"Bring Back Karaoke": Staffers On How To Improve The Parliamentary Estate
6 min read
From bringing back karaoke night to on-site dry cleaning and more serious suggestions in between, parliamentary staffers gave us their ideas on how to make the Palace a better and more modern workplace
Alex Porter, head of office for a Labour MP
Parliament is one of the few workplaces where the majority of people continue to wear a suit daily. Off the estate, we know Westminster is a desert for the amenities you might usually hope to find near your office, so it makes sense that onsite you can get cash out, redo your passport photo and get a quick trim. With the danger of spilling jerk sauce down your jacket a near-constant threat, the addition of a Parliament dry cleaner would provide some real peace of mind for the clumsier among us.
House of Lords staffer
Firstly, reform daft and indefensible access rules. Peers’ staffers (on a red badge) have less access than House staff (on a grey badge), even though we work much closer to peers than most of them ever do. I need to be escorted over the blue carpet by a peer or risk getting shouted at by a doorkeeper. Make it equal!
Second, in any other parliament or office, you would – at the very least – be given a desk or a place to work. Not here, though! There are dozens of empty rooms on the estate but only four desks allocated to crossbench staffers. The administration refuses to give up any of their allotted desk space, “just in case”. You’re not even allowed to book a meeting room for yourself. Sort it out.
On a lighter note, there is an old shooting range in the basement somewhere near the Woolsack when it was the old Sports and Social – they should turn it into a nightclub! Keep the Woolsack open later, like it used to be, and bring back karaoke on Thursdays.
Matthew Torbitt, ex parliamentary staffer
Parliament is an incredibly dysfunctional workplace, so it’s a struggle wondering where to start.
As the former chair of the Parliamentary AA group, I would have liked to have been allowed to advertise the group more. The group suggested putting posters in the toilets opposite Strangers, letting people know there was a group if it was needed. Sadly, this was considered embarrassing as we get guests on the estate and the press might report it, so the idea was blocked. The details of meetings are found only in the darkest corners of the intranet, which is a shame. I only found out about the group when I was open about my alcoholism through word of mouth.
Anyone that works on the estate knows alcohol is an issue, so we should do more to help those who want help.
On that subject, if people wanted to inform people of things, you could do worse than simply having a couple of parish-style notice boards up, which people could check for things going on. It’s basic – but at the minute I’d say Parliament didn’t even get the basics right for staffers, despite much huffing and puffing.
Staffer to a Labour MP
To modernise Parliament, they should go back to the past: rename the Woolsack back to the Sports and Social; make it a staffers-only bar, except for letting Lembit Öpik in (for some reason nobody minded); bring back Karaoke Thursdays; and re-open the rooftop, which is still the best view in the whole of London.
Staffer to an East Midlands Labour MP
Constituents also need to take responsibility for modernising Parliament.
Most people don’t realise the impact of campaign emails on the efficiency of an MP’s office. (This is when emails are pre-written by a charity, with the constituent just typing in their name and postcode, then sent en-masse to MP inboxes.) According to our inbox, the main things our constituents are concerned about are that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is going to be terrible for newts and bats, and the urgent need to ban fur imports.
Of these emails, the worst offenders are requests to attend a drop-in event. These are events hosted in Parliament by a charity or group, usually to pose by a branded placard calling for some legislative change. The strong implication is if that they don’t get said picture, they don’t care about said issue. The time constraints on Members that these frivolous emails place is large. MPs have a perverse incentive to attend as many photo-ops and respond to as many emails they can, rather than do the unseen work of reviewing amendment papers to current legislation.
Most offices employ a member of staff, a policy caseworker, to answer these emails, which constituents likely never read or even remember sending in the first place. No business would be able to run on such waste. My modernisation idea would be to include a disclaimer on all responses detailing the cost of each response, especially given that newbie MPs were recently told to refrain from asking so many written parliamentary questions, as the average cost of answering them is around £800.
Tom Hinchcliffe, staffer to a Labour MP
Move Parliament to the North! But genuinely: maps. There are barely any around the estate and even now after eight years I still get lost.
House of Lords researcher
The only thing I would love to see change is to allow Lords staffers out on one of the terraces! We’re not allowed out on them, and it would make our summer work much easier if we were allowed to have lunch outside.
Staffer to a Labour MP
Better and clearer guidance on access would make general working life so much easier. The Palace is a workplace, and like any workplace the rules on using it should be clear: which doors we can go through, which corridors and when, and so on.
I was very surprised when I started that there was no map on the intranet for Members’ Only areas or places where staff are discouraged from going when the House sits, beyond the Members’ Lobby and the Chamber itself. This is information that is essential for getting around, especially if you only come into Westminster occasionally.
I read in The House’s Staff Room newsletter recently that the doorkeepers don’t like staff using the corridor behind Speaker’s Chair – I didn’t know that, and there isn’t clear guidance on the intranet beyond “access may be restricted”.
Other things like where you can take guests or hold meetings as staff is hard to find, and often we have to rely on group chats to get this information, rather than official channels. It’s all very informal – you learn as you go and by making mistakes. But I’d rather not make doorkeepers’ jobs harder by not knowing some unwritten, but nonetheless strictly observed rule.
