About-face lets 23 MPs keep travel perks

A freeze to stop the retirement travel perks of some MPs from building up was reversed in 2007 by former Speaker Margaret Wilson. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A ruling days before last year's election restored lucrative travel perks to 23 MPs, 12 of whom were not re-elected.

A freeze to stop the retirement travel perks of some MPs from building up was quietly reversed.

In 2007, the Speaker at the time, Margaret Wilson, put a limit on subsidised travel for former MPs so the level of discount for those who were still in Parliament halted as at 2005.

This would have meant MPs elected in 1996 could get a maximum subsidy of 60 per cent.

The reversal means they will be eligible for a 90 per cent discount after the 2011 election.

The subsidy would have halted at 75 per cent for those elected in 1993, but those MPs who left at the last election now get a 90 per cent discount.

Ms Wilson gave no reason for removing the freeze days before the election.

The freeze would have cut the value of the perk for 11 MPs still in Parliament - all those elected in 1993 or after - and 12 MPs who did not return in last year's election.

The perk was cut off for new MPs elected in 1999 or afterwards.

But the decision to remove the freeze now means that about 27 MPs still in Parliament will qualify for it and their entitlements have been growing since the scheme was axed.

The level of travel discount the MPs receive when they retire increases the longer they stay in Parliament, up to a maximum of 90 per cent for those who serve five terms or more.

MPs elected at the 1990 election or before had reached the highest level of a 90 per cent discount by 2005 so would not have been affected by the freeze.

The reasons for implementing the freeze then reversing it are unclear.

The Speaker usually acts on the recommendation of the Parliamentary Service Commission, a committee chaired by the Speaker and made up of MP representatives from all parties.

Its deliberations are usually kept secret beyond a general annual report.

The Green Party has called for the travel perk to be removed and Act has also campaigned on it, resulting in the decision to halt it in 1999.

Both are pressuring the Speaker and Prime Minister John Key to include it in a separate review of ministerial housing allowances.

The freeze was supposed to have been introduced in 2003. Then-Speaker Jonathan Hunt said it was intended that the entitlement would be frozen at the level for which MPs qualified at the end of the 2002-2005 term.

But it does not appear to have been acted on until 2007, when Ms Wilson announced it.

No reason is given in her subsequent decision to reverse it.

All sitting MPs who have served more than one term also get subsidised private international travel.

The perks date back to 1972 and give former MPs and their spouses discounts on international travel up to the value of a business-class return trip to London. They also get 12 return domestic flights a year.

In 2005-06, the subsidised flights cost taxpayers about $1.1 million.

The Parliamentary Service used to report on the number of former MPs who were eligible for them, the number who used them and the amount it cost.

But it no longer does so, instead including the expense under the generic heading of "MPs' travel".