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Hours after the Prime Minister made the surprise announcement that a general election would be held on July 4, staff of Conservative MPs were seen in tears across Parliament after hearing the news.
For many, that meant a high probability of losing their jobs within just six weeks. For others, it was a certainty.
They continued to support both Rishi Sunak and their party, but there is no denying that some were frustrated that they could have had many more months in Parliament to prepare for the next election, with the result that there is a shared feeling that the time left has been cut short too soon.
Lucy*, a parliamentary assistant to a Conservative MP, acknowledges that job prospects for parliamentary staff were probably not great when Sunak made his decision, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
“Of course he’s not thinking about us,” she said. I“I feel like I’ve given up. I didn’t want my term as a member of parliament to end like this, but I have no choice.”
She said her MP, who won her seat by a narrow margin, has already offered to help her and her colleagues find work in or outside Parliament and is “very concerned” about what his defeat would mean for them.
Groups of Conservative party staff are said to have already started sharing CV tips and relevant private sector job adverts in WhatsApp groups. I “I wish I had gotten out sooner,” one person said, while another said they were “going through the five stages of grief” following the announcement.
Last Friday, on the final day of the House of Commons session before the start of the election campaign period, many MPs commented on feeling like “the end of school”, hugging and saying goodbye to people not knowing if they would ever work together again.
“It feels like the end of an era,” commented one person as they bought bottles of Prosecco for a colleague in the parliament bar.
The start of the election was especially worrying for the staff of the outgoing lawmakers, who knew they would lose their jobs but didn’t expect to have to find new ones so soon.
One Conservative MP leaving the House of Commons said: “I’m not worried about myself, I’m worried about my team. I’ve made sure for many years that they had something to fall back on because I’m not coming back here.”
He also noted that with so many Conservative MPs expected to lose their seats, there would be little opportunity for remaining staff to find work with other MPs within the same party.
“Every MP’s office has at least two or three staff members, sometimes more. If dozens of us lose our seats, that could leave hundreds of incredible people with nowhere to go. There are limited staff positions available.”
It’s not just a lack of work that’s the problem. There are other practical considerations. Mark*, a caseworker for councillors, has long accepted that councillors will be stepping down, but he signed a new one-year lease last October, hoping it would coincide with his plans to take some time off with his family after he quits.
He said he was “furious” when he heard the results were announced, adding that his “went all my plans awry” as he had cancelled holidays to campaign.
Moreover, he is not eligible for any kind of severance pay because he has only worked for the sitting MP for 18 months, although he might have been able to receive such a payment if the election had been held in the autumn.
Parliamentary offices are set up like small businesses, with parliamentary and constituency office staff employed directly by the MP and their payrolls administered by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA).
For those MPs planning to stand for election, they and their staff can receive their salaries up until polling day and can claim any expenses related to parliamentary work during that period, such as rent for a constituency office.
If an MP is re-elected, everything will proceed as normal, but if they lose, they will be given funds to wind up their affairs. The fees, called “settlement fees”, can be claimed for four months after losing an election and can cover things like moving costs, remaining bills and redundancy pay.
In addition, sacked MPs will also be entitled to a “loss of service” allowance equal to twice their statutory redundancy pay – for example, MPs under 40 who were first elected in 2019 will receive £5,600, while those over 40 will receive £8,400.
On the other hand, staff of lawmakers are only entitled to the statutory salary (half that of lawmakers) if they have worked for the lawmaker for more than two years.
IPSA rules mean that MPs’ salaries are paid by taxpayers and so they cannot be paid to campaign, meaning that if they want to campaign they would have to either take unpaid leave or give up their free time.
But while there is sadness and the prospect of job losses among many Conservative staff, staff working for Labour MPs appear far more active, with the party going into the election with a lead of more than 20 votes in the opinion polls.
Several I MPs we spoke to commented that the influx of new MPs would make it difficult to find enough experienced staff, with one saying job boards would be “inundated” with vacancies created by new Labour MPs.