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.