to get independence, so I was very conscious of the struggle

for self-government across the continent of Africa. Looking back,

the crowning achievement of Nelson Mandela is political, pulling his

country from the brink of what was a deeply divided racial situation. It

could have gone into civil war at that time, were it not for him. What

is remarkable is how we exercised moral authority in order to achieve

those ends. Our pathway was defeated through persuasion and

reconciliation, rather than violence. With everybody standing up

to speak, sometimes there is a competition to out to be chipper in

eloquence, is it important that MPs steer clear of beatify the man? He

was not a saint, he was never happy with people describing him as a

saint. You would not describe him as a saint, but he is an iconic leader,

you can't take that away from him and you would not want to. He has

done more for politicians and democracy across the world, to

inspire people, than anybody else during my whole life, certainly.

When I was in school, we knew about Nelson Mandela. When I had my first

Civics prize in the sixth form it was to do with the liberation

struggles of Africa. I was active in anti-apartheid. You met him? Indeed,

when he came here to meet various people including the Parliamentary

Labour Party, he and Winnie Mandela came. I was fortunate enough to be

very close to them. The men all crowded around Nelson Mandela, I

went to speak to Winnie. Which is odd, because he preferred to be

surrounded by women, he was very charming. That is part of his

reputation, he said he was not a saint! But she was at that time a

great inspiration to women. We should just explain, it is protocol

with you? I am a member of the Government, but the protocol reasons

I am not speaking. Why are you not? I have not put in to speak, I think

there are more important voices than mine. I was one of the foot soldiers

of the anti-apartheid movement, and although it matters hugely to me and

I shall listen to others, I mean not be contributing. It is interesting

in a world of 24-hour news to remind ourselves that in 1991 Nelson was

released from prison, the world 's television cameras were on him and

the BBC interrupted its coverage to show that. We got a record number of

complaints because it disrupted antiques road show.

Now, let's look at what's happening this week. As we discussed earlier,

the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith gives evidence to the

Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee.

Tomorrow, the Prime Minister will be among many leaders attending a

memorial service for Nelson Mandela in Soweto ahead of next Sunday's

funeral. On Wednesday, as usual we have PMQs - and the big question is

will Nick Clegg and Harriet Harman be back as stand-ins?

On Thursday, George Osborne gives evidence to the Treasury Select

Committee on the Autumn Statement. Also on Thursday, Parliament's

expenses watchdog, IPSA, is expected to announce an 11% increase to MPs'

salaries from 2015. I'm joined now by Tamara Cohen from

The Daily Mail and Rafael Behr from the New Statesman. Welcome to you

both. Let's start with that news about IPSA proposing the 11%

increase. What happens now? It is really difficult for all three party

leaders, they all want to see the cost of politics going down not up.

The reason that we have IPSA, the independent body looking at MPs'

pay, is because they've betrayed the public ours trust in the expenses

scandal. Soak for this whopping 11% increase to be recommended, there is

nothing that can really be done. But this is just catch up, it is because

they have resisted pay increases under the old system in the past

that the figure is 11%? Yes, and I am one of the tiny, weird minority

of people who feels a bit sorry for MPs on this. In the run-up to the

expenses scandal, MPs were given to understand that they could

discreetly fill their boots from expenses because was politically

impossible for them to award themselves a pay rise. That was

compensation. They were then busted doing much, so now it has become

impossible for them to give themselves a pay rise because of the

expenses scandal. Either way, they are stuck. They can't come out and

say that, frankly, people are doing difficult and stressful jobs in the

private sector getting paid more than us, because most people in the

country get paid less. At some stage, this has to change. Someone

has to be able to say, we value this job very highly, it is very

difficult and we want high-calibre people. It is not clear how you do

that so it does not look like politicians with their noses in the

ground. In the trough, probably, but we get your sentiment. Looking at

the universal credit system, it will not be quite on-time, nor on budget.

Where does this leave Iain Duncan Smith? It is disappointing for the

Conservatives, they wanted to go into the next election than saying

they have delivered this most ambitious things since the 1940s.

Iain Duncan Smith will be making the point to MPs this afternoon that the

lessons of previous computer scandals such as the tax credits one

a few years back is that it is better to slow down the pace and

make sure you get it right. He is saying that I delaying the

implementation until 2017 of the least, everyone will be on the

scheme and it will be a success. But we have had somebody's saying that

Iain Duncan Smith should consider his position? Labour will be keen to

pin serious blame, they have been playing catch up on the whole

welfare gender. It is tricky for Iain Duncan Smith, this was the one

big thing he promised to do. Other conservatives such as George Osborne

thought it might not work, the public want to hear that welfare

spending is coming down and our job as conservatives is to swing the axe

into the benefits budget, not get bogged down in the project. Some

people say they are not sure that IDS has the mouse or capability to

carry it out. -- has the nous or capability. A powerful Parliamentary

committee says he has wasted the best part of ?420 million, so at

what point does he take responsibility? Thank you very much.

. I'm joined for the rest of the

programme by three MPs: the Conservative, Mark Field, Labour's

John Woodcock and the Lib Dem Tom Brake. The first question for them

is - do they deserve a pay rise? Not just these three MPs - but all MPs.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority who decide on

these things think so - an ELEVEN percent pay rise in fact. -- and 11%

pay rise in fact, to be introduced in 2015. But leading politicians of

all parties have queued up to condemn the pay award - including

Danny Alexander on yesterday's Marr show.

I think most people will find it utterly incomprehensible that at a

time of pay restraint in the public sector, further squeezes on

Government spending, that Ibsen should recommend that. I think it

will be highly inappropriate for MPs to get such a big pay rise when

public sector workers are seeing their prices capped at 1%. I have

said in the past that I would not accept it. What can you do about it

as a Government? IPSA is independent, we have made a

submission to them that it would not be appropriate at a time of wider

public service restraints to go forward.

Tom Brake, is it a good thing? No, I think Danny is right. At a time when

the public sector is under very strike -- very tight pay restraints,

it would be the wrong time for MPs to get an increase. It is always the

wrong time, even when times were good, which is why the 11 cents I

look so high. Times are bad, which is why now is the bad time. A

decision has not taken. This would happen in the next parliament and

would be subject to a review. Would Ed Miliband go into 2015 saying they

would change the law and there will not be an 11th % pay rise? Ed

Miliband has been clear that this should not happen. There is never a

right time to do this but there is most definitely a wrong one. We have

to look around and understand just how much people are struggling. All

of us as a group of people, as Members of Parliament, as a

legislative body of government we have to take some responsibility for

what has happened to the country. People in the country are

struggling, businesses are struggling, this is not the time to

do something like this. Can you do anything about it or is it just

empty rhetoric? Most of your constituent would expect you to say

it is not right, but can you stop it? I think it is right that pay

remuneration was taken out of the hands of MPs, but I think it is

really important that it is a listen to what the country is saying and

act on this. -- really important that IPSA listen. The truth is that

IPSA have listened and in the last few months have come back with a

cost neutral package. They have said they would strip away some more of

the pension rights that MPs have, get rid of some of the allowances,

the idea being to make it more transparent and tried to get what we

should have had before the scandal in 2009, a little bit more on the

headline salary and to take away some of these benefits. No doubt I

would accept it. We have an independent body. If you want to

undermine IPSA, the whole idea is to draw a line under the scandals of

the past. There are many MPs with very large capital games, there

would have to be a police investigation into what happened

with expenses, which was conveniently done away with when we

went down this route. Danny Alexander 's earlier comment, you in

government have an opportunity to keep the cost of politics down, you

failing to do so. You have added 170 people to the House of Lords and the

last election, page ?300 per day expenses, no questions. We have the

largest cohort of special advisers, 92, with a 16% rise and that cost

over last year. I think it behoves you to get your own house in order

with that element of the cost of politics before putting pressure on

an independent body. Thank you for pointing that out, I don't think it

is the Liberal Democrats who can be accused of this. It is not just you.

We wanted a reform of the House of Lords and if that had gone ahead,

the cost of politics would have gone down. It is right, the number of

peers has gone up, exponentially, I take your point that that is not

what you wanted. Are there other areas where you could cap the cost

of politics, or reduce it in some ways? With special advisers, there

was a pledge to bring down the number of special advisers but it

has gone through the roof, as always happens when a new party gets into

government. We can still press on the issue of House of Lords reform.

The particular proposal in relation to what IPSA is bringing forward is

cost neutral. The increase in MPs' salaries would be offset against the

reduction in expenses. If they listen to the public in four or five

months, this idea that they are going ahead in some sort of ivory

tower is completely wrong. You have to accept that 11%, when we have had

public sector pay freezes over the last few years, wages have been

continually squeezed and most people will say, it is not just a question

that you don't deserve it, but just as a comparative with other

salaries. It is part and parcel of stripping away elements... The truth

is that IPSA came up with this proposal and said we want to

benchmark this against other professions, and we will go to the

lowest possible figure. Isn't it the same as a headmistress of a London

school in the south-east, a police chief? There are lots professions

for whom you could make a case ought to be paid differently, but that is

never treated in isolation. If you look at public sector workers, who

are going through pension changes, they don't see the government coming

along and saying, you have got to take care of your pension so here is

a whopping salary increase. What you have not answered is IPSA itself,

you brought in this new system. The whole point is it was supposed to be

independent and now you are bringing down your own system. I am not

bringing it down. IPSA have not yet taken a decision, it will be posted

thousands 15, it is possible they may come forward with something

which is difficult -- it will be post 2015 and it is possible they

may come forward with something different. We can't return the

money, so we would be left in a position, anyone serving in the 2015

Parliament, about what we would do with the increase that they had

given us. How much would you lie to be paid? -- like to be paid? I want

to see what happens in that review. I think IPSA did a good job of

looking at comparators but we are in a extremely difficult financial

position as a country. The public sector is not only facing pay

increases, but the sorts of things that MPs might be losing in terms of

pension rights and expenses are things that people in other areas of

work are also losing, so we can't sell it to them on that basis. It

goes back to your initial point, there is never going to be a good

time to do this. None of it will come into play in this Parliament so

the voters will have a say. The benchmarking suggested, and Tom

knows this, that MPs should be paid between 74 and 86,000. They came out

with the lowest possible figure on the basis that they thought there

would be a public backlash. I think they have tried to make this as cost

neutral as possible so therefore, let's run with it.

Talking about mental health has always been difficult for the last

week, one of our guests, John Woodcock, revealed he suffered from

depression. That followed last year's debate on mental health in

the House of Commons in which a number of MPs revealed their own

experience on mental illness. In 1996, I suffered from quite a deep

depression. It was related to work issues and other things going on in

my life at the moment. That is the first time I have spoken... Some

people in my family do not know what I am going to say. Because like a

lot of men, you try to deal with it yourself. You don't talk to people.

I just hope you realise what I am saying is very difficult for me now.

I did not make the decision until I put my notes down, to do it. It is

hard, because you don't realise first of all, it creeps up on you

very slowly. We are also in politics designed to think that somehow, if

you admit fault or fail to, -- failure, you're going to be looked

upon in a disparaging way in terms of the electorate but also your

peers. I am delighted to say that I have been a practising fruitcake for

31 years. It was 13 years ago, at St John's woodchip station, and I

remember it vividly, that I was visited by obsessive can disorder --

St John's would tube station. It has played a fairly significant part in

my life. On occasions it is manageable on on occasions it comes

quite difficult, it takes you to some dark places. MPs speaking

bravely and openly. Tell us about depression, why you decided to speak

out about it publicly. I have been through a stranger, I fell off a

ladder, I banged my head, I had a period where I was not able to do

much at all. It has been a slow recovery and I still don't have the

energy to do what I am -- I want. When I am exhausted I get really

low. It took me a while to recognise it. It was actually my wife who

said, I think you are depressed. My first reaction was, we are not going

there. But then I thought, I can do something about this. It was

actually Kevin Jones, Charles and Alistair Campbell, who have spoken

out about this brilliantly, who made me think, that as someone in front

line politics, I could do this privately. And because of the

opportunity they gave me to be able to do something about this by

speaking out themselves, I thought, shouldn't I make it public. That is

what I decided to do last week. Has it helped? I am glad that I spoke

about it. The reaction has been extraordinary. Really amazing. I

have had so much goodwill, it has been lovely. But actually, I have

had many constituents and others talking to me and saying, they have

suffered with problems over the years. Some of them have not been

able to get help. Some people saying, now I might get help, which

is amazing. One woman spoke to me at the weekend and she said, she had

had a bout of very severe mental health problems. She ended up

hospitalised. Her mother had said, you need to keep this quiet, don't

tell your brother. I think if people like Alistair and Kevin can speak

out, it can hopefully change people's perceptions and people can

think of it like a physical illness, which is ultimately what we need to

get to. There is a stigma, people are embarrassed about it. My father

also suffered from mental illness, nobody did want to talk about it or

face up to it. Do you think standing up in the House of Commons like

that, it is quite a brave thing to do? Will people think less of these

people? Dare I say, the more people who do it, the less the stigma will

attach. I think it has always been the case that mental health has been

this type of area. I want to give more money to it. Even in my own

case, I have not suffered from mental health problems but there

have been episodes in life, I can think of two, the first was the

death of my father and the other in my private life, when I probably

was, for a matter of months, feeling so low, thought I could not get out

of bed in the morning, this sort of thing. One of the things come in

Parliament and in many other workplaces, I hope there is more

support and encouragement for people who go through those phases. It is

different from a long-term, permanent mental health issue but a

lot of us have these short episodes as well. Do you think it is

difficult in politics to admit that actually, you do have these low

periods, even if it is not a constant illness? It is hard for

politicians to admit. It is hard for politicians, partly because the job

is so intense and there are stressful occasions. The workload is

there a demanding but there are lots of other professions and careers

where people are in the same place. I think the more people who talk

about it, and recognise that this is not exceptional, this is not

something many people will be experiencing in their lives, it is

something we need to be aware of and something that employers in

particular have a responsible to, to ensure that they can adapt to

situations where either they are perhaps recruiting somebody as a

mental health problem, or someone during the course of their working

life suffers from a problem where the employer has to make

adjustments. Thank you. Time to find out the answer to our daily quiz.

The question was, what did Ed Balls play at his first piano recital

yesterday? Was it Chopsticks, Der Dichter Spricht by Schumann, Angels

by Robbie Williams or The Hills Are Alive from the Sound of Music? So

what's the correct answer? I was going to say, it should be Angels if

he was going to try and keep in with his leader. I suspect it might be

the sound of music. Schumann. Well done, it was not the sound of the

zip. -- not the sound of music. The Sound of Music is the one that makes

him cry. We have a clip of him playing.

I think that could be a, B, C or D! You're absolutely right. I think he

needed to practice that as much as his Autumn Statement speech. You

need to defend Ed Balls here. Not about the piano performance. On the

day of the Autumn Statement... All through the Autumn Statement,

identikit great deal was actually added to the sum of human knowledge.

-- I don't think a great deal. In terms of a Parliamentary show from

members of Parliament as a whole, we did not do ourselves proud and we

need to do better. Were all of the Tory MPs which to go for Ed Balls?

-- whipped. I wasn't there. I think it is great that Ed Balls is taking

up the piano at his age. I have a five and a half -year-old son and a

two-year-old daughter who are both more proficient than I am. You have

got to start learning! Thank you for being our guests. The one o'clock

News is on BBC One. Have a great afternoon.