Welcome to W4MP

Elizabeth Tower against London skyline
Page

12th May 2025 7:19 am


The Working for an MP website is a resource for anyone working for a British Member of Parliament or with an interest in how Parliament works. You can read about the site’s history, or get in touch with suggestions or feedback, or find out about the help and advice available to staff from the House of Commons, including the IGCS Behaviour Code. It is also home to the UK’s largest listing of political jobs, at w4mpjobs.


Hoby cartoon for May 2025
Hoby cartoon for May 2025 (alt-text description)

Social

Follow us on Bluesky at w4mp.bsky.social. We can also be found on Facebook and remain as @w4mpsite on X/Twitter but don’t actively post there.


Latest News

  • Avoid health misinformation: Improving constituents’ health literacy
    Good Information Toolkit Talk from the House of Commons Library How does health literacy impact constituents and the NHS? Join us for an essential session focused on improving health literacy, where we will ask: What is health literacy? If you’re working in…
  • Casework Discussion Forum: Local transport Q&A
    Time: 14:30 – 15:30Date: 8 May 2025Location: Online via MS Teams The Casework Discussion Forum takes place each month via MS Teams. The topic for May’s forum meeting will be a Local transport Q&A (UK wide). We’ll be joined by Roger Tyers and Mike…
  • New! Information Management Hub
    A new Information Management hub has been launched on ParliNet, bringing together information compliance, management and security guidance into one place.  Visit the IM hub to find guidance on what you need to do at every stage of managing your information, from when you first create…
  • Insurance for MPs
    The House of Commons funds and administers a range of insurance policies designed to protect MPs when carrying out their Parliamentary and constituency duties. Read more about them here: https://w4mp.org/w4mp-guides/your-office/insurance-for-mps/
  • Unite May Social
    All MPs’ staff are invited to attend the Unite May Social Time: 18:00Date: Thursday 15 May 2025Location: Old Shadow Cabinet Room
  • Benefits Newscast – May 2025
    In the May Benefits Newscast from The Benefits Training Company, David, Will and Charlotte discuss: You can listen to the Newscast and a transcript here: https://www.benefitstraining.co.uk/benefits-newscast/

Read all the news


w4mp and ParliNet

ParliNet Home Page
ParliNet Home Page

ParliNet, available to those with a parliamentary login, contains everything you need to stay connected to the parliamentary community. Use it to find information like catering menus, events, contact numbers, and the latest news. If you find any links on w4mp to the old intranet, please let us know.

To access the hotlines on Parlinet you can follow this direct link. To search the document use the SharePoint search box by typing CTRL-F / CMD-F.


Are you OK?

Are you OK? How are you coping? Do you need to talk to someone?

An MP’s office can be a busy and stressful environment at the best of times, and over the past few weeks, staff have been under a lot of extra pressure.

The work we do can put a strain on our mental health and wellbeing, and we can often feel isolated. If you are finding it difficult to cope, or just need someone to talk to, or somewhere to offload, please remember that help is available.

The Wellness Working Group offers lots of useful information advice and you can access their hub here: https://hopuk.sharepoint.com/sites/hct-wellbeinghub

Please ring the helpline and talk to someone. It’s what it’s there for.

Health Assured provides an independent support service to MPs’ staff, it is completely confidential, free and can be accessed 24/7 by phone, online portal and app. You can access support for any issue you are struggling with, it doesn’t have to be work related. Look here for further information, their helpline number and a link to access the service: https://hopuk.sharepoint.com/sites/hct-wellbeinghub/SitePages/What-suport-is-there-.aspx


What we do at w4mp

Read a welcome to the site from Sir Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the House of Commons


Archive homepage

Archived guides can be found on the w4mp archive. They should not be relied on as expressions of current practice.

Our humourous alt.guides can be found on alt.w4mp.org, along with an archive of Hoby cartoons.


“The MPs’ assistants and researchers walk at twice the pace of everyone else and their eyes burn twice as fiercely” John Crace, The  Guardian, 14 May 2015

Read the whole article.

Header image cropped from Wikimedia Commons image by user:Colin CC BY-SA-4.0