Annual Consultation

Supporting trust in democracy in the new Parliament

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is consulting on proposed changes to how we regulate and how we publish MPs’ funding, including changes to the Scheme of MPs’ Staffing and Business Costs.

Please read the full consultation document and use this tool to send us your responses.

The consultation closes at 11.59pm on 13 December 2024.
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Do you wish for your response to be kept confidential? Please note, we will summarise the responses we receive when we publish our decisions. In doing so, we may refer to individual respondents and the content of their responses. We will not quote from confidential responses or attribute the views in them to any particular respondent. For more information about what we do with personal data, please see our privacy notice.*

Principles-based regulation
Question 1: Do you agree that these four Regulatory Principles are the right ones to focus on?
Question 2: Do you have any comments on IPSA’s move to a more Principles based approach away from a predominantly rules-based approach?

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Question 3: Do you have any comments about the risk-based approach?

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Meaningful transparency: The publication of business costs
Question 4: Do you agree that these are the right objectives for IPSA to take into account when considering its publication approach? Is there anything missing?
Please add further comments

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Question 5: Do you agree that MPs’ expenditure on rent (for their accommodation and/or constituency offices) and on pooled service subscription fees should be published as an annual amount per MP, rather than as individual items?
Please add further comments

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Question 6: Do you agree that small-value items should be aggregated rather than published line-by-line?
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Question 7: What do you think would be an appropriate value threshold, below which expenditure would be aggregated by cost type?
Question 8: What are your views about the current annual publication process? Would a shift to ‘thematic’ publication over multiple publication ‘events’ be more effective?

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Employment arrangements for MPs’ staff members

Recognising past service
Question 9: Do you agree with the principle of enabling MPs to recognise staff members’ past service with a different MP employer?
Please add further comments

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Question 10: Do you agree that allowing staff to have past service recognised for family pay and redundancy, are the right areas to offer?
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Question 11: Do you agree that where a staff member moves from one employing MP to another, without having completed the full statutory qualifying period, the qualifying period would continue to accrue until eligibility has been met?
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Question 12: How long should the maximum permitted break in service be for a staff member’s past service to be recognised?

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Question 13: Do you agree that the policy should be applied retrospectively to any eligible staff member on an IPSA Contract?
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Question 14: Do you agree that entitlement for redundancy pay would be calculated across all of their recognised past service minus any redundancy payment already received?
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Question 15: Do you agree that redundancy costs should be allocated to the contingency budget, to remove any financial barriers to the recognition of past service?
Please add further comments

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Staffing loans and secondments
Question 16: Should IPSA introduce a short-term loan arrangement for MPs to loan staff to other MPs?
Please add further comments

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Question 17: Should any such arrangement be restricted to the period immediately following a General Election or should it be permitted at any time during a parliament? (hidden 30 Oct 2024)
Question 17: Should any such arrangement be restricted to the period immediately following a General Election or should it be permitted at any time during a parliament?

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Question 18: Should IPSA formalise the secondment relationship for MPs to accept individuals on secondment into their offices?
Please add further comments

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Communications and advertising
Question 19: Do you agree that IPSA should set a maximum amount of funding that can be used for communications and advertising?
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Question 20: What do you think is an appropriate amount at which to cap communications and advertising spend? Do you agree that these should be capped at the same level for all MPs?

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Question 21: Should funding be available for newsletters or other communications covering a number of different issues or topics?
Please add further comments

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Funding MPs’ work accommodation
Question 22: Do you agree that IPSA should adopt a stronger approach to regulating accommodation funding by publishing a list of expectations that MPs must satisfy before being eligible to access the accommodation budget?
Please add further comments

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Bought-in services
Question 23: Do you agree with the proposal to remove the ability for MPs to claim for parliamentary accountancy?
Please add further comments

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Question 24: Do you agree that a written/signed declaration from MPs is required to provide assurance before agreeing a contract with a ‘bought in service’?
Please add further comments

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Question 25: What are your views about the proposal to require registration of a bought-in service supplier in certain cases, based on the regulatory risk?

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Equality impact assessment
Question 26: What likely or actual impact do you believe the Scheme and matters raised in this consultation may have on equality and diversity in relation to MPs and their staff?

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Question 27: Should IPSA collect additional personal data of MPs’ staff to ensure that its policies are applied equitably and do not introduce any discrimination?

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