Author: W4MP Editor

Concerns relating to Health Assured

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The BBC has reported claims that corporate clients of Health Assured, the provider of the staff Employee Assistance Programme, listened in to confidential helpline calls without the knowledge or permission of callers. You can read the House response to this on ParliNet, with contact details for those who need further advice or guidance.

Pathways to Parliament: UK Parliament Work Experience

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Do you know anyone aged between 14 and 18 who is interested in the work of Parliament? The Learning and Careers team have partnered with one of the UK’s leading providers for online work experience, Springpod, to run a 3 month on demand virtual work experience programme.

The programme is now live until the 6th of October 2024. Click here to enrol and more information. Please share with anyone who may be interested

MP Office Manual Published

Setting up your office
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Between June 2023 to June 2024 a cross-party group of civic technologists worked together to create the MP Office Manual. They are all keen to see MPs with well run offices contributing to a flourishing democracy in the UK.

You can read it at mpofficemanual.uk

The proposals in the manual come from in-depth interviews with current and former MPs office staff and expert advice from 30+ practitioners, allied with a survey of staff members and a review of current literature including all past guides and examples found on w4mp, Hansard Society, and Parliament.

We hope you find it useful – and if you have any suggestions for improving it please get in touch.

Who’s Standing?

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A fascinating blog post from Democracy Club where they have analysed their data on the 4,515 parliamentary candidates standing for election on July 4. Read the full details on their website, but some highlights include

  • 30% of candidates are female. The majority of candidates were born in the 1960s or 1970s; the average year of birth is 1973.
  • 73% of candidates have recent electoral experience. 57% have stood for parliament since 2010, and 36% have stood in a council election since 2016.
  • 550 former MPs are standing for election. 1,055 candidates have recent (2018-present) experience as a councillor.

And, crucially, the preferred biscuit of general election candidates is the Digestive, closely followed by Hobnobs. There is a 52/48% split in favour of non-chocolate over chocolate biscuits.

Sorting out your digital profile

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We’ve spotted a useful article on LinkedIn by Laura Dunn, which talks about what MPs or staff who are leaving Parliament should do to tidy up their digital profiles and prepare for what comes next.

You can read the whole thing on LinkedIn here but highlights include

  • make sure you have updated your social media profiles to reflect your employment change. Edit to ‘former MP’ or ‘former staffer’
  • Unhook your parliamentary email from your social media accounts and link to a personal email or set one up just for social media
  • Invest in new photos
  • put together a digital portfolio/website

Parliament Workflow Study: Help us make the your work easier!

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To what extent are offices leveraging modern tools to do their work? Does technology have a significant effect on what they can get done? And how much does this vary between one office and another?

Are you working in an MP’s office? If so, we need your help to understand how technology could be used to make your work easier. By taking just 10-15 minutes to share your experiences in this survey[https://qfreeaccountssjc1.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_abh2Mlnt2CvE9hk], you can make a valuable contribution to this important research.

Your responses are anonymous – we aren’t collecting personally identifying data and nobody will have access to individual responses beyond our research team. If there are questions you prefer not to answer, you can skip over them to the next question.

A tree will be planted for every response we receive!

A joint project by W4MP and LCPT, the Parliament Workflow Study is a research project inspired by the question: “How is technology changing the work of politics?” 

The findings from this study will be shared publicly with the goal of identifying best practices and areas for improvement in how MPs’ offices operate. We hope these insights can help MPs and their staff take full advantage of technology to better serve their constituents and work more effectively.

Ready to participate? Take the survey now

We greatly appreciate you taking the time to participate. To learn more about the Parliament Workflow Study, visit our website at https://www.parliamentworkflowstudy.org. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our team at hello@parliamentworkflowstudy.org.

If you’re interested in hearing about the results of our research, subscribe at parliamentworkflowstudy.org.

Cross-Party Support for Conspiracy Theory Guide aimed at MPs, Peers and Candidates Launched Today

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We’ve received a press release from the Antisemitism Policy Trust about their guide on conspiracy theories.

You can read the guide on their website. It has been written with expert groups including the Antisemitism Policy Trust, Full Fact, Tell MAMA [The charity working to combat anti-Muslim hate], the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and The Global Network on Extremism & Technology.

https://antisemitism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Conspiracy-Theory-Guide.pdf

Press Release

Leading figures in parliament today united to launch A Guide for Members of Parliament and Candidates on Conspiracy Theories. Commissioned by the Leader of the House of Commons, Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt MP, and launched by both Ms Mordaunt and Shadow Leader of the House, Lucy Powell MP, the guide was drawn together by expert groups including the Antisemitism Policy Trust, Full Fact, Tell MAMA [The charity working to combat anti-Muslim hate], the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and The Global Network on Extremism & Technology.

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