News

News

Casework forum

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The Commons Library, in conjunction with the Members’ Services Team, are pleased to announce a new series of talks on research, casework and policy to take place virtually each month.

The talks will cover a different topic each session as decided by Members’ staff, and the first event will be taking place Wednesday 22 June, 9.30 – 10.30am. You can book your place on ACT.

They will also be complemented by a dedicated Teams chat which will allow you to share ideas and best practice, as well as support being on hand from the Library should specialist knowledge be required.

Please note, you do not have to be a Caseworker to attend these sessions, they are open to any Members’ staff who handle casework. If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]

Best Practice Guide on Whistleblowing – Guidance for MPs as Employers

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Following the recent publication of the Best Practice Guide on Whistleblowing (guidance for MPs as employers). The Members’ HR Team would like to invite you to join them for one of the upcoming familiarisation sessions that will provide information that sets out the way in which employees may raise a whistleblowing concern and how those concerns should be addressed.

The session will cover:

  • What is considered as a whistleblowing concern
  • How a whistleblowing disclosure is raised
  • The legal protection and requirements under whistleblowing law
  • The practical steps that should be taken to ensure a fair and thorough investigation

30 June, 9.30am https://parliament.learningpool.com/mod/facetoface/view.php?id=5192

28 July, 9.30am https://parliament.learningpool.com/mod/facetoface/view.php?id=5193

Mailbox Full?

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Your mailboxes have a maximum size limit of 80gb. If you go over this, then you will no longer be able to receive incoming messages and the senders will get bounce messages.

To prevent this from happening, PDS is asking MPs and their staff to either delete or archive old messages. If you choose to archive them, then they will still be accessible to you; the archive size is unlimited.

To see how much of your mailbox you have used, right-click on your inbox folder and select ‘properties.

When the properties box appears, click on ‘folder size’ and then wait a few moments to calculate it. Look at the total size including subfolders and divide it by 1,000,000 to get the size in gb.

Even if you are not nearing the 80gb limit, it is good practice to delete unwanted emails or archive older ones that you may wish to refer to in future – it makes searching your inbox quicker, and archived emails take up less space. If you get into the habit of regular housekeeping – deleting or archiving emails as you go along – it makes your inbox much easier to manage, so go on, give it a go!

Falklands Forty Schools Competition

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To mark the 40th Anniversary of the Falklands Conflict, students are invited to submit essays or stories, posters, podcasts, or short films.

Competition entries are welcomed from students of all backgrounds from across the UK. The winners have the opportunity to visit the Falklands in an all-expenses paid trip.

Please see here for full details: https://www.falklands40comp.co.uk/

Professor Chris Williams Helping you – and your constituents Live Life to the Full

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Thursday 26th May – 10am – 11am

Living life to the Full (LLTTF) is one of the UK’s most popular wellbeing resources, and is widely recommended in health, social care and charity settings. A free access site at www.llttf.com provides online wellbeing skills, and courses to help those living with stress and low mood,  long-term physical health problems including long-covid, new parents and others. It helps people to understand their feelings, and learn key life skills based on the popular and evidence-based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approach.

Award-winning author Professor Chris Williams, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Glasgow, and twice past-President of BABCP – the lead body for CBT in the UK,  will give an overview of the resources, and how they can be used to support your constituents, your families, friends and ourselves.  Dr Williams is also Director of Five Areas Ltd which has developed a range of widely recommended wellbeing resources. He is an award-winning author and his books, classes and websites are widely used in the UK, Ireland, and North America. The free-access www.llttf.com life skills course is the most recommended CBT product in NHS England IAPT services and mental health trusts (Bennion et al, 2017 BMJ Open). His work has been translated into Somali, French, Chinese, Italian, Urdu, Ukrainian and Romanian, as well as six other languages.  Contact details for Professor Williams are below.

To register for the meeting, please email [email protected]

Important date of 28 April 2022, for non-recent cases of bullying and harassment 

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It has been a year since Alison Stanley wrote her 18 month independent review of the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS), and 28 of her 33 recommendations have now been implemented. This is in large part due to the hard work of the ICGS team. We have created the new ICGS Hub, we are recruiting more investigators, and we have made the complaints process more streamlined and accessible.  

An important recommendation implemented in April 2021 was the agreed time limit for non-recent cases of bullying and harassment. Up until 28 April 2022, there will be no time limit on lodging non-recent cases (this has applied since non-recent cases were eligible under the scheme in October 2019). This has ensured that long-standing complaints that had not previously been addressed, such as the case of John Bercow, could be investigated.  

However, as agreed in both Houses, from 28 April 2022, there will be a time limit of one year from when the bullying and harassment incident (or the latest of those incidents) happened. This is to ensure investigations are conducted in a timely manner, and that evidence can be collected efficiently. After the ICGS opened to non-recent complaints, colleagues did come forward to have their non-recent complaints addressed through the ICGS. Almost three years later, this has naturally tapered off. In the past six months, all complaints were about recent experiences. 

It is extremely important that, if you want to make a complaint concerning bullying and harassment that happened more than one year ago, you should phone the helpline before 28 April 2022.  

For anyone experiencing sexual misconduct, it can take a long time to come to process that behaviour, and so there will continue to be no time limit placed on complaints of sexual misconduct.  

These changes do not apply in respect of complaints about the behaviour of members of the House of Lords or their staff. These complaints are dealt with under the Lords Code of Conduct, which states that complaints must usually be made within six years of the conduct complained of. 

You can call the independent ICGS helpline anonymously and as many times as you need, to ask for advice and information. You can also make a formal complaint about behaviour that you have experienced. Your calls will be treated confidentially and empathetically. For more information please visit the ICGS hub. Former members of the parliamentary community can visit the UK Parliament website for further information.  

The helpline is there for all of us. Please use it. 

Jo Willows, 

ICGS Director 

PolicyMogul

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PolicyMogul is rolling out a free political monitoring and research platform to all parliamentarians and staff
PolicyMogul is a political monitoring and research platform that helps MPs and their staff stay on top of political developments and avoid missing important information from constituents and others.

Many MPs and their staff are actively using the free service.

Please see further details here: https://w4mp.org/w4mp/w4mp-guides/researcher-extraordinaire/policymogul-a-free-political-monitoring-and-research-platform/