Conclusions and recommendations
Services for new and returning Members
1. We
trust that lessons will be learned from the 2005 election to enable
offices to be allocated to Members more quickly in the future.
We recommend that the political parties and House of Commons Service
should aim to provide all Members with permanent office accommodation
within a month of a general election. (Paragraph 13)
2. Lessons need to
be learnt to ensure that the provision of IT and telecommunications
equipment and support dovetail as neatly as possible with that
of office accommodation. (Paragraph 14)
3. We recommend that
the House Service should come back to us with recommended costed
options for:
i. ensuring that places to work can be made available
after an election for up to 150 new Members awaiting an office,
together with sufficient fax and printing facilities, either within
the space already provided for temporary accommodation, or by
increasing the space available;
ii. ensuring that for an initial period of weeks
new Members have adequate priority access to spaces which are
sufficiently private to be used for confidential meetings with
constituents and others; and
iii. lockable storage space for new Members close
to their workstations. (Paragraph 20.iii)
4. speeding
up the allocation of offices and providing adequate temporary
accommodation is a better solution to new Members' accommodation
needs than allocating them vacant offices on a temporary basis.
(Paragraph 23)
5. The IT infrastructure
and equipment currently provided on the Parliamentary Estate are
simply not suited to a mobile Member without an office. For many
new Members, adequate wireless Internet access would have made
working without an office much more manageable. (Paragraph 25)
6. We recommend that
wireless Internet access should be provided in those areas likely
to be of most use to Members: the atrium of Portcullis House,
the Library and the new Members' temporary accommodation areas,
and that a way should be found of securely providing wireless
functionality on centrally supplied laptop computers. (Paragraph
26)
7. We recommend that
the House Administration should assess demand for increased voicemail
message capacity to see if it would be worth the additional expense.
(Paragraph 27)
8. The House Administration
should investigate ways of making the information of most use
and interest to new Members easily available to be digested in
Members' own time, on paper, on the Parliamentary Intranet, or,
cost permitting, on DVD. (Paragraph 30)
9. We commend the
House Administration and the party whips for their co-ordinated
approach to the reception of new Members and trust that this success
will be sustained and built upon. (Paragraph 32)
Services for former Members
10. It
is the task of the House Administration to assist those Members
who lose their seats at a general election to carry out the necessary
business of ceasing to be a Member as sensitively, quickly and
painlessly as possible. (Paragraph 34)
11. The House Service
needs to treat those who lose their seats at a general election
with dignity, and to inculcate among staff a sensitivity to their
situation (Paragraph 36)
12. The House Service
should consider nominating a senior member of staff to ensure
that those who have lost their seats are given sensitive and proactive
assistance and guidance during the week immediately following
a general election. (Paragraph 37)
13. Clear communications
to security and other staff immediately before and immediately
after polling day would help to ensure that all defeated Members
are able to access and clear their offices as smoothly and swiftly
as possible. (Paragraph 40)
14. We recommend that
the House Service should investigate whether defeated Members
could be allowed longer than a week after polling day in which
to clear their offices without delaying the allocation of accommodation
to serving Members. (Paragraph 42)
15. We recommend that
defeated Members should be given access to a telephone line for
both outgoing and incoming calls for the whole of the time that
they are permitted to clear their offices. (Paragraph 44)
16. An e-mail automatic
response service for former Members should be provided as a matter
of course in future for a period of several months after a general
election. (Paragraph 45)
17. The Administration
should investigate whether former Members might be offered the
option of extending the mail forwarding service they currently
receive. (Paragraph 46)
18. We welcome the
fact that for the first time comprehensive guidance on finances
for Members standing down or defeated at a general election was
produced in a single accessible document. It is important, however,
that in future the guidance should be reviewed and signed off
well in advance of the expected date of any general election.
(Paragraph 48)
19. It may be desirable
to simplify the arrangements and guidance for the redundancy of
former Members' staff. This is a matter on which we would welcome
advice from the Advisory Panel on Members' Allowances. (Paragraph
49)
20. we invite the
Advisory Panel on Members' Allowances to seek to identify those
circumstances in which the House Administration might make payments
above a certain value direct to suppliers where costs have been
necessarily incurred by former Members, and those circumstances
in which the Administration should continue to insist on former
Members paying before seeking reimbursement from the House. (Paragraph
51)
21. The provision
of central written guidance and a telephone advice point for Members'
staff facing redundancy would be a welcome and sensible development.
(Paragraph 54)
22. The current situation,
in which most former Members have no greater access rights to
the Parliamentary Estate than the general public, fails in our
view to recognise their service appropriately. We recommend to
Mr Speaker and to the House that consideration should be given
to granting all former Members eligibility for a parliamentary
pass, whether a long-term pass or an unescorted day pass, on the
understanding that this access should not be used for business
or political purposes. Further consideration also needs to be
given to the range of access such a pass should allow. (Paragraph
60)
Conclusion
23. Elections
are unpredictable in their timing and their outcome both for the
Administration and for the individual Member. In such circumstances,
the Administration cannot be expected to get everything right
for everyone all of the time. Planning is already carried out
before an election to minimise the risk of things going wrong,
but the planning could be more thorough and more timely. We hope
that the issues we have raised in this Report will be looked at
again after the next election to ensure that lessons have indeed
been learned. (Paragraph 61)
24. All necessary
guidance for Members who lose their seats or who intend to stand
down, and the related working instructions for House staff, should
be agreed and made available as soon as possible, by Easter 2007
at the very latest, and regularly updated. (Paragraph 62)
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