Select Committees – pay for chairs

On 30 October 2003, the House agreed to pay certain select committee chairs an additional salary of £12,500, from the beginning of the 2003-04 Session, following a recommendation to that effect from the Review Body on Senior Salaries (SSRB). These additional salaries were paid in accordance with resolutions of the House.

Responsibility for paying Members’ salaries transferred to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) in May 2010; and provisions in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 giving it responsibility for determining Members’ salaries came into force in May 2011. IPSA issued its first determination in January 2013, setting salaries for April 2013 and April 2014. It issued a further determination in December 2013, setting the salaries of committee chairs from April 2015.

On 19 March 2013, the House agreed a resolution setting out which chairs were entitled to an additional salary.

The additional salaries of select committee chairs, determined by IPSA, are:

April 2013 – £14,728

April 2014 – £14,876

April 2015 – £15,025

In 2003, when the House agreed to pay additional salaries to select committee chairs, it also endorsed the Committee on Standards and Privileges’ report on Pay for Select Committee Chairmen, which argued that select committee chairs could continue to have outside interests, subject to full declaration; and introduced term limits for select committee chairs. In January 2014, following a report from the Committee on standards in Public Life on lobbying and a complaint about a committee chair, investigated by the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards, the Committee on Standards issued a consultation document seeking views on “whether the rules relating to committee Chairs’ interests remain appropriate”.