‘Working for an MP shouldn’t mean falling through the cracks of employment law’

If you tour the Houses of Parliament, you will hear a great deal about the building itself, its architecture, its history, and the conventions that have shaped it over centuries. What you will hear far less about are the people who work inside it every day. MPs are subject to incredibly high levels of scrutiny when it comes to their political lives, but you’d be forgiven for knowing almost nothing about the other side of their job.

After being elected, every MP suddenly finds themselves running what is, effectively, a small business. They must employ staff, set up an office, manage budgets, pay business rates, and deal with everything from HR issues to ordering toilet paper. Each MP is ultimately responsible for hiring, firing and managing their entire team. Across Westminster and constituency offices, that adds up to several thousand people whose working lives depend on the decisions of individual MPs.

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The team behind an MP helps them in all aspects of their role – from being legislators, to representing and engaging with constituents. MPs need an adaptable team whose roles are shaped by that MP’s ambitions and priorities. These roles require skill, political awareness, and resilience. Yet despite the importance of this work, the employment system surrounding it is inconsistent and not fit for purpose. 

No one goes into working for an MP expecting a comfortable ‘job for life’. Staff understand that their employment is tied to the political fortunes of their MP, and losing a seat at a General Election can lead to sudden redundancy. We accept that political risk. But that does not mean staff should fall through the cracks of employment legislation or miss out on the basic standards expected in any reputable workplace.

The problem is that staff doing the same work in different offices are treated and paid differently. Progression in your role doesn’t depend on your skill or experience; it depends on the discretion of individual MPs. Some MPs are excellent employers, but others, often unintentionally, create environments where staff lack support, fair pay, or clear development pathways. There are thousands of people in Parliament’s workforce for whom the institution itself does very little.

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It’s obvious to the GMB MPs’ and Peers’ Staff Branch how to fix this, because our 1,500 members tell us where things go wrong and why. On top of this, our equalities team produced a ground-breaking report into how protected characteristics impact careers in Parliament. It uncovered pay gaps and unequal progression for women, non-white staff, and disabled staff, inequalities that stem from a system with no central oversight.

GMB’s campaign for “One Parliament, One Employer” calls time on a defunct structure and proposes a clear solution: a central employment body. 

Creating a single employer would shift employment responsibilities to the institution while protecting MPs’ political autonomy. It’s a system that already works in other Parliaments, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Parliament. There is no reason for the UK Parliament to remain an outlier.

MPs stand for election to represent their constituents. The administrative burden takes time away from doing the job they were elected to do. 

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An organisation is only as good as its employees, and we want to make it easier for MPs to retain experienced staff. We firmly believe that professionalising the job of working for an MP would lead to a better Parliament, a better democracy, and ultimately a better service to the country.

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