'If you've been overpaid, you'll have to pay it back'

On Sunday 14 June Andrew Marr interviewed Harriet Harman MP, Deputy Leader.

Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Labour's Harriet Harman promises a clear-up of parliamentary allowances.

ANDREW MARR:

Harriet Harman MP, Deputy Leader

Now we were just hearing Sir Christopher Kelly talk about what he hopes will happen with the reforms cleaning up MPs' pay.

One of the people who is going to be sitting giving evidence to him I think next week is the Leader of the House, Shadow Leader of … Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman, who is with me now.

Harriet Harman, one of the things raised in the interview with Christopher Kelly was the question of MPs having other jobs.

Lots of MPs are barristers or they work for newspapers or whatever it might be outside the Commons hours.

Are you going to make any move against that? Are you going to make it tougher for people to do that?

HARRIET HARMAN:

Well we are going to make moves on that. I mean I think if somebody I was employing in my office in the House of Commons had an additional job which was paying them up to half a million pounds a year, for example, and I didn't know about it- firstly, I'd want to know about it; and, secondly, I would question their commitment to doing their work for me. And one of the changes we've already introduced, which is going to come into effect on 1st July and I think is going to be very important indeed, is that any money that an MP earns beyond their parliamentary salary will need to be registered from the 1st July, how much it is, who is paying them and how much time they devote to it because people are entitled to know that.

ANDREW MARR:

What about the other changes that have been discussed because there's a whole raft of things when it comes to transparency, when it comes to flipping homes, when it comes to the question of whether MPs should be able to claim mortgage costs on the secondary home no matter how grand or where that home might be?

HARRIET HARMAN:

Well we know there absolutely has to be a clear up of the system. I mean there's been a real crisis of confidence and we're going to tackle it in three ways. Firstly, absolute transparency. And later this month, up on the House of Commons website, is going to be all MPs' claims and all payments made to MPs for the past four years. So complete transparency. Secondly, we're not going to do it any more ourselves. We're not going to set our allowances and then get the House of Commons authorities to pay the allowances because the public think that we set it in our own interest and then we lean on the staff in order to make them pay us more.

ANDREW MARR:

The public may be right about that historically.

HARRIET HARMAN:

Well I mean what we're going to do to make sure that there can be no doubt about that is by the time the House of Commons rises, we're going to shortly introduce legislation into the House of Commons so that by the time the House of Commons rises for the summer recess there will be legislation which will say we'll have a Parliamentary Standards Authority and they will run the allowances system. We won't do it ourselves any more. And I think that will not only be important for the public, but actually a relief to MPs because we don't want to be doing this ourselves.

ANDREW MARR:

A guarantee that will be on the .. tabled in the House of Commons before the Commons rises, definitely?

HARRIET HARMAN:

It will not only be brought into the House of Commons, but we will hope to have legislated. It will become law before the House rises for the summer recess.

ANDREW MARR:

Right.

HARRIET HARMAN:

And the third thing, which I think is very important, is payback. Those MPs who've been overpaid by the House of Commons authorities or who've over claimed, even if it's just innocent over claiming, it's got to be paid back. So there is an independent process, which Sir Thomas Legg is going to be supervising, which is going to go through every claim over the last four years and say if you've been overpaid, you'll have to pay it back.

ANDREW MARR:

And everything that an MP earns outside, whether it's in the law or wherever it might be …

HARRIET HARMAN:

Yuh …

ANDREW MARR:

… the public will know? Every penny?

HARRIET HARMAN:

Yes. And therefore a constituent will know …

ANDREW MARR:

Okay.

HARRIET HARMAN:

… if the MP has been working in the law courts as a criminal barrister, how much time they've been dedicating to that, how much money they've got from that. And then the public will have that knowledge, and that's from 1st July.

So I think it has been a traumatic thing - this big collapse of confidence and the crisis over MPs' expenses - but we're going to end up with a much cleaner, better, clearer system. And then obviously everybody will be able to be confident in that and we can address ourselves, as we have been doing, to the really big challenges that face this country …

ANDREW MARR:

Right.

HARRIET HARMAN:

… which is, above all, the economy.

ANDREW MARR:

Well you take us onto the economy. You can tell me that those things are going to be tabled through the Commons and so on because you are Leader of the Commons. Last week, very sadly Lord Mandelson was unable to help me when I asked him about when legislation on the part-privatisation of the Post Office was going to be put before the House of Commons. As Leader of the Commons, I'm sure you can help me.

HARRIET HARMAN:

Well it's been through … The Postal Services Bill has been through the House of Lords. What it does is it … we've got to tackle the problem of the …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) We know what it does. I'm just asking when it's going to be tabled in the House of Commons?

HARRIET HARMAN:

Well I haven't announced a date yet. But what we are clear about is …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Is that because you're going to lose in the House of Commons, you feel?

HARRIET HARMAN:

No, it's because we only announce the business two weeks ahead at a time, and I actually announce the business to the House of Commons rather than on TV. This is …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Well you just told me … You've just told … You've just told me about MPs' expenses.

HARRIET HARMAN:

Yes.

ANDREW MARR:

I'm just … This is another big and difficult issue …

HARRIET HARMAN:

Yes.

ANDREW MARR:

… and it's therefore reasonable to ask you when that's going to come to the House of Commons.

HARRIET HARMAN:

But the actual time tabling of when a bill is going to come forward to the House of Commons, we'll announce it in due course. But let me just say on this. We are determined that we've got to sort out the regulation of the Royal Mail, which is unfair and puts the Royal Mail at a competitive disadvantage compared to other independent suppliers. We've got to sort out...

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Can you promise the Royal Mail before the summer break?

HARRIET HARMAN:

We have got to sort out the pension liabilities.

ANDREW MARR:

Yuh.

HARRIET HARMAN:

As I've said, on timing you know I'm afraid …

ANDREW MARR:

Okay.

HARRIET HARMAN:

… I'll have to …

ANDREW MARR:

Alright.

HARRIET HARMAN:

… you'll just have to wait for the announcement on that. But the problems are there and they will have to be dealt with.

ANDREW MARR:

Politics more generally. We now have a reshaped cabinet with Lord Mandelson having extraordinarily large powers across it and relatively few women in key positions. You'll be familiar with the phrase 'window dressing' that Caroline Flint used when she was … when she left.

A series of key Labour ministers have left this cabinet, and sometimes in private and sometimes in public they have protested that Gordon Brown has not been good at using female talent. Now you have spent most of your career promoting the idea of more women in politics. You must be deeply disappointed?

HARRIET HARMAN:

Well the Labour Party has more women Labour Members of Parliament than all the other parties put together. But I'm not going to be satisfied that the situation is fully equal until half the Members of Parliament are women because that would be properly representative of the country as a whole, until half the ministers are women and half the cabinet is women. And that's why I ran for Deputy Leader, on the basis that we can't have …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) But it's gone the other way, hasn't it?

HARRIET HARMAN:

Yeah …

ANDREW MARR:

I mean that phrase 'window dressing' was fair enough.

HARRIET HARMAN:

Yeah, we have more progress to make. There's no doubt about that, you know, and I share the frustrations that we must make further progress. But make no mistake, the Labour Party is way ahead of all the other parties. Now am I satisfied with that situation? Do women think we've you know done the job fully? No, absolutely not. We do have more progress to be made.

ANDREW MARR:

When I heard Hazel Blears recant, I sort of … it looked like one of those Maoist images from the old days where someone has a dunce's cap on and a thing round them saying 'I was wrong, I was wrong'. Or maybe it was the Stalinist show trials or something. It seemed a very, very strange moment, that. Was unfair pressure put on her to do that, do you think?

HARRIET HARMAN:

I'm sure there wasn't. I think that you know she's no doubt responding to what's been said by her constituents and by the Labour Party members in her constituency and more widely, and I'm glad that she said what she did. But you also mentioned about the Business Secretary and the expanded business department and I want to …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Yes, I wondered whether you felt slightly nudged aside by him?

HARRIET HARMAN:

I think that the question of the future security and prosperity for businesses in this country, which employ people, so it's absolutely crucial for jobs you know whether businesses are large, medium or small - that is absolutely central. And having a big government department, which is actually …

ANDREW MARR:

Okay.

HARRIET HARMAN:

… at the heart of government, that is very important indeed.

ANDREW MARR:

Alright. Harriet Harman, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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