4 The impact of general elections
55. The position of Members' staff during a Dissolution
would not change if the House became their employer. As now, Staffing
Expenditure would continue during the election campaign. Campaigning
by such staff would not be forbidden, but Staffing Expenditure
for any working time when the staff member was campaigning would
have to be reimbursed.
56. On the other hand, the situation following an
election would be radically different. At present, if a Member
leaves the House, a "redundancy situation" arises: the
employer has ceased or intends to cease to carry on the business
for which the employee was employed.[55]
The job which the member of staff has done has, in effect, disappeared.
Therefore the member of staff may fairly be dismissed on grounds
of redundancy, though redundancy compensation is payable (from
the Winding Up Allowance).
57. If, instead, the employer is the House, a redundancy
situation does not arise simply because the Member for whom the
employee worked ceases to be a Member. It could not be said, for
the purposes of the statutory redundancy scheme, or for the law
of unfair dismissal, that the employer has ceased, or intends
to cease, carrying on business.
58. Under both the redundancy and unfair dismissal
provisions, the employer would be expected to make proper efforts
to find alternative employment for the employee. Although it could
be made a term of the contract of employment that the employment
comes to an end when the Member ceases to be a Member, this is
unlikely to provide an effective defence to a claim for unfair
dismissal. The employee would be able to argue that the House
acted unfairly by dismissing him or her without considering employment
elsewhere (eg by assigning him or her to another Member).
59. Employing Members' staff on fixed-term contracts,
as some who wrote to us suggested,[56]
would not remedy this problem because after four years the courts
will be likely to treat any contract of employment as a permanent
one.
60. The House would therefore need to find alternative
work for a significant number of Members' staff following a general
election. Even when new Members have replaced Members from the
same party, there would be very limited willingness among Members
to take on the staff of former Members, though undoubtedly some
would be chosen by new Members, as happens now. If large numbers
of seats change hands between parties, the situation would be
far more difficult. Many Members emphasised to us, not surprisingly,
that they would not be willing to take on staff who had worked
for a Member from another party and whose political loyalties
probably lay with that party.[57]
Again not surprisingly, there was deep hostility to any idea of
a pool of staff from which Members must choose or from which staff
would be allocated. For example:
"It is utterly unrealistic to expect an
in-coming MP to take over the staffing arrangements of a predecessor.
The politics may be different; the skills required will be different;
the MP may wish to bring existing staff with him/her; the office
locations will almost certainly be different; the workload will
be different."[58]
Some employees of Members also indicated their
hostility to the concept of a pool, preferring to be made redundant.[59]
Even if a Member was willing to take an employee from the pool,
the employee might not be willing to work for that Member.
61. Staff based in the constituencies would be especially
hard to redeploy. It would be possible to include a "mobility"
obligation in their contracts of the kind which is often used
within the Home Civil Service, and even without this it might
be possible to argue that there is an implied term to the effect
that the place of work can be changed, provided it remained within
reasonable travelling distance for the employee. To go beyond
that, it would be necessary to include an express term in the
contract. Such a provision might of course severely discourage
applicants for such posts, and it would be unfair as well as impossible
to seek to apply it to existing staff. As already indicated, even
if it could be applied, Members are unlikely to be willing to
take on staff redeployed in this way in any number. On the one
hand, the absence of a mobility clause might provide some basis
for an argument by the House that an employee could fairly be
dismissed on grounds of redundancy, because no comparable work
was available within a reasonable travelling distance. On the
other hand, that argument could not be made where the employee
was willing to take on work outside the reasonable travelling
distance.
62. Although Members have made clear their deep hostility
to the concept of being required to take staff from a pool, the
law would ensure that a pool of staff existed after a general
election regardless of whether Members were willing to use them
or not. It could be an extremely large pool: at some elections
more than 200 seats change hands, which could result in 800 staff
employed by the House but with no Member to work for. The logic
of central employment is that there would be central assignment
of staff to Members, but we are sure the House would not accept
this. The likelihood is that, since the House would probably be
unable to persuade an Employment Tribunal that the staff concerned
were redundant, it would have to negotiate pay-offs with them,
at considerable cost. Many would prefer to leave rather than be
reassigned to a different Member, but undoubtedly others would
not.
63. The problem of staff whose Member leaves the
House is the most intractable aspect of the proposal that the
House employ Members' staff. There is no easy answer to it, and
resolving it would undoubtedly be highly expensive. Whether that
cost would be worth bearing would depend on whether the benefits
were considered to justify the cost.
55 Section 139(1)(a), Employment Rights Act 1996. Back
56
eg MS 100. Back
57
eg MS 40. Back
58
MS 21. See also MS 10. Back
59
eg MS 10, 49, 85, 94. See also MS 3. Back
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