Select Committee on Administration First Report

Annex: Transcript of informal discussions

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Discussions held on Tuesday 8 November 2005 with Members of the Administration Committee

Discussion with new Members: Adam Afriyie, Nia Griffith, and Grant Shapps

Chairman: Welcome. Thank you for coming to the inquiry and for the written evidence that you have provided. This is the first inquiry of the new Administration Committee, so we are grateful for your involvement. Hansard writers will be taking notes and our proceedings will be recorded, so anything that you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence. I throw the session open to colleagues who wish to question the witnesses.

Mr. Ainsworth: From reading the evidence that some of our colleagues have presented to the Committee, I gained the impression that the new Members, rather than have the hot-desking arrangements that were made available, would have preferred to be moved into offices even though they would subsequently be thrown out of them. At a general election, some hon. Members expect to lose their seats and some stand down or retire, so their offices might become available immediately. Others, however, are surprised to find themselves returned, so if it were their office that you were to move into, it would take some time. Do the witnesses think that it would be better to be moved into an office only to be thrown out subsequently, or do they consider that the current hot-desking arrangements should be continued, but that improvements should be made?

Nia Griffith: Yes, I think it would be better. It would have to be made absolutely clear to new Members that such arrangements were only temporary and that they were likely to be moved. The sheer volume of stuff that you are carting around and the fact that you have nowhere to put anything leads to the danger of losing constituency correspondence and making a complete mess of things in the first few weeks of being here because you do not have a base. One or two MPs have very kindly let other Members camp in their offices, which was a helpful option. Having somewhere, rather than sharing desks and being at a different desk each day according to whoever was in the room, would be much better.

Adam Afriyie: From my perspective, I am absolutely clear. If on arrival a new Member moved into an office—even if you had all your stuff in a big wheelie bin—you would have somewhere to base yourself. Even if you were told that you could be chucked out on 24 hours' notice, it would make no difference—at least you could get on with doing something. If the Army can do it in 24 hours, I am sure that Parliament can do so in 48 hours.

Helen Jones: I wish to ask about induction procedures. We have received evidence about IT and so on, but before the witnesses came into the Room, several of us were chatting about when we arrived in Parliament. It would be interesting to know whether you were given enough information to be able to find your way around the House, to understand where everything was and to understand procedures, such as where to go to table questions, or whether you had to learn such things as you went along? Do you have any suggestions to make to the Committee about how the procedures might be improved?

Adam Afriyie: The quality of the information given out was fabulous—there was this much of it, though [3-foot pile indicated with hands]. The quality of the induction sessions involving parliamentary staff was spectacular. There was no issue with any of our respective Whips. The trouble is that, when you first arrive, you do not have much capacity to take in everything. For what it is worth, I suggest that a single three-hour induction session that covered everything briefly and generally in, say, 15-minute chunks, would enable us to assimilate what we needed to know. From my perspective, the most helpful item would have been a single sheet of A4 that had a list of 47 things that we should look at and in what order, and explained where to look. We could then proceed at our own pace. People have different demands on their time, so it would be of help if the information was there when you were ready to receive it at your own pace, particularly if you have been living on no sleep for three or four weeks beforehand.

Nia Griffith: Could I come in on that?

Chairman: Sorry, I should have said: if anyone wants to come in on the debate, they can just do so.

Nia Griffith: If I could take up the idea of learning as you go along, I think that a mentor is absolutely crucial, but the best way to have a mentor system is to have clear guidance for the mentor and the person they are mentoring on exactly what the process involves. There is plenty of guidance on that in lots of other professions. There could be regular meeting times and a list of things that you would cover, so that together you could tick them off and say, "Right, yes, I have done that today, and that." Then you would have that one-to-one tuition, which is what you need, but you would have it in a structured way, and you would have a clear list of what you had to complete.

I found the initial letter that we had with the four-figure phone number on it inadequate. It would have been nice to know what the seven numbers before that were, just for information. I think that slightly more consolidated training right at the beginning would also be helpful. It is difficult to take it in, but you can break up speaking sessions with sessions in which you are shown round. I found that there was very poor attendance at those sessions put on subsequently, on Tuesday mornings, when perhaps two or three of us would turn up because by that time the pressures of so many other things were coming in on you. There should be a clear couple of days, well structured, at the beginning, with not too much information but a mixture of more practical and more explicit information.

One of the sessions that I found particularly useful was the one where the Committee Chairs did something together with Committee Clerks. Again, I think that a mixture of elected Members and Clerks working together can probably provide the best sort of information and training.

Adam Afriyie: I have one other brief suggestion. Even if it were done in a tin-pot sort of a way, if there were DVD or video libraries of each of the sessions—even if it were done in a very inexpensive fashion, with blackboards behind the presenter—you could watch them in your own time, and at 2 o'clock in the morning, you could say, "Right, I'm going to learn about parliamentary procedures now," and just have a very quick overview. That would mean that you could control your own destiny and the pace at which you needed to learn.

Derek Conway: My question is about settling in. Some Members come in and manage to inherit a secretary who knows the way around—often better than Members do—and their life is taken over. Others have never employed anybody before and the rights and responsibilities of employers are therefore alien to them. What was your experience of that? Did you find it easy getting someone who knew their way around? Did you inherit someone, or did you want to bring in someone from the outside? Was the whole process of engaging staff on the parliamentary estate as clear as it might have been?

Grant Shapps: First, I apologise—I did not realise the formal nature of this session, otherwise I would have been here a few minutes earlier.

One of the facets of working here and being a Member of Parliament is that the best people want to work for you, so immediately there is a pool of very talented people. Actually, I think that in the minds of most of us new Members starting here, the big panic is, "Will we will find people good enough who are left over once everyone else has found PAs, case workers and researchers?" Of course, nothing could be further from the truth: there are lots of people available and probably each of us to this day receives a lot of CVs from people who are highly qualified and whom we could probably take on at a moment's notice if we were short of staff. A little more guidance in that area would be helpful.

My concerns do not revolve around employing people, however, because I happen to come from a business that I started and ran for 15 years so I am very comfortable with that sort of stuff. My concerns are all to do with the way the place itself operates—the lack of flexibility and the systems that would be just unbelievably ridiculous in any kind of business context. This is the first time that I have worked in anything approaching a public service environment, and the culture shock is just horrendous and extraordinarily frustrating. For me, it all leads back to things like not having an office quickly enough and not having IT equipment that is flexible enough to do the job that I need it to do. It is a problem that, for me, exists to this day.

Mr. Gerrard: How far do you think induction should be conducted purely by the House authorities, and how far should it be down to the parties?

Nia Griffith: There are two aspects to that. As I said before, a joint approach helps because there are different view points, say, between Members and Clerks. But there may be times when parties would prefer to train separately simply because people are more willing to say that they do not understand something or are uncomfortable about something to Members of their own party than they are in front of a cross-party group.

Adam Afriyie: I think it is important that you have private party sessions, because part of your job as a member of a parliamentary party is to know roughly what is required of you from your own party—not that I would be a full advocate of strong whipping systems. However, it is important to have a good mix of the two. I do not think that I have any complaint about the balance of the sessions. It worked out quite well: the parliamentary party fitted in where it could and worked around the general inductions.

Peter Luff: I should like to explore two quite separate issues about getting offices quickly. Adam made this point, as did Nia, and Grant, you mentioned it just now as well, although it was not in your written submission.

I want to be clear about what you think is a realistic expectation. You cannot have your permanent office quickly; that is impossible. We will hear evidence later from outgoing Members who were asked to vacate their offices too quickly; they did not have time to vacate their offices to make the space. There are other issues, which I am sure the accommodation Whip in the Room would acknowledge, about seeking to achieve the right balance of occupancy of Rooms in buildings so that you are surrounded by colleagues in the same party. It is actually a very complex process. So what are you looking for that is realistic and deliverable, given that you cannot have a permanent office within several weeks?

Adam Afriyie: I would be looking for what most of the other chitter-chatter was about: basically, getting access to an office. It really, really does not matter whether it is a permanent office or not. That makes no difference.

Peter Luff: There are no spare Rooms in the estate; I do not think that what you ask for is achievable either. You are talking about carving up a Committee Room or something.

Nia Griffith: Realistically, people know that they have lost the election on the Friday morning and I think you can give them a week to move out. People make funeral arrangements in a week. It is reasonable to allow them about a week to move out and to look to moving people in a week the following Monday.

Peter Luff: We shall have a debate in the Committee about this subsequently, but I do not think that you understand the practical constraints. For example, Front Benches change, Ministers become Back Benchers, Front-Bench spokesmen become Back Benchers and Back Benchers become part of the shadow Cabinet—it takes weeks for it to become apparent who needs what Room. That is the problem.

Nia Griffith: We accept that. We have just accepted the idea of a temporary office. You are saying, "How soon could you get into your temporary office?" If the office is only temporary, I would have thought that about a 10-day period would be realistic. We accept the fact that all those moves have to be made, and you could not have your permanent office for, say, six or seven weeks.

Mr. Ainsworth: There is expenditure in setting up a temporary office. That would be one consideration, although I think that the House authorities would be more concerned about that than the accommodation Whips. What the accommodation Whips would be concerned about is getting you out at the end of the period. If we moved you into some nice salubrious office that had just been vacated by someone who had been here for 20-odd years, and then attempted after about six weeks to move you into a little box, you would not want to go. You would fight like mad and put up all kinds of excuses as to why you should not go.

Grant Shapps: This is almost at the outrageous level. If people have lost, they have to get out. It is as simple as that. If this was any kind of private industry—

Mr. Ainsworth: I am not talking about the people who have lost; I am talking about you, after your six weeks, eight weeks or however long it is, when I decide that you cannot inherit John Major's office, or whoever's office, and that you must have the cubby hole at the end of Upper Committee Corridor North.

Grant Shapps: This is all synonymous with the wrong culture here. It is absolutely ridiculous that we should have to wait for six to eight weeks for offices. I think that about a fortnight is reasonable. When people have lost, they should move out; when they have been downgraded in their jobs, they should move. All this would never ever happen in a business. The only reason why it happens is because there are no financial implications for which anyone is accountable. It is as simple as that. It is completely the wrong culture. We should be thinking in days, but we are thinking in weeks.

Peter Luff: Grant, I invite you to think not just about culture, but about practicalities. There are some practical issues. Bob Ainsworth made the point that if we put you in a luxurious office in Portcullis House and you are destined for a cubby hole on Upper Committee Corridor North, you will not move. We will pursue this point in more detail, and I think that we will hear from later witnesses that they do not get enough time.

We will probably be more in agreement on the issue of information technology. I am impressed by your paper. I have a feeling that each of us as Members of Parliament do our jobs in very different ways. We all have our own approach, and our own needs and requirements. We are being straitjacketed by the information technology systems into doing our jobs in a certain way. Leaving aside the differences about timing and the other issues that we might explore, do you feel straitjacketed?

Grant Shapps: Absolutely. I wrote about that in my paper "Improving Westminster IT", and I struggle with it to this day. I do not want to use the House of Commons PICT IT system, because I find it restrictive. I do not like being straitjacketed into its e-mail system, which until this week had a ridiculously small storage space. It cuts off at election time, which means that someone else gets my e-mails and not me. It is needlessly made impossible to work around that. All the House needs to do is to unblock POP 3 port—port 110. It is very simple. Every other organisation in the country manages to do it, but for reasons beyond any of us with an IT mind it is blocked. That, together with inflexibility, is the problem. I needed two laptops, not four desktops, but to swap two desktops for one laptop took me 16 phone calls, most of which were never returned. Eventually, there was a meeting with the head of IT in my office, having first gone through the Serjeant at Arms. It was a ludicrous situation. There was no excuse for that. I have not even touched on the amount of time it took to get some PCs up and running in the first place.

I am being very restrained. I am not being nearly as scathing as I should be about this problem. It is outrageous.

Chairman: We are grateful for your restraint.

Nia Griffith: I want to follow on from that, not as an IT expert but as someone who needs to use the system. When we arrived, we all had the option to have a laptop, which was fine, but could we not have had standard computers straight away? We knew roughly how many new Members there were likely to be, and those who wanted something different or special could have waited a bit longer. I was among the first to put my name down for computers. I already had an office in the constituency, yet it still took weeks to have those computers set up. Surely we had a reasonable idea of how many people were coming. Choice is not always a good thing. We could have had a basic item immediately, unless we were prepared to wait for something different. What happened was that we all had to wait a long time, even if we had somewhere in the constituency where we could work. The issue was not whether we had an office; it was not being able to work from the constituency either, which was another handicap that we could have done without.

Adam Afriyie: I know from my 15 or 20 years in IT that it is easy to set up a computer in a few hours so that it can be used for basic purposes. The biggest constraint was that many of us came here already using our own notebooks and computers. It would have been fine had I been able to be connected to a wireless LAN in this building. I could have carried on at full speed using my own systems until the parliamentary systems were ready. I can work anywhere in the country—in coffee shops, in any building, most Conservative associations, if there is a coffee shop next door with a wireless LAN. The only place I was unable to work is here.

John Thurso: May I go back to the comments made about the provision of temporary offices? When I came to the House, what frustrated me more than anything else was not having a telephone that had my name on it. Will you comment on that? I am specifically thinking about practicality. A new office is about a space—it does not have to be four walls, it could be a cubicle—where you can leave things locked in a drawer that no one else can get into, and where there is a telephone that has your voicemail. Am I right in thinking that that was still as big a barrier this time round?

Adam Afriyie: Actually, I congratulate the parliamentary services, or whoever provides the telephones. It was great that we had an extension allocated before we arrived. Why? Because most of us carry mobile phones, and you can dial into them and get your voicemail forwarded. That is one of the first things I set up, so I was quite comfortable with the telephone extension we had allocated—but again, the voicemail box was too small.

Nia Griffith: May I just second that? The voicemail training was good and helpful, but I would have liked to have had a place where I could have received faxes and also, initially, before the fax machine was set up in the Committee Room, somewhere to send faxes from. Perhaps faxes could have been put in the Members' Post Office and, if they were non-confidential, they could have been put into your postal pile. It was difficult not having a fax machine on which you could receive things as well, particularly when your e-mail was not working either.

Chairman: Six colleagues want to come in. I will call Brian first and then Kevan.

Mr. Donohoe: I return to the question of what happens in the first few weeks, and the idea of using the Committee Rooms on the second floor of the Committee Corridor. Do you think that there is a case for there to be a portable or temporary work station with everything that you require on it, such as a telephone and PC, and perhaps have directories there so that it is all there contained for you? If they were to make some 150 of those available, would that be, in part, the answer to the problem?

Nia Griffith: It would be an improvement on the situation we had, where we were sharing and turning and turning about, particularly those who had taken on staff. That made the place crowded up there.

Mr. Donohoe: So is that something that we could be considering?

Nia Griffith: It is certainly something to be looked into.

Mr. Donohoe: You praised the quality of the information and the advice that you were given in the induction period. Would it be better if it were to be done by one agency within the House, so that there was a specialised agency, rather than, as it was when I came in, a hotch-potch? Everything then was just done, and it might have worked and it might not have worked. Do you think that there is a case for the Education Unit, which I am sure you will now be aware of, taking on a role in that?

Grant Shapps: The answer is that it probably does not matter, so long as they answer and return phone calls. It was just at the point where PCD, and even Members services, were simply not returning the calls. I would call up and eventually get somebody, and they would say, "We're not listening to the voicemails because we're too busy." The only people that the general election took completely by surprise were those in PCD.

Mr. Donohoe: You have to understand that you are talking about a fairly significant sea change, because this is not just restricted to the Members, but involves the staff as well. In addition, that can be impacted by all the change in the constituencies. Given that you have all now got your equipment—I am presuming that it is from PCD—what is the new equipment like? Is it working to your satisfaction or not?

Grant Shapps: Not for me.

Nia Griffith: Just having had yet another crisis in the constituency last week, and the constituency off e-mail again for the whole week, I have to say no, it is not satisfactory. It took until August to get it sorted out, although I had the office on 6 May. It has been a complete nightmare on the IT front.

On your original question, there is a case for some form of co-ordination. This publication—"Business of the House and its Committees: a short guide"—is very useful, and perhaps whoever put it together could be enlisted to look at the sort of training that we might put together in the first couple of days, when we want to give a brief coverage of as much as we possibly can.

Adam Afriyie: My observation would be that I continue to use my own equipment because the parliamentary equipment is just too restrictive. It is good equipment, but it is designed for the purposes for which whoever the authorities are want you to use it, rather than the way in which you would want to use it. But the equipment is good quality, and it is fine.

Having handled IT projects where we were rolling out networks of 500 or 1,000 users in 36 or 72 hours, I must say again that an election is a predictable event, and I do not believe that such things are that difficult to achieve. Perhaps, behind the scenes—I do not know how it works—those processes need to be looked at.

Mr. Jones: Can I just comment on the offices? As someone who camped in an office for nearly a year and refused to move, I can tell you that trying to get people out of an office once they are in is extremely difficult. I did get the office that I wanted in the end.

May I ask about money? When you get elected, one of the key things is that you shell out a lot of your own money very quickly. What was your experience of the advice that you were given about what you could claim back? Was it consistent? One complaint that I had was that you had different advice from different people in the Department of Finance and Administration. What was your experience of the advice you were given, and what turnaround was there in terms of getting paid for your outlay?

Grant Shapps: Not bad, in my case. The briefing from the Department of Finance and Administration was quite good, and you could usually get to the bottom of the facts. My only complaint would be similar to that about calling PCD. If you call Finance and Admin—on 1340, I think—you very rarely, if ever, get an answer. That is a service culture problem, that, I am afraid, goes across the entire Houses of Parliament.

Nia Griffith: By and large, they were pretty helpful—but I would like to bring up the issue of accommodation. During the time when you do not have an office, you also do not have a home in London. Simply having a list of letting agencies would save you time. We are all survivors; we are MPs—you know, we can get there. However, it would just be quicker if there were somewhere where you could pick up a list of phone numbers and at least begin to sort out somewhere to live when you do not have an office, or anywhere to put anything at all, and you are carrying a mountain of stuff around. That is something very simple that could be done.

Frank Dobson: My attitude to all communications is that I do not want to know how they work; I just want them to do what I want them to do. If I want to go to New York, I do not want to know the power-to-weight ratio of the engines or anything like that—I just want to pay, and the guy to drive it across. What is the minimum you think you require in terms of communications for the first few weeks of being a Member?

Adam Afriyie: My answer is similar to that I gave before: just a brisk, three-hour induction that jumped around each of the areas that you need to consider for 10 minutes, and then a single sheet of A4—

Frank Dobson: I am sorry—I meant IT for communicating with the outside.

Adam Afriyie: I see. Basically, access to a wireless LAN so you can use your own equipment while you do not have that IT equipment. Then a word processor and an e-mail system. That is it.

Grant Shapps: Same thing.

Frank Dobson: A telephone?

Grant Shapps: Yes, that would be useful.

Adam Afriyie: You can dial in with mobile phones. It would be handy to have a normal telephone handset, but I would not say that it is absolutely essential when you arrive. That is the least of your worries.

Grant Shapps: The LAN, in fact, does not even have to be wireless, just one that works that you can plug your laptop into. It is difficult for people to appreciate this if they are not trying to do it, but you cannot use your own e-mail system through the parliamentary network. You can surf the web, although they say that you cannot, but you cannot access your own e-mail. Because of that, to this day I use a 3G datacard in the House and completely circumvent the IT. It is a nightmare. It is very slow, and there happens to be a lift outside my office in Star Chamber where workmen are working. That cuts my 3G down to GPRS, which gives very slow access. I have all these problems, simply because I want to use my own e-mail account rather than the one that I have been assigned and that the House wants to control for me.

Adam Afriyie: I used to spend afternoons sitting on the steps outside Portcullis House so that I could get a signal from what I think is Caffè Nero next door.

Frank Dobson: Would any stuff be redundant at the end of the process of providing what you talk about?

Adam Afriyie: Nothing technical that I can think of immediately, no. All the equipment is pretty much the same; it is just the way it is configured, and whether you have access.

Pete Wishart: I clearly recall coming to Parliament for the first time four years ago and experiencing the same difficulties that you describe: turning up and there being no office, no phone and no place to put your stuff—although there was always a place to hang up your sword. They always make sure you have that in the House of Commons, and you can be thankful for it.

I have found listening to you very useful. I have been in the House for four years and you have come here from the business world, having experienced the technology available. You are able to say to us, "This is where it is deficient." We have a lot to learn from new Members about the type of thing that we need to do.

My question to you is what would be the ideal set-up in which to do this job, given your experience in business, your applications and how you have used information technology in the past few years? I came here four years ago, but I am sure that it is radically different from what was available when Frank Dobson first entered. We all have a lot to learn, because we have not been out there, we have not been doing it, and we do not know what the most current technology available is. What would be ideal to enable you to do your work effectively and efficiently?

Adam Afriyie: I am just going to sound repetitive: the ideal would be a wireless LAN, so that you can get on with your own computer if you are already into computers, and somewhere private where you can work, where you either have a telephone, or just use your mobile phone. There would be somewhere you can put your stuff, and you know you are there and it is your area, and a basic computer, if somebody does not have their own computer.

Pete Wishart: I am not talking about what you need in your first few weeks or your first month, but as a Member of Parliament. What would you expect to have to enable you to do your job easily and most effectively? We are talking about highest expectations.

Adam Afriyie: My highest expectations—there is no rocket science here—are just access to the internet and a bit more freedom with the way you use your equipment. You have got great equipment; it is fine. It is just getting access to the internet, as the rest of the country has.

Grant Shapps: Adam is absolutely right about this point. For all my ribbing about the offices, I did not really care that much that I did not have an office for two months, because if I have my laptop and a mobile phone, I have everything I need to contact the outside world. The problem is that not only does this place make it harder than average to contact people outside, it actually blocks you from accessing your outside contacts using your own laptop, so it is working against you. The way it is working at the moment is counter-productive. What is required for a fairly IT-savvy new Member from the outside world to come in here and use the place is quite simply the ability to get on to the network. It does not even have to be wireless—just through the sockets. We come back to the same thing every time, but it is a fundamental problem. It puts a blockage in the way of progress, almost deliberately.

Pete Wishart: I was also very interested in your remarks, Nia, about assistance to find accommodation, because I was quite surprised that I did not see anything about that in any of the representations that we received when we asked new Members what they felt they required from the House when they came down here. I know that it is particularly difficult for Members like yourself from Wales, and people like us, from Scotland, when there is absolutely nothing available at all. What would you like to have in the way of assistance to try to find accommodation down here?

Nia Griffith: It would have been quite nice if, when you had the letter from the returning officer, perhaps there was a sheet in there with some basic phone numbers and places that you could ring up—letting agencies or whatever—so that you could go around and find yourself somewhere, because you literally do not have anywhere to put anything, do you? You might be in a hotel room for a few days or something, but you do want to get out. You do it, but it would be nicer if you had a) some hotel phone numbers and so forth, b) some numbers for letting agencies, and c) possibly just a few paragraphs about where the normal areas that MPs find convenient are. If you do not even know London, as some of us from the far-flung corners of the globe do not, it would have been helpful to have had a few thoughts. Instead, I had a wonderful comment from a colleague, who said after I had found a place to rent, "Oh, that's rather a long way, isn't it?" I thought, "Why didn't you say that before?" I had thought it was quite good, being only 20 minutes away on the tube.

Mr. Harper: Very briefly, on the office space issue, I just want to be clear, following the notes that we have from the survey of new Members. I perhaps understand a little about it, having talked to our accommodation Whip about the difficulty of putting people into either permanent or temporary offices. One of the suggestions was that, rather than hot-desking, which has issues around lack of privacy and lack of space to put things, we could use Committee rooms—or some other space—and just partition them, as in modern open-plan offices, into small cubicles where you at least had network access, a phone and some lockable space. Would that, for the first five or six weeks, do the business in giving you somewhere to operate from?

Adam Afriyie: Absolutely.

Grant Shapps: Yes.

Nia Griffith: Yes.

Mr. Harper: The second question is this. I do not know whether any of you did the squatting—for want of a better word—with existing Members. I managed to do that, but one of the difficulties I had was to do with IT. Even when I was in the office of an existing Member, it took me as long as I was using that office to get network access in it. Even though I had an office and a phone, I still could not make my laptop work, because all the network ports were disabled. That took me quite a long time to sort out, and by the time I got it working, I had an office. I just want to hear your point of view on whether, through the accommodation Whips, it would be worth trying to encourage willing colleagues who are already here—whether they be geographical neighbours, party colleagues, or Members with whom you have some connection—to volunteer to give up some space. Also, if you had access to a phone and a network, would that be a second best?

Adam Afriyie: I take your point, but I think I would be a bit reluctant to do that, because why should that be the responsibility of an existing Member who has an office? I just do not see it. The first concept—having little booths where everything is set up—would be fine.

Chairman: Thanks very much, lady and gentlemen; that has been extremely helpful. I have been thinking back to my first day here in the House of Commons. This was not on my first day, but I also remember complaining to Michael Foot—I was of that generation—that I did not have an office or a telephone or anything, and he said, "My boy, for my first 20 years in here, my office was the desk in the No Lobby, which I shared with 650 other Members." It is clear that things have moved on a little bit. The evidence that you have given is extremely helpful. Your generation has to cope with what you have found, but we hope that the next generation will benefit. Thank you very much.

Discussion with former Members: Peter Bradley, Mr Adrian Flook, Linda Perham, Mr Peter Pike, and Mr Simon Thomas

Chairman: Welcome to you all. You are all old hands, so you are fairly familiar with the procedures here. You probably heard me say earlier that we have Hansard writers here and are being recorded; I say that that just in case someone is tempted to say something impolitic. Thank you very much for all the written evidence that you have submitted; it has been extremely helpful in our considerations. I throw this discussion open to the rest of the Committee. Who wants to kick off?

Frank Dobson: My own feeling, from observing what happened after previous elections and from looking at the evidence that you and others have submitted, is that the real problem is the mindset of House officialdom—which is that by and large, while you were Members you were a bit of a nuisance, and now you are a nuisance that can be dispensed with; looking after your interests is not a major consideration. It seems that most of the rest of the problems flow from that, really. Some effort is put into helping, but not a lot. Is that too grotesque a generalisation?

Linda Perham: I think that is right, Frank. Peter made the point most strongly in his evidence, but that is the feeling, apart from in dealings with the Fees Office, who were very good, and who were very helpful for months afterwards with phone calls. From my point of view, the worst thing—someone will probably come on to this—is access to the building. I have come in just now, and I started off with a complete body search. It is as if I had turned into a terrorist in the last few months. It was certainly as though I had turned into a terrorist between the Thursday evening and the Monday morning, which is when I turned up. I think that is the worst aspect; it reinforces this mindset—you started off with that term—of "You're not welcome here; you're a bit of an embarrassment, really." As you see in my evidence, I was even doing things like handing in keys, and people were saying, "Why are you giving me this key?" I would say, "I'm giving you the key because I've got to hand this stuff in." It is that kind of attitude; I think we all felt that.

Peter Bradley: I do not know whether anyone recalls a series in the 1970s called "Branded", with Chuck Connors, a David Davis look-alike with a broken nose. I do not remember the programme, except the introduction. It was about an American cavalry officer in the 19th century, who was unfairly accused of committing a misdemeanour. The opening titles showed his sword being taken from him and snapped over a fellow officer's knee, and his epaulettes being torn from his uniform. He left the fort and walked off into the wilderness. That is how it feels. Mysteriously, you have committed a crime that you were not aware of committing, and you are to be punished for it—with dignity, but nevertheless punished. That is the feeling that people get, but whether it is justified is another matter. People feel particularly sensitive and hard done by when they lose elections, so it is important that those who deal with them do so with sensitivity and compassion.

Peter Pike: I found that if you were making telephone calls and got Mr. Finer, you got helpful answers. If you could not get him, no one got back to you, and if you wrote to him you did not always get a reply. In the end I gave up asking about my pension and other bits and pieces, because it became a waste of time—although certain people were extremely helpful.

The same applies to the post. I know that a number of important items were posted to me after the cut-off date of 5 August. If you go to the Post Office the people are extremely helpful, as they always were. Obviously, I appreciate that after the election the priority is for new Members, but the Post Office forwarded mail to us only as and when they could, but some of it was important to pass on to the new Member, because it involved urgent cases, which you were transferring to them.

What happens to that mail on 5 August? That is the cut-off date, but I know that some urgent items that have been sent to me at the House of Commons have neither come back to the people who sent them nor come to me. Nothing is forwarded. You are told, "That's the end; you've finished." I was talking to Linda about this outside, and we write to people, we e-mail them and we tell them—yet even Government Departments still write to me as a Member of Parliament. Some of that mail is sent to my party office, even though some of the Departments have been told that I am no longer the MP. People still lobby. It is incredible. After 5 August nothing is forwarded, so where does it go?

Frank Dobson: I succeeded Lena Jaeger, who went to the House of Lords. After the third time I had been elected, she passed on to me a letter which had been passed to her in the House of Lords. It was a bit of a giveaway because it started with the words, "I voted for you at the last election." [Laughter.]

Simon Thomas: If you wanted to design a system to rub people's noses in it, you could not come up with a better way than losing an election and being flung out of this place. It may be different if you planned to retire; that involves different issues. We have lost in the democratic process, and we have to respect that process, but it works both ways. Take Frank's point—many people still think I am the MP. Even those who voted do not realise that I lost and some still write to me or try to contact me. The House authorities should recognise that the democratic process is about managing that change. We can all feel humiliated and get hot under the collar about the fact that we were frisked this morning. It was very pleasant, you could say, depending on how you look at it and who is doing the frisking. There is something wrong with the idea that the democratic process ends on one day, and there is no ongoing need to be managed correctly.

In the same way as you need to manage people coming into the House, you need to manage people leaving the House. Two things flow from the authorities' current attitude: one is that there is extreme pressure on us to bring everything to an end quickly—to shred papers, to deal with the Data Protection Act and so on. But we are asked to do that without any support, while being treated as a nobody. The authorities want ex-Members to deal with staff, pay them the right redundancy money and give them the best pay off—and to do all that unpaid. In the meantime, we cannot claim benefit. We cannot claim jobseeker's allowance because we are regarded as currently being engaged in a job. We are still being asked to do a job that is part of the democratic process, but we are not treated with respect.

The second thing that flows on from that is failure within the system. I have had tremendous problems in getting rid of my computers. I was told that they would be collected, but the people probably cannot find a map that shows Aberystwyth. I was told to hang on to the computers and that they would be collected and cleaned. They have had to be left in an office over which I no longer have control. That is not the way in which to treat computers.

Mr. Jones: Can you clarify that?

Simon Thomas: I was told that the PCD computers—not the ones that I purchased with my money, which I have kept—would be collected by PCD and dealt with, but no one has collected them and no one has contacted me about them. In fact, my house was burgled and my laptop was taken. I do not know where that leaves me.

Adrian Flook: I echo that. It seems that everyone here is institutionally cut off from reality. Collectively, they forget that they are also constituents somewhere. If they wanted to write to the House of Commons, what would happen if they wrote to the wrong person? As 69 per cent. of people voted in Taunton, the 31 per cent. who did not take part in the process probably still think, "I'll write to my MP," then write to the bloke who had been in the paper for the previous four years. I was elected in 2001 and at the time, I was in the paper regularly—my picture was in it two or three times a week. A year after I was elected, some bloke came up to me and said, "We don't see you much in the paper", and then in the run-up to the election I'm sure some of them felt that I had been in it too much. As I also have a particularly strange surname and my successor is called Browne, which is not strange, people will probably remember my name. Although I do not know if I still receive letters because they are no longer forwarded, I was still getting letters as the MP until 5 August.

Mr. Donohoe: Passing on information to your successor has implications in terms of the Data Protection Act 1998, does it not?

Adrian Flook: Yes, I took over from someone who was from a different party. She did not give me anything and I did not want any. Likewise, I have not been asked for anything by Mr. Browne. I think that the Data Protection Act has scared everyone witless anyway, so one would not even dare ask.

Peter Pike: I asked people to sign if they wanted me to transfer the file. If they signed the paper, I transferred it. If they did not sign it, I warned them that I would be closing the file and that it would be shredded, then I gave them a final warning. I did it like that.

Mr. Donohoe: When I took over, my predecessor handed me three files. They are still with me, but that was as many cases as he thought were important enough to pass on. However, if I were knocked down by a bus tomorrow, my successor—if Labour—would get more than 1,200 files. That shows how the job has changed. It is hardly surprising that you are in the situation in which people still think that you are the Member of Parliament.

Let me return to what you said about the equipment still lying around your house, Simon. Could not a case be made for a seamless process? All information would have to be wiped, but could it not be argued that the equipment in a constituency should be transferred over for use by your successor—after it has been dealt with and its memory erased? Do you advocate that?

Simon Thomas: Yes, that makes sense. I have heard evidence about new Members having problems obtaining computer equipment, yet there was I with two perfectly decent computers in my office that I did not need any more. It would have only taken someone from the department to come up and clear them, and then for them to be transferred. That might be one way in which to deal with the problem. The other way would be to clear them and allow ex-Members to dispose of them to a local charity and make a use of such things. It seems that much of that has been lost in the system.

Peter Pike: We were not allowed to buy them. Since the election, I have bought a laptop, but I would quite happily have bought the laptop that I already had. We were not allowed to buy them. There was a problem to do with licences or something. It seems to be a bit of a nonsense that all that stuff is gathered in and is then scrapped because it is not being issued to the new Members.

Mr. Donohoe: Do you have any comment to make about your e-mail account being shut down on the date of the general election, or very close after it? If you were to relive your time as a Member, would you consider adopting the House of Commons e-mail system or, in view of your recent experience, do you think that you would probably set up your own e-mail account so that at the very least your right hand was not in effect cut off two days after the general election?

Peter Bradley: There is an issue to do with the dissolution period in general. I cannot understand why suddenly all access to your office or e-mail is withdrawn during an election. I can understand the principle that you are not supposed to have an advantage over your adversary, but the fact is that in many ways your adversary has the advantage because he or she does not have access to communications and information disrupted and his or her staff do not have to be hurled out of their office.

I do not understand why, when you come in and clear your office, you find that for some reason you can make outgoing calls but you cannot receive incoming calls, and that your e-mail account has been entirely disabled so that people who for genuine reasons want to contact you cannot do so, and do not even get a message. I do not think that the people who contacted me at that time got any kind of message back until I argued for that at some length. I prevailed on the basis that I was the only one who had asked for it, so it was not setting a precedent. People were sending me e-mails but they were not receiving any message in return saying, "He's not here any more," or, "Here's the new address," or, "We will forward it to him." As Peter says, the mail stops coming in August. I was a diligent MP and I did all my own casework, so the idea that people were trying to contact me and were unable to do so, and that for all they knew I was just ignoring them, was quite offensive.

Mr. Donohoe: Perhaps I did not ask the question as I wanted to. If you had the experience again of being on the losing side after a general election, would you consider—if not initially, then at some point such as six months before a general election—setting up an alternative e-mail account that you would be able to continue with? Do you think that Members should get advice about that long before a general election takes place? If not, that might take me back to my original question, which was about restrictive practices that have caused great concerns and grief and make the system almost impossible to operate. Is it sensible to have the system that we have for e-mail accounts and for them arbitrarily to be denied to people almost immediately following a general election?

Adrian Flook: Notwithstanding the fact that our representations to you and yours, in turn, to the House will have failed, I would not use the [e-mail] address again when—or if—I am re-elected to the House. I would use my own address. It demonstrates my name better in its title—it does not reverse it—and I could use it with greater flexibility after Dissolution if, heaven forbid, I stood again and lost and I was immediately completely cut off.

Simon Thomas: I have a slightly different view. I think there is an advantage in the @parliament.uk address. People become familiar with the fact that that is the address of an MP and of people who work in the House. However, I do not see why it is not possible on Microsoft Outlook to enable the POP 3 account so that it allows people to have more than one e-mail address. You can then just switch identities. That is what I do now, but I could not do it when I was an MP. It would be so simple to do that, so that people could have more than one e-mail address. The problem is that there is a caution around campaigning from the House.

Peter Pike: I would have thought that, even if you did not start using your own e-mail address before the end of a Parliament, it would at least be possible for a message to be sent saying that they can be posted to—for example—[e-mail], so that people know where to contact you. That would be better than them just being bounced back with a message that they cannot be received. That would be easy because you would have publicised that address for so long. There would be some merits in involving the @parliament.uk address, but just to get e-mails bounced is a bit stupid.

Mr. Donohoe: Were the resources that were given to you adequate?

Adrian Flook: Afterwards?

Mr. Donohoe: Yes.

Adrian Flook: Financially?

Mr. Donohoe: Yes.

Adrian Flook: Hugely so.

Simon Thomas: May I make one point on the financial resources? It is not the adequacy that raises any problems, but the way that you have to do things. You have to shell out first and then claim it back. For a few hundred pounds that is no problem but, for example, I had a photocopier lease that I had to buy my way out of, which cost £6,000. So I had to spend £6,000, which was not my money but my family's money; it was my wife's money and my money. In that sense, you are penalising people who have just lost their job. I do not know why it is not possible, when you have got all the paperwork and the legal documents, simply to go to the Fees Office and say, "Please pay this".

Peter Pike: And you have to claim the resettlement grant, which is stupid. The guidance notes said that you could not claim it until you had settled all your other claims on the House, but suddenly in July I got a phone call saying, "You haven't claimed it." I said, "Well, you can't claim it yet," and was told "Well not many people have." I said, "Well, if you look at the guidance, it says we can't claim it until the end." He said, "Well, if you sign it now, we will pay it you at the end of the month." That would have overcome a lot of the difficulties of paying for things and claiming them afterwards. I would assume that it would be very unusual for a Member not to claim their resettlement grant because it is quite a large sum. I do not know why we have to go through the farce of having to fill a form in and claim it.

Linda Perham: Simon talked about claiming. I was told by the Fees Office categorically that if you had large bills of several thousand pounds, you could send them in and it would pay them.

Adrian Flook: Pay it against an invoice.

Linda Perham: You did not have to pay up in advance.

Simon Thomas: There is an inconsistency.

Mr. Jones: It is interesting reading people's evidence; there is a clear difference between people who lost their seats and people who retired.

Linda, I was reading your submission. Another Member told me that he was told on Saturday morning that he had to be down here by Sunday to clear his office out. There is a clear implication that you are treated like lepers. Would it be simpler if the parliamentary pass could be extended for a couple of weeks to allow people to do things. Your description shows that you were made to feel as though you were a problem and that you should go away.

Linda Perham: Yes, that is right. Having on the Friday morning after the election made my appointment with the Fees Office for the Monday—I live in London so I can get here for 9 o'clock in the morning—I phoned up and said, "What do I do". You have all read this in the evidence. I was told, "No problem, you turn up and they will know what to do," but they did not know what to do. There was all the ridiculous business about being accompanied to your office when you are standing by the lift.

Our friend sitting on the end here, the business man, said that if we have lost, we get out. I wanted to get out. I did not want to be around here. I just wanted to go. I wanted to clear out. Help us do that. Do not just say, "Well, shall we let you go upstairs by yourself? All right then. Oh, it might be an idea if we re-enable your pass." Why was that not thought of to begin with? Everyone could go round and get their pass re-enabled and they could go back to start on their office. I do not think anybody really wants to hang around. We want to clear out. Nobody wants to be here for two or three weeks. It just draws out the agony when you see other people going round who have got every right to be there and you are going around wishing that it was not the nightmare it was. Give us the help to get in, get sorted out and get on with our lives.

Simon Thomas: It might be helpful to both new Members and retiring Members if there was simply a process by which offices were cleared—if there were staff on hand to help load boxes and to arrange things easily with a removal firm or a van.

My situation was that I lost. My first response was to spend the weekend with the family—I was not going to do anything else. I came down here on the Tuesday with my car to try to move what I could. The fact is that most of my stuff is still in my colleague's office because there were so many Committee papers and research papers that I had been using here. My staff though were in the constituency, on the whole, so I did not have much in the way of help here to clear an office. It was very much a question of just packing it into bags and hoping that there would be another opportunity to do that. You could have some sort of central control throughout that fortnight, going into the offices, packing things up and moving them out. Then they would be available for new Members much more quickly.

Mr. Jones: May I ask Peter a question about stationery? You had the opposite problem; you ordered in excess of £1,000-worth of stationery and you could not get rid of it. They did not want it back.

Peter Pike: They would not credit it back. In the old days, when they did not publish how many envelopes you had had, it did not matter. If you have plastic mailers, they are quite expensive—about £5 a piece, the large ones—

Janet Anderson: Are they?

Peter Pike: Yes; they pay to cover a certain amount of postage, you see. So if you have a stock of those and other envelopes, £1,000 might sound a lot, but it is not when you work it out. I asked if I could have it taken back—the bulk items, not the odd bits; it does not matter about them. I meant the unopened boxes. They said no, they could not take them back. Some were in my constituency office and some in London, so the next people benefited from that. These days, now that we have published expenses and you are shown where you are in the league tables, it does have an impact.

It might sound petty, but I have to say this: mine was a planned retirement—I regret having taken it—but on the Thursday my office was speaking to the Serjeant at Arms' office, and they said that I had to be accompanied all the time. After about four phone calls backwards and forwards, I spoke to the Serjeant at Arms office and was told that I would have to be accompanied. I said, "I've been a Member for 22 years, and if you're going to have someone sitting with me in the office, I am not prepared to come down." I said, "I want you to arrange for it all to be boxed up and sent to Burnley, and I'll sort it out in Burnley." About an hour later I got a phone call to say that I could come down unaccompanied—but I got a note when I came down, saying "You mustn't use the cafeteria." I did use it. It was only for staff of the House when the House was suspended. Members or ex-Members, even Members seeking re-election, were not allowed to use it. If I had wanted to collect my post, which I did not, I could not open it in the building; I had to go and open it in the street. Well, I did think it was quite petty. As I say, at that stage my post was all being forwarded to Burnley, so it was not an issue.

Mr. Jones: Who was this from?

Peter Pike: This was all from the Serjeant at Arms Department, and there were bits of paper that were—well, I am not saying who actually originated them, but I did think it was a bit petty. Like Linda says, we do not suddenly become terrorists overnight because we are no longer Members, nor do our staff. It needs a little bit more sensitive thought.

Peter Bradley: On the issue about access and being a visitor, we have to accept we are not Members any more. You have to make a distinction between the hurt that you feel when you lose your seat and what is reasonable and justified. Much as I would rather not be wearing a visitor's badge, I understand the reasons for it. However, I think the House needs to come to some kind of settled view on how to treat its former Members. It may decide that, yes, it would be a courtesy to allow them to have access and a card like Peter's, but this false distinction between whether you have been here four, five, six, seven or eight years is, I think, precisely that: false. Either we get it or we do not get it. As I say, I think we have to be slightly less sensitive on that issue. After all, if you leave somebody's employment, you do not necessarily enjoy rights of access and privileges. It is a difficult issue; it is going to be difficult for people. I just think there needs to be consistency.

Pete Wishart: Listening to what you say, it is quite clear that there is a clear distinction between those who were retiring and those who lost their seats at the election. Peter, although you have had difficulties and issues, it seems that your experience has been a lot more seamless than those of Simon and Adrian, who unfortunately lost their seat at the last election. I would like to ask the people who lost their seat whether there is anything that could have been done to prepare for their experience since. I am thinking of something such as a list of what to expect if you lose in an election, so that there is something we can all access to see what difficulties there will be. Taking this evidence today will possibly help to shape something like that—something that we could all be given in the run-up to the next general election to give us some sort of guideline on what to expect.

Adrian Flook: I am only just 42 and my first inclination was to get another job, forget this place, draw a line in the sand and move on. In fact, it has been quite difficult to draw a line in the sand. I will not exchange on my house in the constituency until this coming Thursday, and even that is tentative at the moment. I had members of staff who were unemployed—one has found a job, but the other is not so keen on finding one anyway because she is more than 60. However, you are living a lot of other people's problems. All you want to do is say, "Right, I accept that I have lost. Thank you very much; now I have to move on," but you are forced to dwell on it—from former constituents thinking that you are their MP, to filling out forms and playing with bureaucracy. All I wanted to do was go back to the private sector and work fewer hours for more money, which I have achieved.

Simon Thomas: I have not quite achieved that, but I have a year to go; I am a year younger. Adrian has made a good point. You cannot just walk away. This place expects you to do so, but it holds you accountable for many things, such as the employment and redundancy situation of your staff and the whole winding-down of the office. You have to get yourself out of legal contracts with rent and photocopiers and everything else that has been mentioned. In addition, there is an ongoing moral commitment to constituents, even if it is just letting them down gently for the purposes of a seamless transition to the help that they may get from the new MP. If you take that seriously—and conscientious former MPs do—that means that you are out of the job market for two or three months anyway, before you can even consider what you might be doing.

I am fortunate enough to have a new post now. However, when I was interviewed for it, I thought, "Good God, I haven't had a job interview for eight years. This is very different. What has changed out there?" Any other major employer would give assistance to people who have been made redundant, which is basically what had happened. There would be assistance on preparing CVs, on interview techniques and all the rest of it. None of that is available. I understand that it is for staff, although it was not clear to me how my staff could avail themselves of those training opportunities in a place such as Aberystwyth. I am pleased that they got jobs.

Pete Wishart: That is what I was edging towards in my question. Is there anything that we could do to help to deal with some of those issues? Is there something that the House could prepare for or give to Members who lose their seats?

Simon Thomas: There are two things that the House could do. I had problems with the interaction between being an MP and the benefits system. I wanted to make a point of claiming the jobseeker's allowance—I fought hard to keep the jobseeker's allowance office open in my constituency, so I thought that I should go and use it. It is bit like a post office—you should go and use it. I also wanted to preserve my national insurance status. That is still unresolved. An ex-MP's relationship with national insurance still has not been decided. I did not want to claim the jobseeker's allowance; I was getting enough money in my pay-off, but that was not the point. The point was a principled one about the relationship with the national insurance system, and that is still unresolved. Surely it must be possible, as I mentioned in my evidence, for the House and the various powers-that-be to have a discussion and prepare a note for Members to tell them about their situation when they leave office?

The second thing that could be done would be to set up an ongoing employer-type relationship. If you are made redundant by a serious and responsible employer, it is not a question of just closing the door on you; there is an ongoing relationship. It is different for an MP because you cannot be given any notice. I would argue that the notice has to happen after you have lost and that for a month or two some sort of support system should be available that helps you through the process, helps you get a new job if necessary—even if it is giving help with preparing CVs or whatever. Not everyone in this House has been active in the job market as recently as Adrian or I. That makes it more difficult for people to get back into the job market.

Chairman: There are five members left who want to ask questions and we are already behind schedule. I ask colleagues and witnesses to be more brief.

Mr. Harper: To pick up on this "closing down" thing, it strikes me that there is a bit of a discrepancy. On the one hand, there are arrangements in place with the winding-up allowance and the expectation that you have to get out of things and you have to finish things off, and you are given taxpayers' money to do all that. But on the other hand, as Linda said, you cannot get access to the estate.

It strikes me that we need to do one of two things. Either people are not expected to do anything and they can just walk away—that is one option—or we could pay them to wind things down properly. Going along with that second option are the other things that help that process—either access to the estate or perhaps having a short-term team of people who facilitate some of the moves. As you said, you could have people helping with shifting office equipment or with office paperwork, or somebody to assist with closing out contracts and making all that happen very quickly. As Adrian said, you really want to have all that stuff resolved and then move on to whatever else you are going to do, not to be stuck in limbo, desperately trying to clear things up in a not very efficient fashion. I wondered whether anyone would like to comment on that.

Simon Thomas: We agree.

Chairman: Does anybody want to respond to that?

Simon Thomas: I just responded. My preferred option would be to have assistance, because I think you cannot walk away. There is the democratic process that we talked about earlier. It is important that some respect is held for that. People expect you to deal with their problems still, and to wind down that process, so the proper course is to have a winding-down period, but there needs to be more recognition that you are still doing a job.

Mr. Harper: You support that?

Simon Thomas: Yes.

Mr. Gerrard: Simon, you mentioned the situation that your staff were in. Do you feel that in particular, people who lost rather than retired—although this might well apply to both—have sufficient help in dealing with the whole business? You have staff who are being made redundant, and with some people who lose, that would come absolutely out of the blue. Did you get sufficient assistance to be able to deal with them fairly and efficiently, as you should?

Adrian Flook: Yes. To be honest, I did not treat all my staff equally, because two of them were part-time and actually had not done as much as they ought to have done, and two had done more than they ought to have done. The process is quite arcane and bizarre, the bonusing that you can apply, and you can backdate it and almost postdate it. It is incredibly complicated. I like to think that I looked after the two people who worked the hardest the best, and they were brilliant. The lady who I ended up speaking to most of the time—Hannah Lamb—was just superb, and very helpful.

Mr. Gerrard: Peter obviously did not feel the same.

Peter Pike: I do not think so, no. There is a difficulty for a Member who knows they are retiring. You cannot tell staff exactly when you are going to finish, because you do not know when the election is going to come, and you get told to give them a loose notice telling them that at some stage they are going to become redundant, which is a bit of an odd thing. Also, a number of things that we were told at the pre-meeting that we could have—I went to one—did not actually happen. We were not told what we could give in bonuses and redundancy until well after the election, so you were not able to tell staff what you would give them. I wanted to treat them as favourably as possible, remembering that, with a Member who was retiring, they could choose to leave you at any time, when you would find it very difficult to recruit staff who knew that they might have only a few months to go, because you were going whenever the election might suddenly be called. None of my staff were being taken on by my successor, because she did not want anybody in London and the others, for different reasons, did not continue. You want to get staff to stay on with you till the end, and I tried to treat them as favourably as possible. To expect them to type out their own redundancy notice and things is difficult. I could do it myself now, but I had become dependent on staff doing things. I can now e-mail and type things myself, but for years I had not bothered. To tell them to type out something saying "This is your ex gratia payment," "This is your statutory redundancy," or "This is what you are getting as a bonus," is a bit much, so they did not get the information.

After the election you cannot do it on official paper, and the benefits office will not accept a letter signed from your home address. Then you find out that there is somebody dealing with it at the Fees Office—or the Department of Finance and Administration, or whatever we call it nowadays. They were very helpful, but it would have been much better if, right from day one, we had been told, "This is who is dealing with staff. This is who they can contact." I was talking to a member of my staff last night, and one of them spoke to me in South Africa, when I was on holiday, and I said, "Get in touch with them. They'll sort it out." Once she did that, they sorted it out perfectly well. We should already have known that, and the person should have been identified. It is not only a difficult time for the MP who is finishing; it is an extremely difficult time—not of their choosing—for the staff, whether the Member has been defeated or is retiring.

Adrian Flook: It was at least a week and a half before the actual amount was declared, was it not? I found that bizarre.

Peter Pike: Yes. When they gave the briefing, they said that all these things were under discussion by the Commission, or whatever it was, which was going to make a decision. But they all knew that an election was coming up. The papers kept telling us that it was going to be on 5 May, so all these things should have been known. When you want to treat staff as reasonably as possible—I would hope that we are all good employers—it is a bit difficult.

John Thurso: May I just return to the question of access? It seems to me that there are two separate sides, or two related issues. One is common courtesy and treating former colleagues in a courteous manner. The other is efficiency, and getting the work done. On the former issue, I note, having had the privilege of being ejected from a different House, that everybody who was ejected from there was given a pass immediately, irrespective of how long they had been there. Is there any reason why, in your view, former Members should not have a former Members' pass and be allowed to come in? On the issue of efficiency, it seems from everything that you have been saying that this area needs to be completely revisited, and a completely new protocol written to reflect the reality of a modern Member of Parliament leaving office, as opposed to a model designed for a 1945 Member of Parliament leaving office.

Linda Perham: That is absolutely right. It is what I said in my evidence. If it were accepted that former Members had a pass, there would be no question of being challenged when you turned up. Perhaps your pass would be temporarily re-enabled so that you could clear your office, but then you would be given a pass like Peter Pike's. Then you would not be subject to what Peter Bradley said before. It all depends on when the election is called. Why should someone be allowed access because they have been here for 15 years, or 10 years? Efficiency may involve a dedicated team being geared up to deal with former Members—certainly Members who have not got staff in London and have Simon's problems of packing up their office virtually alone. A dedicated team would help—like the section that deals with you on the winding-up allowance in the Fees Office. I really think that the Serjeant at Arms Department should have something like that. Perhaps the Committee could think about that when it is considering its recommendations.

Peter Bradley: In contrast with some others, I had no problem whatever with coming in and being here. Perhaps that is because I just waltzed in and people assumed that I was still a Member. I did not ask any permissions, so they were not denied me.

John Thurso: You did not try to vote, by any chance?

Peter Bradley: I heard what current Members said—that former Members should just clear off. However, it is interesting how long a former Member's office lies empty before somebody occupies it. I am sure that most ex-Members do not want to spend too much time clearing their offices. They want a bit of time to gather their energies after their defeat, and then they will do the business. But I think that I had about 50 sacks of paper, having hoarded paper over eight to 10 years. In the end I threw everything away, but I still had to go through it as I did so. It did take time and it was physically quite tiring. It was daft to be under that sort of pressure to clear my office just for it to stand empty. Either people need to speed up the allocation process, or they should be a bit more relaxed about Members clearing their space.

Simon Thomas: It is interesting that formers Members are allowed to retain an honorary membership of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, but are persona non grata in this place.

Frank Dobson: Although at first blush there appears to be a conflict between ex-Members getting out of their offices and new Members coming in, it is not a case of hot seats. There is quite a period during which it would be possible to give Members who have left more time to sort out things. However, as the staff are paid from the public payroll, do you, in your experience, think that it would be better if the House had a better redundancy scheme and it was left to the House officialdom to make all the arrangements, so that you did not have to make them?

Simon Thomas: That is my point. I tried to say that in my evidence. When I first came to the House I employed staff directly from the office allowance, or whatever it was called. Now staff are employed directly by the House—so why am I in the middle of a shop in Aberystwyth buying my daughter trainers and trying to negotiate a redundancy package for one of my members of staff? I must say that the person who I was talking to was very good, and that I have received a lot of help and assistance from the Fees Office. Nevertheless, the situation that we are in strikes me as completely archaic. If people are employed by the House, they should be dealt with by the House. They should be given the proper redundancy package and support to enable them to get new jobs, because they are not employed directly by Members any more. The situation has changed. I was tempted to do what Adrian did, but we should not really be doing that, should we? It should be for the House to decide.

Adrian Flook: I must stress that mine got the required minimum; it is just that I did not bonus them up. Equally, I bonused up two at the expense of the other two.

Chairman: May I raise an issue about passes? When I read some of the evidence, I was more than a little shocked. I lost my seat in 1992, and my recollection of that period was that I could come to Westminster without hindrance. In fact, for the five years until I came back in 1997, I came and went as I pleased on my 1992 pass. I was never questioned.

Mr. Donohoe: Things have changed.

Chairman: I did not know any better. I did not come very often. To be honest, I did not want to come in. I felt that when I came back, I wanted it to be in my previous status. There is an issue about passes and access for former Members. Peter, your story is particularly difficult to accept because you well qualify, even under the old rules, for a pass as a former Member. One issue concerns the pressure on the estate and its facilities. The cafeteria facilities, in particular, are under enormous pressure. That is one of the stated reasons for not extending the right for passes. Not everyone here lives in London and must have to travel quite a bit to get here. If you had a pass, how regularly would you expect to use it?

Linda Perham: It is just a matter of being able to come to meetings and not having to go through what I did today. It is about the right of access. As I have said, we are the least likely people to have turned by the Taliban. About 14,000 passes are issued, many of which go to temporary workers. MPs give their passes to lobbying organisations and to people who work in the constituency and come down once or twice a year. Former Members may not all want to take it up or to come back here. I doubt whether all that many people would want to come back. Perhaps an exercise can be carried out to see how many ex-Members would come back, if passes were made available. Perhaps letters could be written to them asking whether they would return in such circumstances. Joe Ashton said that some people, even those who had been in the House as long as Peter, did not know that they could take up what is now the 10-year rule. Perhaps that is why they are not told much about it—because if they were, more people might want a pass. But I cannot imagine that it would involve huge numbers of us, or that we would be a risk.

Adrian Flook: My job might bring me here occasionally, but I would not necessarily come that often, even if I had a pass. There has been a great hoo-hah in the last four years about the fact that we were not using the facilities enough, so they were not doing as well as they could have done. If extra people went to Strangers Dining Room, it might help the catering budget.

In looking after a client's interests, I have had to go to the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand in the past week. Once I am through the efficient security search, no one checks who I am or where I am going. You can wander into any courtroom you want, as long as you go to the public areas. You have to go past the barristers, but no one quibbles at all. Here we are persona non grata, but there no one even has to wear a visitor's pass. It is bizarre.

Chairman: You may regret saying that. From the shakes of the head in the Gallery, that may be about to change.

Peter Bradley: Personally, I would not use a pass very often. I still live in my former constituency, and even if I were in London I would have the same reservations about coming here, unless I had a good reason, as you had during your time out of office. The problem is the attitude of the House towards former Members. If you represent a marginal seat, you know that sooner or later you will lose it, but nothing quite prepares you for the loss of identity that accompanies that. It is a unique job, so losing it is a unique experience. We suddenly go from being everything to all people—including some of the things you do not particularly want to be to your constituents—to being nothing. Colleagues of ours who are not present today have probably suffered a great deal more than we have, especially those who did not anticipate losing and who had every right to believe that they would still be here. It must have been a blow to them.

I would appreciate a pass, not for any practical benefits but merely as a recognition that, although I no longer serve, I have given service and should have a little respect. I may hardly ever use the pass, but if I had cause to come here I would not feel quite so "branded".

Peter Pike: I have come here a few times since I got a pass. I have friends on both sides of the House, and it is an advantage not to have to queue up to enter. There is nowhere to hang a coat, so I disappear into the Family Room and pretend that I do not notice the sign. I hang it up there and hope that no one throws me out, so do not inform the authorities. A pass has some advantages. You can use the cafeteria and you can go into the Members Lobby. It is strange that you can go into the Members Lobby and other places. Officially, you cannot go into Portcullis House, but no one challenges anyone who goes there.

Simon Thomas: I do not mind the security arrangements; they are essential these days. However, it would be good, once you are in the building, not to have to rely on your ex-colleagues to accompany you everywhere. That simple courtesy could be extended to ex-Members.

Mr. Jones: The issue that Frank raised about pressure on the facilities is nonsense, because the House authorities do not know who uses the facilities, as we found out on our tour of the catering facilities. The idea that the small number of ex-Members would be a burden is laughable.

At the end of the month, some members of the Serjeant at Arms Department are going to Washington to look at security. Perhaps they could investigate how ex-Congressmen are dealt with, because I understand that there is an ex-Congressmen's club and society that looks after them quite well. I wonder whether they could bring back some information on that.

Chairman: Thanks to everyone for coming along today. I know that some of you have had to travel some distance, and we appreciate that, as this is an important inquiry for us. It is new territory. This is a brand new Committee, and this is our first such inquiry. Your evidence has been excellent, and has helped us to focus on a serious issue. Thank you very much.

Discussion with officials from the House Administration: James Robertson (Assistant Serjeant at Arms), Matthew Taylor (Director of Parliamentary Communications), and Terry Bird (Director of Operations, Department of Finance and Administration)

Chairman: Sorry to have kept you waiting, gentlemen. We obviously underestimated the time that we would need to question witnesses, but I think you will agree that what we heard was quite important and useful. I hope that none of you is inconvenienced, and that we are not preventing you from being somewhere else.

Frank Dobson: I have a factual question: how quickly was the first room vacated by a defeated Member allocated to a new one?

James Robertson: I cannot answer that question. I do not know.

Frank Dobson: But someone will know, presumably?

James Robertson: We could go back and look through the record, and should be able to work it out.

Frank Dobson: It would be interesting to know how quickly the first 10 or 20 were allocated.

James Robertson: If I may say so, that would be untypical of what we aim to achieve. On this occasion, because of the arrangement that we tried to execute for the Whips, there was a significant delay in getting the first Members into their rooms. Normally, we would expect to move all Members within a month of the election, but that did not happen on this occasion.

Frank Dobson: Does that mean that the very short deadline for retiring or defeated Members contributes nothing to the reallocation of rooms?

James Robertson: I would have to go and look at the data, and I should have been interested in what the Whips would have said if they were here.

Chairman: I think you heard the evidence, Mr. Robertson, from both groups who were here. Obviously it took a long time to find all the new Members new rooms, yet retiring and other ex-Members were pushed out of the door as quickly as possible.

James Robertson: There is a need, in some cases, to redecorate the rooms and bring them up to standard—not in every case.

Mr. Harper: I have a factual question for Mr. Bird, to make sure that the record is accurate on the employment point that Simon made. I understand that what he said is not correct: the House is not the employer of staff—we are. I think the change to which he referred is the fact that they all have standard terms and conditions, but we are very much the employers and therefore have to deal with relevant issues. Presumably we can consider whether that should continue, and make recommendations, but that is the situation at the moment.

Terry Bird: That is absolutely right: Members are the employers of their staff. Our Department is on the horns of a dilemma. It is a difficult time for everyone, but the Member is the employer. We provide advice to the Member, not to the Member's staff, much as we might like to do so. We try to be as helpful as we can. We are here to provide you, the employer, with personnel advice if you need it.

Mr. Jones: What instructions are given to members of staff in the Serjeant at Arms Department? We have heard different stories from people. Mr. Pike was, frankly, treated shoddily, if he was told he had to be escorted around this place.

James Robertson: I cannot understand that.

Mr. Jones: I also know of an ex-Member who, like Simon, wanted to spend the weekend with his family. He rang on the Friday morning and was told that he had to be in here over the weekend to clear his stuff out, and would not be allowed in the following week. From the evidence that we have, and from ex-Members to whom I have spoken, there is clearly an inconsistency in what is being said to people. Is there a procedure laid down whereby the Serjeant at Arms Department and people who deal with officers are told this is how people should be treated? The way in which some Members were treated has been appalling.

James Robertson: The guidance is laid down in the Dissolution arrangements under the rules for defeated Members. The aim is to get them out of their offices within a week.

Mr. Jones: Is that written down?

James Robertson: Yes.

Mr. Jones: Can we have a copy of that?

James Robertson: Yes.

Mr. Jones: How is that communicated to staff? Clearly people are giving different messages?

James Robertson: It certainly sounds as though they are.

Mr. Jones: Can I pick up on the point made by Frank Dobson about the turnaround of rooms? I cannot wait to get on with our accommodation inquiry, because there are rooms all over this building standing empty. In my corridor there are some, not with ex-Members' names on, but with the names of Members who I know have moved out. How many empty offices are there in this building?

James Robertson: Again, I shall have to look at the record.

Mr. Jones: I suspect that there are a lot. I was on Upper Committee Corridor South before the election, and the two offices across from me stood empty all year. This idea that there is a real pressure on offices—is it a bit of kidology?

James Robertson: I do not believe so, no. The recommendation in the last accommodation study is that there should be 5 per cent. of what is called "swing space"—free accommodation, so that people can be moved around and we can try to achieve some of the things we were discussing as regards flexibility. At the moment almost all offices are allocated. Whether the Members choose to occupy them, I do not know.

Mr. Jones: There are also offices that have the names of members of staff on them. I go past some that are rarely used.

James Robertson: Without specific examples, I cannot answer that.

John Thurso: May I ask about this question of the pass, which seems a relatively straightforward issue, but is obviously salt in the wound? At the other end of the building, when I and all the other hereditaries were ejected, it did not matter whether you had taken your seat a month before or 50 years before, everybody got a pass that gets you into the building. I believe that it is very rarely used, and that most people when they leave somewhere tend to say, "That's it." Occasionally, when they do come back, it is quite nice to be treated with that little bit of extra respect. Is not that something we could do for all former Members? It is highly unlikely to be grossly abused, and as Linda Perham was saying, they have been through all the security and all the rest of it for five years. Is not that a simple thing that we could do to ease that little bit of pain, which is not going to cost us much?

James Robertson: It is certainly something that has been looked at by previous Administration Committees—bringing down the cut-off time at which the ex-Member's pass is issued. In the past they have decided that the current level is correct.

John Thurso: Was that because there was some evidence?

James Robertson: It tends to be done at the same time as there is an up-swelling among Members and Members' staff, who are the main users of some of the facilities. Things become crowded. Clearly there is pressure on some areas at some times of the day.

John Thurso: All the evidence from the other place is that it is a courtesy given but rarely used. From what I heard there, nobody was in any rush to come back, but on the odd occasion when people do, to be able to come in with a bit of recognition meant a great deal to them. The argument that it puts pressure on the facilities does not actually stand up to the evidence that I have seen. Obviously the previous Committee took that view, but would the Serjeant at Arms Department support that view, or would the Serjeant be quite relaxed if this Committee recommended that everybody got a pass once they had been a Member?

James Robertson: If this Committee recommended it, the Serjeant would obviously abide by the decision of the Committee.

John Thurso: That would be wonderful. Thank you.

Pete Wishart: The two key issues for new Members are clearly accommodation and the availability of technology. My experience of accommodation as the accommodation Whip for most of the minority parties was constantly having to deal with Bob Ainsworth; it is a pity Bob is not here just now. To implement solutions to deal with early accommodation issues, we need to get the Whips out of the arrangement and make sure it is managed properly from within the House. Leaving it all to practical Bob to fix, allocate and manage led to a bottleneck in the allocation of accommodation. Is there not a better way to do it than going through the Whips?

James Robertson: I think that we would be extremely reluctant to get the Whips out of the equation. Accommodation Whip is one of the most thankless tasks that anyone can take on. Because of the varying needs of Members and the pressures that they come under, it requires the Whips' understanding of what is going on to try to manage that process.

Pete Wishart: In order to try to get rooms for my new Members, I constantly had to deal with Bob, Judy and other members of the Serjeant's office to get things resolved. There did not seem to be a proper interface to achieve and secure that. I found it quite chaotic. Bob was trying to assist as best he could, and Judy was trying to assist as best she could, in her own particular way—but there must be a better way to do it than what we went through in the allocation of offices.

James Robertson: I have to say that I am not sure of one.

Pete Wishart: Okay. We will leave that point.

As for PCD, and what new Members were clearly saying about their basic requirements when they come here, are we closer to meeting those requirements regarding things like wi-fi connections, LAN lines and so on? Will that be possible?

Matthew Taylor: You may recall that we covered some of this ground at a previous meeting. We welcome the report presented from the new Members, and we believe that we can address most of the points in that paper. On the specific points that have arisen in today's meeting, the key one was flexibility. I would like to say one or two things about that if I may. First, we are following the Senior Salaries Review Body resolution, which is agreed on the Floor of the House, and if you look at the resolution, it is quite specific about the types of equipment that Members can receive. It is probably over-specific, but it is extremely specific and it is difficult for us to move away from that.

With regard to flexibility of access—we heard a lot about wireless access today—we have initiatives in hand which are looking at 3G wireless access, and public and direct access to the internet and parliamentary network. Once we have delivered those, which are budgeted for in this financial year, we might have gone quite some way to address the problems that have been identified.

Mr. Harper: To pick up the point concerning the specificity of Members' equipment, could the Committee have a copy of the SSRB paper so that we can have a look at it?

Matthew Taylor: Yes, it is a published document.

Janet Anderson: Mr. Robertson, you referred earlier to Dissolution arrangements. We heard earlier in our evidence that new Members get handed a letter by the returning officer when they are elected. Clearly, there is nothing similar or comparable for defeated Members, and maybe that is something that we should consider. We know when a general election is coming. We do not know the date, because that is up to the Prime Minister, but we roughly know when it is going to happen, and all of us as politicians put certain procedures in place to get ready for it. It would be interesting to us to know what you do, as part of the House Administration, when you know that there is an election coming up. I wonder whether there is a manual or some guidance that you have that you could make available to us.

James Robertson: There is no specific manual or guidance. We start planning the reception for the new Members something like a year and a half before we believe an election will take place. It is done by the Departments of the House. We talk in that process to the Whips to see whether we can begin to address the issue, which was brought up here, about a co-ordinated approach between the parties and officials to see whether we can get a short, sharp, relevant induction. Then, as a result of that, we put on, in our case, the induction process that you saw at the last election, which was, if you like, the general induction in the one room, with the one-stop shop for other departmental stuff in the other rooms in Portcullis house. We have reviewed that since the election, and the evidence that we have had from the report, which forms part of the evidence, is that we think we probably provided information overload. We heard about some of that earlier on. There was too much, too soon. We should be concentrating— again, as the witnesses said—on providing something that allows them to get in, get up and get working very quickly. That means the simple post, pay and PC—that sort of thing—to get them in and working, and then perhaps subsequently provide further information.

Janet Anderson: But accommodation is obviously a very pressing issue when new Members come in.

James Robertson: Yes.

Janet Anderson: I am sure you have taken on board the evidence that we have heard—

James Robertson: Yes, indeed.

Janet Anderson:—that they would like more information about that.

James Robertson: Yes. What we have done in the past is to provide, as you said, hot-desking. We took the top floor of the Committee Corridor out this year.

Janet Anderson: Actually I was thinking about somewhere to live—somewhere to dwell and sleep at night.

James Robertson: Oh, sorry. We put the Travel Office in as part of the Department of Finance and Administration, and I think that one of the things that, very late in the process, we thought about was somewhere for hotel accommodation. We did provide, I think, two or three hotel addresses and telephone numbers as part of the package, but clearly that was not enough, and it would have been very much better if we had provided something as part of a sort of joining sheet, which had that sort of information on.

Janet Anderson: Thank you very much.

Frank Dobson: On the IT, am I right in thinking that your first answer was saying basically that you can now provide universally what the three new Members giving evidence said they would want?

Matthew Taylor: In terms of the wireless access, we certainly have live projects—they are happening now—which are looking at providing wireless access in some of the communal areas—for example, Portcullis atrium. They are looking at direct access to the parliamentary network, but also direct access to the internet for those who want to use it. We are currently considering what other locations in both Houses might be suitable for that sort of access. Because of the structure of the building, flooding the place with wireless access would not be possible—some walls are just too thick, some places are just too inaccessible—but we are looking at communal areas. Perhaps the Committee Corridor, perhaps the atrium, but they have still to be decided.

Frank Dobson: You were also saying that the SSRB recommendations, as endorsed by the House, constrain the flexibility of what is provided. There is nothing to stop us saying we want more flexibility than the SSRB talked about in its last report, and that we are not prepared to wait three eons until it makes its next recommendation. It would be possible for you to say, "This is what would need to be done to provide the flexibility," and it would be up to us to decide whether to provide it.

Matthew Taylor: On that particular point I was responding to the point that Mr. Shapps raised about—"I don't want all PCs. I want to have perhaps more laptops"—and I was interpreting the resolution in that respect. I have taken advice on that, and we would need to take this to the Members Estimate Committee for its ratification, if we did indeed want to make a change. But we would take it to this Committee first and the Advisory Panel on Members' Allowances before it went to the MEC to seek that change.

Frank Dobson: Could I then go on to the computer equipment possessed by the departing Members? Some of them would like to buy it, and I am told that they cannot buy it because of problems over the licence agreement. Does anybody ever ask the people at the other end of the licence agreement whether they would be prepared to accept that?

Matthew Taylor: Yes, we have. The problem is the position that Microsoft has taken over the licences that we have as an enterprise and corporation. It is not allowing us to resell them or take advantage of the price discounts that we have achieved as an organisation for the benefit of an individual. We have discussed this in the former Information Committee and in the Panel in the past, and the conclusion that was reached was to wipe the hardware of all the useful software. This would render the equipment fairly useless, given that it would be more than four years old and would need software to be purchased and reinstalled on it.

The decision taken had been to retrieve the equipment, dispose of it within the House—members of staff could use it if it had a usable life—or resell it if it had a commercial value. If it did not have a commercial value, we would destroy it in an environmentally friendly and safe way, while ensuring that we had cleaned all the sensitive data that might exist on the machine.

Frank Dobson: How far up the great chain of command at Microsoft have we gone in trying to get the company to be flexible?

Matthew Taylor: That is a fair question. We have been operating at a certain level, and because of the interest expressed by the Advisory Panel when we met a couple of weeks ago, we are escalating the issue at Microsoft and asking, "Are you absolutely sure that this is your final position?" We are pursuing that.

Frank Dobson: I have a question for Mr. Bird. Would there be any problem for the Fees Office—as I still think of you—in taking responsibility for the redundo aspects of Members' staff?

Terry Bird: The key problem is that we are not the employer. Members of Parliament are, and therefore it is their responsibility to go through the processes that should happen before redundancy takes place—consultation and so on. It is the responsibility of Members of Parliament to enact those redundancy procedures.

However, we do a lot of backroom work. As one or two of the former Members indicated, we provide a number of services. We would provide the calculation of the redundancy payments at request, even though you could go elsewhere to find that information. We were also very happy to provide—although perhaps we did not notify this widely enough—template letters that former Members could use in the process of making their staff redundant. They were not required to use them, but we were happy to provide drafts that they could use.

The other thing that we did was to provide, through a third-party provider, courses for members of staff on such things as CV writing. That third-party provider phoned round all former Members to say that those courses were on, and ask whether any of their staff would like to attend. I do not think that we got a great take-up, and maybe we need to look at that. We did a lot of backroom work, but could not take on the responsibility.

Frank Dobson: I do not expect you to answer this now, because it is a matter of interpretation of the law, but will it be possible for Members to include in their contracts of employment a stipulation that, in the event of their losing their seat or retiring, the House of Commons would be responsible for the redundancy arrangements? Could you find that out for us?

Terry Bird: I can certainly look into that.

Mr. Gerrard: I want to come back to one or two of the issues around the IT. We heard Simon Thomas; there still seem to be people who have retired whose equipment has not been collected. Is Simon Thomas's an isolated experience or a wider problem?

Matthew Taylor: No, it is not an isolated situation; quite a number of ex-Members out there still have their equipment.

Mr. Gerrard: Why has that happened?

Matthew Taylor: We would expect to have retrieved it before now, but it has been a low priority in the project, the first priority being new Members. Also, we had an issue at the start of that delivery project, which then created an increased work load. You have heard some of the comments about calls not being returned. It generated a work load that was difficult to cope with. That was considered a lower priority. In the guidance to Members that we issued about the retrieval of equipment from ex-Members there was not a set date by which we said we would retrieve it. Clearly, we would have expected to have made more progress by now.

Mr. Gerrard: Is it PCD who are doing the retrieval?

Matthew Taylor: We instruct a third party to do it, and monitor and manage its work.

Mr. Gerrard: I am not clear where the problem has arisen, because if you are instructing a third party, I do not see how some of the problems about getting the new Members supplied would interfere with a third party collecting from ex-Members.

Matthew Taylor: I can understand why it appears that way. It will in fact be a member of our own staff who would be contacting the ex-Members and making the arrangements, and the third party who goes out with the van to collect it. Having the resources to have handled that to date has not been possible.

Mr. Harper: Why would it not be possible just to have a list, given that former Members are not, in most cases, likely to be particularly difficult about this and that most of them wanted to give us information? Why would it not be possible to have the contact as part of the third party contract? You could give the third party the name and contact details and just say, "Go get the stuff in a sensible and courteous manner." These people want you to come to collect it, so that they can have it off their hands. Most of them are having to store it or look after it. They do not want it; they want you to come to collect it.

Matthew Taylor: That is a perfectly reasonable point and we will want to take it on board. Where Members have contacted us and said that it is causing a problem, we have ensured that we have retrieved it. So we have dealt with the situation for those Members who have been in touch saying, "Please get this off my hands".

Janet Anderson: Are you confident that it will ever be retrieved?

Matthew Taylor: If it is where our records say it is, we will be able to retrieve it.

Janet Anderson: But you have no kind of cut-off point for that. You do not know what the time scale will be. You will do it some time, perhaps never.

Matthew Taylor: It is not a coincidence that the meeting is happening today and a member of staff is working on this at present. But there is somebody who now has making contact with all the ex-Members as a dedicated task.

Mr. Gerrard: The question of flexibility is something that we ought to look at. It is not just the SSRB report. There was a resolution of the House, which is based on that SSRB report. If we pass something through the House that does not have flexibility in it, we would have, in a sense, created the problem. We should have a look at what the terms of that resolution were and what we might need to do to change it. I understand the point that was being made about different Members wanting to work in different ways. Perhaps when we are looking at this report we could think about how we could progress. You might need to come back to us on that.

The other point that I wanted to raise was about the wireless access, and once that starts to happen, which I recall being mentioned at the previous meeting. What restrictions would you have on that? You heard some of the people who were giving us evidence saying, "Well, I just want to bring in my own gear that I have been using, and be able to connect through wireless access into the parliamentary system."

Matthew Taylor: In terms of the ability to access the POP 3 types of accounts that you heard about earlier, when I was talking about the wireless connection I mentioned two types: direct connection to the parliamentary network and direct connection to the internet. That is the key distinction. If you are directly connecting to the parliamentary network, the technical advice that we have received says that we should not allow POP 3 access.

Mr. Gerrard: For security reasons.

Matthew Taylor: For security reasons.

So, we would not currently consider doing that. If you had direct access to the internet, which I believe the two gentleman on the panel were requesting, that would allow them to access their POP 3 accounts and to do the sort of internet work that they were seeking to do. We are in the middle of a project and we are exploring the possibilities of that, but it is worth flagging up again the fact that we are looking at public or communal areas within the building and not necessarily people's individual offices for that service.

Mr. Jones: I have two points about the computer equipment that clearly has not been collected yet. Is it worth collecting some of this equipment? Will you provide us with some information—not today—about what percentage is reuseable and what is disposed of because it is not worth collecting? Computers go out of date quickly.

As for unused envelopes, the Serjeant at Arms Department and the Speaker get vexed about the cost of envelopes. Is there a system—clearly not in Mr. Pike's case—for returning envelopes if you have not used them?

James Robertson: There is no specific instruction that tells a retiring Member that if they want to return envelopes they should do it this way. Members who have a large number of envelopes tend to contact the Office Keeper, who tells them to put them in a box and return them via parcel post.

Mr. Jones: That clearly failed in Mr. Pike's case.

James Robertson: We failed in Mr. Pike's case, but we had at least one long meeting with him before he returned the envelopes and other bits and pieces.

Janet Anderson: When Members return envelopes that have previously been billed to them, is the value of the envelopes they have returned taken off their expense returns?

James Robertson: No.

Janet Anderson: Why not?

James Robertson: Nobody has thought of it. I guess that it is bringing public money back into—

Mr. Jones: It is important, because a few weeks ago our expenses were published in the newspapers. They also published figures for all those ex-Members in our region who retired at the last election. If they returned £2,000-worth of stationery, that should come off the bill.

James Robertson: Fair point.

Frank Dobson: I seek clarification from Mr. Bird. My question about legality was on the assumption that the House of Commons has a redundancy scheme that is more generous than the statutory one.

Terry Bird: It has a redundancy scheme, and in general it is more generous than the statutory one.

Frank Dobson: Applying it to Members' staff?

Terry Bird: There would be all sorts of difficulties, because if the employer was changing from a Member of Parliament to the House, there would be issues about length of service, and redundancy and length of service are connected too. I take your point, but I am not sure that the solution you have offered is a neat way of achieving what you want.

Frank Dobson: It might not be for the Fees Office, but it might be for the Members.

Chairman: I have a final question. I used a couple of examples from my own experience, and I was not exaggerating when I said that I was able to come and go for five years. That applied particularly when I was asked to come and empty my office, which was difficult and painful. I was certainly not escorted, and I did not have any trouble getting into the office and getting staff from the Serjeant at Arms Department to help with boxes.

The other example I gave was from the time when I first came into the House. Between 1987 and now there has been a sea change in the services provided for Members, including the induction process, on which you are to be congratulated. It is important to point out that although we have concentrated on some of the negatives, there were many positives in the evidence that we received. However, I still have a nagging problem about former Members and how they were treated, but there has been massive culture change.

I understand the security issues, and what I did is probably impossible to countenance nowadays. Not all that the Committee has heard has been presented in evidence, because we have all had conversations with defeated Members. Some strong words have been spoken today, and previously written, about the way in which people were treated. There has been a culture change. Is there an explanation for that, beyond the security one, which most of us on this side of the fence would argue is invalid, because everyone has been security checked. Everyone whom we saw today, with the exception of Peter Pike, had been a Member for eight years.

James Robertson: I cannot offer an explanation. As far as I am aware, and certainly in all the dealings with my staff, the intention has been for defeated Members—former Members—to come in and to be facilitated in clearing their offices. We give them as long as possible to do that, and if a Member has a significant problem, as some do, we will do whatever we can to help. However, in general, because of the pressures that we perceive on turning the accommodation around, we aim for about a week.

Chairman: That is not what we have heard.

James Robertson: It is certainly not what seems to be happening.

Chairman: Thank you gentlemen. This has been extremely useful. I apologise again for the Committee overrunning. If anyone wants to write in to us about issues that were raised in evidence today, we would be happy to receive such letters. We must start to prepare our report in the next couple of weeks, but if anyone wants to elaborate on any points, they should feel free to write to the Clerk.

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Prepared 9 January 2006