MPs’ staff report being undermined, humiliated and shouted at in public, having doors slammed in the office and bullied for asking for a pay rise in anonymised evidence given to an inquiry by the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Two unions, Unite and the GMB, said the current system for supporting those who work for MPs was not adequate in submissions to the Speaker’s conference on employment of members’ staff.
A Unite survey returned by 600 parliamentary staff working for MPs found that 25% had experienced or witnessed bullying in the offices of MPs. A GMB survey found 20% of 68 respondents reported having personally experienced behaviour that may constitute bullying and/or harassment from their MP employer.
Unite said it believed its findings were “stark and highlight major failings in the operation of the current system of relying on management by each individual MP, where standards are clearly highly variable.
“It is no surprise that within the parliamentary community some MPs are notorious as bad employers, with notably high staff turnover. This is detrimental not only to those employees, but to constituents who suffer from office chaos, lower productivity and unhappy or unmotivated staff,” it added.
Testimony given to the GMB union’s parliamentary staff branch said that while many MPs were “wonderful”, others could “mistreat their staff with relative impunity” given a lack of access to HR support.
One parliamentary staffer reported: “When I asked for a pay rise as I had not made any pay progress for several years, my MP took this personally and said I should be grateful for what I was on (which was bottom of my pay band). The relationship then changed and there was a pattern of bullying, simply because I had asked for pay progression like any other staff (for example House of Commons staff) would be entitled to in line with objective criteria.”
Another added: “Someone once politely asked for a small pay rise and the member made their life a misery.”
A third respondent to the GMB said: “The closer we came to an election … the more short-tempered and more unreasonable [the employer] became in her interactions with me and her constituency staff … All of the issues noted above were exacerbated by the fact that the MP’s only senior and longstanding member of staff – her office manager – was also her husband.”
Under current rules, MPs directly employ their staff, allowing them to set pay, review performance and dictate hiring and firing. However, some politicians have never had previous experience of running an office.
The GMB is pushing for an overall employer to take responsibility for MPs’ staff, avoiding pay rises “being influenced by the good or ill favour” of each MP and allowing continuity when staff move to work for another MP. Unite said: “Collective employment by the House or another body has some appeal, notably as a guarantor of standards and potentially reducing uncertainties at election time, but we need to hear far more detail.”
In the results of the GMB survey, about 17% of those who had worked for another MP said they had been forced to leave their previous job because of bullying.
Of the 20% who said they had experience bullying or harassment from their boss, 15% said the situation had never been resolved.
Staff appeared to have heard many problems from colleagues, with 62% of respondents saying they had witnessed or heard of bullying or harassment towards another colleague.
More than a third of staffers – 34.7% – said they did not feel confident raising concerns to their MP about being bullied or harassed, while only a slim majority – 52% – did, with the remaining respondents unsure.
One person reported experiencing sexual misconduct from their boss, but the number who had heard about or witnessed such behaviour towards another staffer was 33%.
The Speaker’s conference set out its terms of inquiry this week, and will publish a range of options for improving the system for MPs’ staff in the new year, with a view to a final report in 2023.
