House of Commons - Employment of Members' staff by the House

Employment of Members' staff by the House - House of Commons Commission Contents

1 Introduction

1. On 30 April the House agreed the following resolution (moved by the Deputy Leader of the House):

"(1) That, in the opinion of this House, staff who work for an hon. Member should be employed by the House, as a personal appointment and managed by the hon. Member; and

2. Employment by the House would replace the current arrangement whereby each Member employs his or her own staff but the House pays staff directly and provides for standard contracts and pay ranges. The Member is required to ensure that the staff concerned are employed to meet a genuine need relating to the Member's parliamentary duties, are able and (if necessary) qualified to do the job and are actually doing the job, and that the costs charged to Staffing Expenditure are reasonable and entirely attributable to the Member's parliamentary work.[2]

3. The House has expressed a view and has asked us to make recommendations for putting it into effect, rather than requesting our opinion of the proposal. We have accordingly concentrated on examining how the proposal could best be implemented, rather than on whether it should be taken forward at all, which will be for the House to determine.

4. Since the House agreed its resolution, the Government has proposed an Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) and Parliament has passed legislation (the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009) to set it up. The establishment of the IPSA complicates the House's proposal. The IPSA has a statutory duty to prepare an allowances scheme[3] and to pay allowances to Members. If Members' staff are to be paid from an allowance, the House would be the employer, the IPSA would pay the staff and the Member would recruit and manage. The House could pay direct, but it would need to be considered whether it would be more appropriate for a benefit to Members (in the form of the provision of staff) to be provided under the scheme which Parliament has only recently enacted. It seems likely that the IPSA's allowances scheme will include a staffing element and criteria to govern how this allowance can be spent. It would make sense for such rules to include standard contracts and pay scales, but at this stage it is not known what approach the IPSA will take.

Our consideration of the matter

5. We put out a consultation paper on 12 June and received 100 submissions.[4] Because of the limited time available we relied entirely on written material. We would like to thank all those who took the trouble to send us their views.

6. The majority of submissions (57) were from Members' staff, sometimes presenting the views of several staff members. Also, there were three submissions from Members directly incorporating the views of their staff[5] and there were submissions from the Members' and Peers' Staff Association (MAPSA) and the Unite and TUS unions. The Members' staff who wrote to us were overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal,[6] as was the MAPSA. Among Members, only four of the 36 who responded were in favour.[7] The Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and the 1922 Committee were opposed to the proposal.[8]

7. We were pleased to receive so many submissions from staff, which gave us a valuable insight into how they view their employment by Members. We wish to emphasise at the start of this report that we could not do our jobs as Members without the help of our staff and that we recognise and value immensely their dedication and loyalty.

8. We did not approach this subject without previous knowledge. Not only are we, individually, employers of staff, but the matter had already been examined in detail by the Members Estimate Committee (MEC), whose membership is the same as the Commission's, in its Review of Allowances in 2008.[9] The evidence gathered then has been of great value to us in the current examination.[10] The MEC stated then that it was "vitally important" to the work of Members "that their staff should be entirely and unambiguously committed to the individual MP and the causes being championed, rather than to the House of Commons as a corporate body."[11] It observed then that it had been unable to identify any model elsewhere which combined central employment by Parliament with an individual Member's ability to appoint and direct his or her own staff.[12] It remains the case that no such model has been identified, but in this report we attempt to devise one in response to the House's request.

Reasons for change

9. The reason given by the Leader of the House on 30 April for the proposed change was as follows: "The reality is that the staff allowance is nothing to do with our salary; it is to pay our staff. Yet, because it is accounted for as part of our allowance, the public see it as part of our pay, which it is not."[13] Several other Members referred in submissions to us to the possible benefit of separating expenditure on staff from Members' other expenses and allowances.[14]

10. The most important public concern about Members' staff relates to employment of family members. The current proposal is not directly relevant to that, and the matter is separately under consideration by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.[15] We note the view expressed by the MEC in 2008 that, subject to assurance that the family members are genuinely carrying out the role and paid at a fair rate, "it would seem entirely perverse to rule out employment of some of the best employees who could possibly be found and who represent excellent value for taxpayers' money."[16]

11. Although only one reason was given for making the proposal, some Members' staff identified other potential advantages from it, in some cases despite being opposed to it in principle. These included:

Greater consistency of pay and other terms and conditions among Members' staff.[17]
Better employment practices as a result of being employed by a larger organisation with better HR support, in areas such leave entitlements, health and safety and grievance procedures.[18]
Better protection of staff in cases of exploitation or grievances.[19]
Regular pay rises reflecting changes in the cost of living.[20]
Pension provision and pay being made comparable to that of House staff.[21]
Recognition of trade unions.[22]

Not all agreed on these points, especially on the last of them. The trade unions also referred to the issue of equality of pay and pensions with House staff.[23] One Member referred to the benefits of improved transparency and accountability,[24] and others to improved pay and conditions for Members' staff and reduced likelihood of exploitation.[25] We consider later whether some of these potential benefits could be achieved by other means.[26]

Numbers and costs

12. Staffing Expenditure is currently set at a level intended to allow each Member to employ the equivalent of 3.5 full-time staff (increased from three in April 2008).[27] The number of Members' staff is about 2,700, or just over four per Member.[28] The scale of the proposed transfer of staff to a new employer is therefore significant.

13. Also important for our purpose is that about two-thirds of those staff work in the constituencies rather than at Westminster. This has major implications for any scheme for direct employment by the House.

14. Turnover is high, with about 70 new starters added each month. The fact that, while Staffing Expenditure is intended to provide 3.5 full-time equivalent staff, Members employ more than this figure demonstrates that there are many part-time employees.

15. Since 2005/06, Staffing Expenditure[29] has increased by more than 20% to its current level of £103,813 per Member. The number of staff employed has increased by 200 since 2006/07, raising the average per Member from just under four in 2006/07 to just over four in 2008/09. On average Members spend approximately 95% of the maximum available. The average full-time equivalent salary for Members' staff is approximately £25,000 per annum, with full-time salaries in Westminster being around £3,000 per annum higher than those in the constituency. Base pay comprises some 85% of the total spending. Much smaller amounts are spent on staff bonuses (about 4%) and on overtime (0.5%). The remainder of the budget is spent on items such as employer's National Insurance costs and payments for bought-in services.[30]

The Member-employee relationship

16. Several important aspects of the current relationship between Members and their staff are highlighted by the submissions we received and are taken into account in what follows:

Members vary greatly in how they divide their working time between their different roles as Members, how many staff they have, where they locate them, how they organise them and how well they carry out their duties as employers.[31]
The submissions received overwhelmingly emphasise the importance of political affinity and political loyalty,[32] although there were also suggestions that political commitment was not so important for caseworkers.[33]
The relationship between Members and staff is a highly personal one, and personal loyalty is vitally important; it is also essential in small teams that everyone can work well together.[34]
Many staff prefer working in a small team to being part of a large organisation, and were motivated to work for a particular Member rather than for any larger entity.[35]

The Member-House relationship

17. The relationship between Members and the House is almost as important in this context as that between Members and their staff. The first and obvious point is that Members are not employees of the House. Consequently, if the House became the employer of Members' staff, the situation would not be comparable to that of other large organisations with employees divided into small teams, where line managers are appointed by the employer to manage those teams and can be regularly appraised and if necessary moved, disciplined or dismissed. Different means would be needed to ensure that Members' actions as regards their staff did not create unacceptable risks to the House itself in its role as employer.

18. The other aspect is not so relevant to our examination because it relates less to the practicality than to the principle of the proposed change, on which the House has already given its view. It is that Members do not in any sense work for the House as an organisation or have the same objectives as the House. They have loyalty and duties towards constituency, party and country, but are not expected to promote the interests of the House as such. Indeed they may be actively working against the objectives of the House administration, and must have the freedom to do so. Several employees of Members pointed out that they did not feel they were working for the House, and some Members and some staff referred to the risk of divided loyalties and the damage this might do the relationship between Members and their staff.[36] Some staff also considered that their authority and therefore their ability to represent the Member locally would be diminished if they were employed by the House rather than independently by the Member.[37]

Difficulties to be resolved

19. We identify the most important difficulties posed by the House's proposal as follows:

How the House could fulfil its legal responsibilities as the employer of Members' staff.
In particular, how it could discharge its responsibility as an employer in respect of Members' staff based in the constituencies and be a good employer rather than a remote bureaucracy. Several constituency staff who wrote to us believed that the House administration knew little about them or that they were neglected by it.[38]
How the consequences of a general election with a large turnover of seats, and especially a large transfer of seats between parties, could be coped with.
How the additional costs of the House employing Members' staff could be minimised.

Initial considerations

20. Members' entitlement to staff could be expressed either as a number of staff at particular pay levels or a sum of money to be spent on staff (subject to the standard pay ranges specified by the House). The former would greatly restrict Members' current flexibility in using their Staffing Expenditure to best effect, and would also remove Members' incentive to control the cost of their staff. We recognise that allocating staff expenditure would be more like the current system than allocating a number of staff, but we regard it as the only way to devise a scheme which might have some chance of being acceptable to Members. The limit on the staffing of Members' offices from public funds should continue to be a financial one rather than a limit on the number of staff paid for.

21. Some of those who wrote to us feared that Members' freedom to organise their staff in the way which suited them best could be replaced by a 'one size fits all' system.[39] We see no reason why this should be the case, and seek to avoid it in our proposals below, but it is inescapable that the House's new duties as employer would significantly restrict Members' freedom in some respects.

1 The resolution was agreed to on division by 280 votes to 100. Back

2 The Green Book: A guide to Members' allowances (July 2009), p 27. Back

3 Section 5, Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. Back

4 The consultation paper and the submissions are on the Commission's website at www.parliament.uk/about_commons/house_of_commons_commission_.cfm. References in this report to the submissions are in the form 'MS' followed by the number of the submission. Back

5 MS 10, 40, 41. Back

6 36 were opposed, 12 in favour and nine were neutral or expressed no view on the principle of House employment. Back

7 Seven expressed no view on the principle of House employment. For the balance of views in 2008, see HC 578-I (2007-08), para 86. Back

8 MS 1, 2. Back

9 Third Report from the Members Estimate Committee, 2007-08, Review of allowances, HC 578-I, paras 72-103. The current members of the Commission who were members of the MEC in 2008 are Sir Stuart Bell, Harriet Harman (Leader of the House), Nick Harvey and David Maclean. Back

10 HC 578-II (2007-08), Ev 12-22. Back

11 HC 578-I (2007-08), para 92. Back

12 Ibid., para 85. For information on other parliaments, see ibid., paras 81-5; HC 578-II (2007-08), Ev 14. Back