MPs’ staff have been termed the ‘unsung heroes’ of Westminster, but for a long time, their work – in Westminster and constituencies across the UK – has gone largely unrecognised outside parliament and is often misunderstood by outsiders. A new report by Rebecca McKee has sought to address this knowledge gap by combining original analysis of existing data with entirely new evidence from an original survey of MPs’ staff. Here Rebecca summarises some of the report’s findings.

The staff who work in MPs’ Westminster offices, and in constituency offices across the UK, are a core part of the functioning of our representative democracy. They are called on to assume a wide variety of roles; serving as gatekeepers, controlling access by constituents and interest groups; as resources, providing MPs with policy advice, research, and legislative support; as channels of communication, engaging with constituents and linking the constituency to Westminster; and as providers of essential administrative support. Yet a lack of information, inconsistent data, and limited understanding of who they are, what they do, and how they support MPs, means that they have long been missing from much of the analysis of how parliament works.

There are good reasons for the gaps in our knowledge: these staff are employed directly by the MP, so the only complete centralised data is kept by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which as a regulator holds minimal information on these staff. Until now it has been difficult for those outside and even inside parliament to get a full picture of who works for MPs and what they do.

To provide this missing piece of the puzzle my new report, MPs’ staff, the unsung heroes: an examination who they are and what they do, combines original analysis of existing available data, held in different places, with entirely new evidence from an original survey of MPs’ staff. The report is in two parts. The first part sets the context of MPs’ staffing in the House of Commons; it charts the history of staffing support, the role of IPSA, staffing in other legislatures and sets out what limited information is publicly available – either published routinely by IPSA or from Freedom of Information requests. The second part of the report analyses data from the survey of MPs’ staff. The analysis includes a wealth of detail, covering who these staff are (demographics, education, qualifications and past experience), what they do, how they were recruited and their future plans. This reveals some important things, including significant differences between Westminster and constituency office staff in terms of gender, age and other characteristics; and a lack of staff with backgrounds in STEM subjects. The analysis also provides evidence for things that have been reported anecdotally, such as the varied nature of the work these staff do and the blurred lines between job roles.

Is there a ’typical’ MP’s office?

There is no set job description for MPs. They can choose any combination of the many different roles available to them. To support them in their role, MPs can employ their own office staff from a staffing allowance, set and administered by IPSA. The arrangements under which MPs employ their staff were not developed as part of a carefully thought-out exercise but evolved incrementally in response to MPs’ demands for increased support. MPs are relatively free to hire who they want and into which roles. There is no one function that an MP’s office has to perform and there are few commonalities between them.

Some MPs will hire fewer, more experienced staff on higher salaries, while others will hire more, less experienced staff, and/or a mixture of full-time and part-time staff to cover the range of support that the MP needs. Since 2020 the staffing allowance has covered up to five full-time equivalent (FTE) staff with a mixture of roles and responsibilities. However, as a large minority of staff (around 40%) are employed on a part-time basis, the number of individuals employed in an office can be much higher.

MPs employ a mixture of staff from across the three IPSA-defined job families (executive, administrative and research). Overall, almost half of MPs employed staff from across all three, but some placed a greater emphasis on constituency work, while others concentrated on research supporting policy work at Westminster. MPs can of course have two offices, one in Westminster and one in their constituency, so not all of these staff are based in Westminster. Most MPs split their staff across both; only 5% had all their staff in Westminster and 11% had all their staff in the constituency office. Westminster and constituency offices had different proportions of staff from each of the job families. While 65% of staff who said their primary office was in Westminster were research staff, they made up only 8% of constituency staff. Instead those working in the constituency offices were mainly executive staff (57%) and administrative staff (35%). Beyond this, there were very few patterns in the way that MPs staffed their offices; however there were differences by political party. Conservative MPs employed the highest proportion of staff in research roles, Plaid Cymru and SNP MPs employed the highest proportion of executive staff, and almost half of staff supporting DUP MPs were in an administrative role.

Who works for MPs?

Overall the workforce is young; the average age of survey respondents was 37; a quarter of staff were under the age of 25. Just over half of the staff were women and over 90% of survey respondents self-identified as white. But this only tells part of the story: while the data show that there is significant variation among these staff, in terms of age, gender, education, and experience, these characteristics map onto job roles and job settings, revealing two distinct staff groupings.

The first group comprises staff who are mostly based in Westminster and work in research or certain administrative roles. They are much younger than the average of all MPs’ staff, and are more likely to be male – four in 10 Westminster-based staff were men under 30 years old. They are also more likely to have had a privileged education, having attended an independent school and/or having a degree from Oxbridge or another Russell Group university.

The second group of MPs’ staff primarily comprises those who are based in constituency offices. The constituency office is where most MPs’ executive staff and some administrative staff are based. These staff have a mixture of characteristics but are distinct from Westminster staff. They include more women and are, on average, older than Westminster staff – just over half of constituency staff were women over 30. They are less likely to have a degree but have had a variety of other experiences that are often suited to the role, such as previously working in public services.

What do MPs’ staff do?

The three job families as set out by IPSA are a way of grouping roles with shared characteristics that require similar qualifications, knowledge or experience. Within these families there are different levels, a higher level corresponds with greater responsibilities and a higher salary band. Although MPs are relatively free to choose who they hire and how they hire them, they must give new staff a job title that sits within a job family and pay staff within the corresponding salary band. The aim of this structure is to offer a degree of consistency across 650 different MPs’ offices; staff with similar roles, and with similar levels of responsibility, should be paid a similar salary, regardless of which MP employs them. However, while executive and administrative jobs start at level 1, research jobs start at level 2, which means entry-level research staff start on a higher band than their administrative and executive colleagues.

Despite the aim of consistency there is in fact wide variation in the type of work staff do. In the survey staff were given a list of 15 different tasks taken from the IPSA job descriptions and were asked to say how often they undertook each one as part of their regular work. Excluding running personal errands and managing budgets and finance, at least 50% of staff said that they sometimes or often undertook each of the activities listed. So although there is some distinction between roles formally, there is much less in practice; 87% of executive staff reported that casework was something they did often, but 31% of research staff and 45% of administrative staff said the same. Similarly 65% of administrative staff said they often undertook work on budgets and finances, as did almost a quarter of research staff. At least some staff from each job family said that they performed every activity as part of their role.

How well are MPs supported?

This analysis leads to questions about how well MPs are supported and whether the staffing model and current processes are serving parliament well. Because the staffing allowance is capped, beyond annual salary increases there are few opportunities for career or pay progression so there are few incentives for staff to stay on and develop in post. IPSA data tells us that turnover of staff is high; around 100 staff per month, which is approximately 4% of the workforce. MPs manage their own recruitment, so high turnover creates a lot of work for members overall. High turnover also creates a problem of staff taking with them valuable institutional knowledge. Turnover is especially acute in election years, as when MPs step down or lose their seats their staff also lose their jobs.

A further problem is that MPs’ staff, as judged by degree subjects, have a narrow field of knowledge; as many as 90% of staff with an undergraduate degree studied humanities or social sciences. Very few of those working for MPs have a graduate qualification in STEM subjects. This is despite the fact that MPs are grappling with problems that need these insights, such as transport infrastructure, the future of artificial intelligence or how technology can be used to tackle climate change. While there is now a dedicated Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) that provides briefings for MPs on some of these topics, the survey found that there is a shortage of knowledge and skills in these areas among MPs’ office staff.

What now?

The demands on MPs, and their staff have grown hugely over the past decades and since the pandemic are likely the highest that they have ever been. MPs should be, and would benefit from being, supported by a range of people with different experiences and views, yet the current arrangements risk leaving many MPs without adequate support for the work that they do. Neither MPs nor their staff are served well.

Any decision on reforming MPs’ staffing should be informed by data on who these staff are and what they do for MPs and for parliament more widely. The recent Speaker’s Conference on the employment conditions of MPs’ staff has addressed some problems in its own report. But the findings in my report – some of which are set out here – show that there are various important wider issues that also need to be addressed.

As a general election is on the horizon, new MPs will soon have to navigate the system of staffing their offices, and will be faced with blurred roles and varied options for staffing. The new generation of MPs will need the right amount and type of support to ensure they have the capacity to fulfil their demanding roles. Armed with new evidence from this report, and the momentum provided by the Speaker’s Conference, now is an opportune moment to reflect and reset. To ensure that MPs, their staff, and parliament as a whole, have the support that they deserve and need.

MPs’ staff, the unsung heroes: an examination who they are and what they do is available to download. If you are interested in the topic of MPs’ staff and working at Westminster, we recommend our collection of blogposts on the subject. Rebecca is the author of several of the posts in this series: former Clerk of the Commons David Natzler and Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Daniel Greenberg have also contributed blogs on this topic.

About the author

Dr Rebecca McKee is the author of  MPs’ staff, the unsung heroes: an examination who they are and what they do, the research for which was completed during a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Constitution Unit. Rebecca is now a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Government, where she works on the Levelling Up and Constitution work programmes including the IfG/Bennett Institute for Public Policy Review of the UK Constitution.