Lucy Allan was supposed to be the turning point. #MeToo should have opened the floodgates. But neither made parliament change. As someone forced to leave Parliament from depression, Dame Cox’s inquiry must be the straw to break the camel’s back.
On Monday, 80 current and former Commons staff wrote a public letter to demand parliament do something about the dreadful culture exposed by Laura Cox. The letter, like the report, brings together clerks, researchers and respected journalists. This is right, changing culture, like a new complaints procedure matters to everyone. For staff employed directly by MPs though some problems are particularly acute.
Fresh to the job market and interested in politics, working for an MP looks like the dream career. Face-to-face with people you’ve admired on TV, at the heart of party, personal and public politics. But every silver lining hides a cloud behind it. Young, eager, and dying for a job gives you little bargaining power. The pay is dire, the conditions worse.
Parliament has 650 offices of three to five people, rather than one organisation employing several thousand. Tiny offices mean no management. Few staff have an intermediary between them and their MP, let alone a separate HR team. Parliament doesn’t even recognise the local trade union branch.
The bullying that Dame Cox exposed isn’t just grand public acts, bellowing in the corridor, lunging in the bar. Thousands of smaller things, that alone don’t feel like much, together point to an environment in desperate need of change.
Your boss might ignore countless emails, then blame you for delays, they might change their diary without telling you, then blame you that people are waiting. It’s tempting to focus on individuals but these issues are so built into how Parliament works. You’re asked to do things but never shown how. Everything becomes your fault. Even the most basic of training could help, most new staff don’t even know their way around.
If you have a problem there is nowhere to turn, especially if that problem is your MP. Cafeteria support and a Kit-Kat with other researchers can only heal so many wounds.
People forget that being an MP, or working for one is a career like any other – it requires skills. For MPs that should include management, but all parliament offers is an optional yearly course. Meanwhile, what MP has the time or resource to think about developing their staff? Young staff are likely to move on. It seems easier to hire someone new, keeping wages low, than develop and promote existing staff. It’s all underpinned by just how expendable staffers are perceived to be.
Training might help, but it won’t address the fundamental power relationship that allows MPs act poorly. It won’t stop there being a new wave of bright, keen graduates willing to work to the bone because it’s an honour even be in the Commons. The turnover in some offices shows that all too readily.
Beyond the complaint procedure, simple structures can support vulnerable staff. IPSA already handle MP’s expenses, including staffing budgets. Why not add a layer of protection and make IPSA the hiring authority? MP’s could still run the selection process (with guidance), but staff would be part of one organisation rather than 650. An stepping stone could be for staff to be hired by parties, just like Political Advisors are. This would make HR provision, complaints procedures or development courses, simpler, more efficient and more protective.
Even more communal working spaces would help, stopping staffers from feeling trapped and isolated, spread across all corners of the estate.
IPSA need to lay out the skills required for all positions in Parliament, alongside the opaque pay scales. Whether that’s progressing from Intern to Senior researcher, or MP’s duty of care. You could even mandate percentages of budget to support development.
These aren’t popular arguments. They need more money. We already know how hesitant MP’s are voting for urgent repairs to the estate, let alone larger budgets. Further exposure of bullying in Parliament will lower public trust before it gets better.
But it must happen. Reform can open up Parliament and restore some faith in its processes. At the moment Parliament is an insiders game. Greater clarity and security can help attract staff from more diverse backgrounds.
But most importantly, as someone who left Parliament with depression, with no job to turn to after a year of no one to turn to – simple solutions help individuals. Unless someone speaks out the system won’t change, and the cycle will perpetuate. While I got out, got healthy and got a stable job, the system needs to help those that don’t feel like they can.