The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority’s (IPSA) document MPs’ Expenses: a consultation contains a little-known proposal that could have a detrimental effect on MPs’ staff and how MPs run their offices.
This is recommendation 12.14, in which Sir Ian Kennedy proposes to scrap the existing arrangements for the pensions of MPs’ staff. Under the current system, new employees are automatically signed up to the staff Portcullis Pension Plan, and their employer contributions made centrally from the House of Commons. Kennedy is now proposing that 10 per cent should instead be allocated to staff pensions from each individual MP’s staffing allowance.
This is problematic for four reasons. Firstly, it appears Kennedy does not intend to increase staff budgets accordingly. This means that under the current system this proposal would represent a 10 per cent cut in MP staff budgets across the board.
As the role of MPs has changed and they are taking on more casework, such a cut is unnecessary and may affect the level of service an MP’s office is able to provide to constituents. Kennedy wants MPs to no longer receive a flat allowance for staff, but without setting out the details of an alternative system, we can’t know what the implications will be.
Secondly, this proposal will return us to the 1990s, before the creation of the staff Portcullis Pension Plan, when pension access was haphazard and entirely dependent on the approval of the individual employing MP. This meant many staff of MPs had no pension scheme at all.
It is important to remember that many people who come to work for MPs in Parliament are young and may be in their first job. Many will have no experience of pensions and some may not have the necessary bargaining power with their MP to raise the issue – even more so if MPs are trying to make a reduced staffing budget stretch further.
When improvements to the staffing allowance were made in 2001, the Unite Parliamentary Staff Branch, which represents 400 staff of MPs, fought for pension payments for MPs’ staff to be automatic upon employment, and paid from central funds through a group stakeholder arrangement.
In return, we agreed that staff would have their pensions paid into one of two pension schemes run by Norwich Union and Axa, in order to make administration of the plan by House officials simpler and cheaper. This has worked well so far, and we see no reason why this should change.
Thirdly, there is no explanation for why the change to MPs’ staff pensions has been put forward. We can find no evidence for it in Sir Christopher Kelly’s report on MPs’ expenses and allowances for the Committee on Standards in Public Life. If it is driven by the need to reduce costs for the House of Commons, IPSA should weigh this against the cost to MPs’ staff, who should not have their own basic employment conditions reduced because of the expenses scandal.
The fourth concern we have is that this proposal is not one that MPs and the public are being asked specifically to comment on – it is simply given as one of the recommendations that will go ahead. That is why we are encouraging MPs, and the staff of MPs, to raise it in the IPSA consultation meetings and to include it in all submissions to the consultation document. Otherwise, this proposal will go through unchallenged. This would be a backwards step for a House of Commons that is trying to become a more professional and modern place of employment.
For these reasons, it is imperative that any future model from IPSA retains the current centralised pensions system for MPs’ staff.
