News
You can now book a one-hour, fully-accessible tour of the State Apartments of the Speaker’s House, which includes the Grand Staircase, the Crimson Drawing Room, the State Dining Room, and the State Bedroom. The tour starts and finishes in Westminster Hall which you are welcome to explore afterwards.
See here for full details and booking: https://ukparliament.seetickets.com/timeslot/the-state-apartments-of-speaker-s-house-tour
New six-week online mindfulness course for Members starts next Wednesday 23 February, 8.30-9.30am.
Sessions will take place every Wednesday 8.30-9.30am for six weeks (from Wednesday 23 February to Wednesday 30 March).
The course will be delivered by Awaris, leading mindfulness training provider and sessions will take place online via Zoom.
To book your place email Lydia Smith on [email protected]
Please note that links to the old Parliamentary intranet have been removed as of October 2023. Please use search on ParliNet to find relevant current details, if available.
https://parlinet.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-members-staff/
The House of Commons Members’ HR Service has produced a Best Practice Guide to Grievances.
This best practice guide aims to enable Members and their HR proxies to respond to and investigate grievances fairly, consistently and effectively.
You can find the guide here
This is one of a series of guides, and you can find the other guides here
This is the fortnight training information from the Commons Learning and Development Team for you to be able to find the available courses for the following two weeks. We are including some law sessions recently arranged for March.
Please click the links to book if you are available to join.
W/C 21 February
W/C 28 February
Newly arranged short webinar Law sessions in March
The Royal Mail has brought in a new style of postage stamp which feature a barcode. You can read about it here: https://www.royalmail.com/sending/barcoded-stamps
Stamps which do not feature a barcode ceased to be valid on 31 July 2023 and should not be used. If they are used, the recipient will be charged a surcharge.
You can ‘swap out’ your old stamps for new ones and information on how to do this is on the above website. This applies to all ‘definitive stamps’ – the ones which feature only the Queen’s head in profile. This includes standard First and Second Class stamps, Large Letter stamps, and all specific value Definitive stamps (e.g. 1p, 2p, etc). Special Stamps with pictures on and Christmas Stamps without a barcode will continue to be valid and don’t need to be swapped out.
The pre-paid envelopes used by MPs’ offices will not be affected and can continue to be used and are not part of the swap out scheme.
Update 9 July 2024: the pre-paid envelopes bearing the head of Queen Elizabeth II are still valid, and there are currently no plans to replace them with the head of His Majesty King Charles III.
It’s that time of year when MPs’ proxies start to gather together all of the information required to finalise their accounts. There’s forms to fill in, accruals and prepayments to check and whilst it’s usually plain sailing, there’s sometimes a few furrowed brows.
Never fear, though – IPSA is on hand to help.
From 14 February 2022, IPSA will be hosting weekly webinars, drop-in sessions every Tuesday to answer queries and you can also book a call with your IPSA Account Manager for individual support. You can also call IPSA directly on 020 7811 6400 without booking, but your call will be answered by a member of the team, not necessarily your Account Manager or Payroll Officer, who will try to resolve your issue or will forward to a
member of the team.
Even if you think you know what you’re doing, it’s still worth listening to the webinars in case there’s anything you’ve missed.
You can find out more information about these events here: https://www.ipsaonline.org.uk/notices/year-end-support
Information about Constituency Office Risk Assessments and Public Access to the Parliamentary Estate have both been added to the Members’ Services Team SharePoint site https://hopuk.sharepoint.com/sites/hct-mstinfo/SitePages/Bulletins-and-notices.aspx
This new briefing from the Commons Library provides an overview of equality law, summarising the main concepts and the role of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
You can find the full briefing here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9448/
The Equality Act 2010 consolidates most equality law into one Act. It prohibits conduct and creates duties in relation to ‘protected characteristics’. There are nine protected characteristics, listed in section 4 of the Act, ranging from age through to sexual orientation.
The Act prohibits direct and indirect discrimination, and harassment and victimisation. It also prohibits discrimination in relation to something arising from a person’s disability, and creates a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people.
The Act applies in various scenarios, including at work, in education and in relation to services and public functions.
Public authorities are subject to a Public Sector Equality Duty. The Duty means they must ‘have due regard’ to equality considerations when exercising public functions.
Except for in Northern Ireland, which has its own equality legislation, equality law is largely reserved to the the UK Parliament. The legal concepts in this briefing apply across England, Wales and Scotland.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission was established by the Equality Act 2006, with a duty to promote and encourage understanding of equality and human rights.
Individuals enforce their rights under the Equality Act 2010 before the courts. However, the Commission also has a range of powers at its disposal to enforce equality law at a more institutional level, and often strategically intervenes as a party to litigation if doing so could help develop equality law.
Closing date for applications is 27 February 2022.
Applications are open for the 2022 Nuffield Foundation POST Fellowship scheme. Open to any PhD students in a scientific or quantitative social science field who are undertaking or have recently finished their PhD studies.
Please see the POST website for further information: https://post.parliament.uk/nuffield-foundation-post-fellowship-2022/
To mark Time to Talk day this year, we will be running a series of events from Thursday 3 February. Over five days we will hear from colleagues across Parliament, who will share their experience of living with a mental health problem.
Join our Time to Talk Day campaign and let’s start talking about mental health:
To sign-up email [email protected] or visit the H&W Learning Hub.
If you are on the Estate tomorrow (Thursday 3 February 2022), come and visit our Wellbeing Stall in Portcullis House Atrium to find out more about the wellbeing services available