Good morning, and welcome to the Administration Committee on Tuesday 16 June 2026. My name is Nick Smith, and I am the chair of the Committee. Today we have our general election planning inquiry; welcome to the first session of this inquiry into our general election work. This is the Committee’s first public broadcast in this parliamentary Session. We welcome the witnesses to our first panel—Ellie Chowns and Ann Davies, who I will invite to introduce themselves in a few moments. General elections are a huge time of change for Members of Parliament. My objective today is to make sure that we can help MPs in the future to have as soft a landing as possible and also to be as effective as possible. We know that in recent general elections, newly elected MPs have responded positively to the support they have been provided with in the first weeks, but we also know that there is information overload. Therefore, we are seeking to find out how and what additional information is needed in those initial weeks, and when that information and support would be best provided to help new Members get started. Ellie and Ann, please introduce yourselves.

Hello, Nick. I am Ellie Chowns. I am the leader of the Green MPs in the House of Commons, and I am the MP for North Herefordshire.

I am Ann Davies. I am a Plaid Cymru MP for Caerfyrddin, which is in south-west Wales.

It is really pleasing to see you this morning. Thank you. First of all, tell us of your experiences of the induction process, including the new Members’ reception area, the Chamber briefings and the induction sessions in the Committee Rooms here. What do you think could be improved?

I want to preface my remarks by saying a huge thanks to everybody who is involved in inducting new MPs. When we came in, it was obviously overwhelming, but we heard from people who were inducted many years previously, who said how amazing it is now in comparison with then. I really appreciate that, so although I will be sharing some suggestions on room for improvement, that is in the context of recognising and appreciating all of the support that is already in place and the huge efforts that everybody goes to. I think it is fair to say that our experience as new MPs was pretty overwhelming. The hand-holding that was in place was really lovely—for example, the buddy at the start, who was somebody to lead you around. Lots of things happened really efficiently, such as the issuing of IT and so forth, but there are some huge areas for new MPs, including setting up a constituency office, getting staff in place and coping with the huge influx—the tsunami—of emails you receive from constituents and thousands of organisations that all want you to be their best friend, attend their drop-in and so on. That was a huge amount to juggle right at the start. There is also finding a place to stay in London and coping with childcare arrangements for people with caring responsibilities and so forth. We felt—I am speaking personally, but I have consulted with colleagues in my group about this—very appreciative of the support that is in place, but we have some practical suggestions for how that could be made easier. As a group, we benefited very much from inheriting a few members of staff who had previously worked with Caroline Lucas, so there was a huge amount of institutional memory for our group and support. They were our main source of support in hitting the ground, but the practicalities of setting up offices, getting casework and MP work going, and so on are where things could be improved in terms of the support.

I totally agree with that. For me, the buddy system worked well in that first week. I would say as well, with regards to the induction, that I would really have appreciated revisiting that in three months’ time. I know that the general election was at an awkward time—it was at the beginning of July and then we were off for summer recess, back for three weeks and off again for conference recess. As somebody who had no knowledge, for example, of how legislation was presented to Parliament and the system of going through legislation, I would have really appreciated revisiting that in, say, October or November to gain an understanding because when you land here, you focus on the practical issues. The information or knowledge that you need to be an effective MP beds in a little bit later, after you have sorted out, as Ellie was saying, your office and staff and the practical issues. There is also the fact that we were allocated offices in October, after the conference recess. Up to that time, I was working downstairs in the Library in Derby Gate. It is the practical issues. It would have been fantastic if we could have sorted offices out a little bit sooner, rather than working in Portcullis House because, lovely as it is, it is not the best place to have some peace and quiet and some thinking time.

All of us elected to this place remember the shock of being elected and coming here. Where did you, as a candidate, turn to for advice? What would it have been helpful to know about parliamentary life before your election, and what preparation would have been helped?

I am going to be perfectly honest with you: I did not think any further than election day. I do not know if everybody else was in the same situation, but that was mine. I wanted to get to election day, and then there was the realisation that I had actually been elected. I won the election, and then I started thinking, “Oh, right. Okay, here we go then.” For me, I did not think about the after. It felt right to stand—it was the right thing to do—and the practical issues came afterwards. On once I had landed here, I would say I was very fortunate in that one of Ben Lake’s ex-staff, who was not working for Ben at that time, really helped me enormously. He was based in Carmarthenshire—he was a Plaid activist—but he really helped me enormously.

It was different for us. The Greens had four target candidates, and we had monthly meetings with Caroline’s chief of staff, who is now our chief of staff, for at least a year prior to the general election. In those, we went through an informal but fairly structured programme of understanding more about how Parliament works, talking about the practicalities of things such as security, setting up an office, and the fact that we would have a tsunami of emails on the very first morning and would need staff working with us, at least on a temporary basis, until we could permanently recruit people, and so forth. So we had already lined up individuals who had agreed in principle that, if we got elected, they would be able to work with us for a short period to tide us over. In that sense, some preparation—lots of preparation—was done, but there were still the realities. As Ann says, it was an unusual time because we had recess shortly after we were elected, and thank goodness we did. I spent that entire summer basically trying to set up systems, finding an office etc. If we had also been trying to function four days a week in Westminster—scrutinising legislation etc—it would have been even more difficult. For me, it is not that we needed more information after we were elected or more training sessions, but that we needed more practical support, on the part of IPSA in particular—for example, offices that are just the constituency office and pass seamlessly from one MP to the next at handover, with staff who know parliamentary systems and can respond to constituents. Probably in most places there is huge pent-up demand, so a huge number of people are saying, “Please raise this issue with the Minister,” or “Please do this, that or the other.” As a new MP, you are not yet familiar with all the mechanisms MPs have to deal with things, so I think pretty much every single MP ends up with a backlog from that early period. That means you are not starting off on the foot you want to, which could be addressed with support being in place for the practicalities.

We will shortly come on to those issues shortly with questions from colleagues, but I have one more question. What would you say was the critical information you needed to know on the first weekend, the first week and the first month?

On the first weekend, it was what would happen in the first week, and we did get that. On the morning you get your result, you are given a folder of information, which, as I recall, says be in this place at this time. In the first week, you need a laptop, and that was really good. I got a laptop and an email address, etc. You need to know things, and I wrote down a few notes. In the first week, I have written, “Getting staff and systems to help with the initial huge wave of constituent emails.” I was wrestling with home-grown Excel spreadsheets for the first couple of months, until I got Caseworker set up, which took about a month. Our chief of staff ended up doing huge amounts of admin in those first months, because even if you already have temporary staff who say that they will help you in the initial weeks, you have to get them all through security vetting, get them passes and get them set up on the system. There are so many adminy things, and they take up a lot of time, so you do not have a whole lot of head space for working out, “Right, I’m doing my maiden speech.” Many of us did throw ourselves in at the deep end and made our maiden speeches right at the start, but it is understandable why some MPs do not, as you are struggling with just getting set up as a functional representative.

The only thing I would add is accommodation. As somebody who lives a four-and-a-half-hour train journey away from London, I found it very difficult that this place sorted out our accommodation for only two weeks, and that after that, we were on our own. As most of you know, we run a farm and a children’s nursery at home; I do other work in my community, as well as being an MP. My head space was, at half-past 10 on a Sunday night, to find accommodation for the following week, because I simply did not have time to do that before I was getting ready to come back up. That is a practical issue. This place needs to sort out accommodation for about three months for people who are eligible to have accommodation in London because of where we live. We need to represent our people effectively. I was finding accommodation that was three quarters of an hour, or more, out from here, because of the time that I looked for accommodation on the Sunday night; I fully appreciate that that was my fault, and that I should have done it sooner or made a block booking, but when you are beginning to juggle your life at home with your life as a full-time public servant, practical issues such as accommodation are the last things you think about before coming up.

Accommodation is an issue that some people in our group feel very strongly about. We feel that Parliament should have flats. It is not even about the first few months—Parliament should just hold leases on flats. In France, they have a block of bedsits that MPs can have, and I would love that. I stayed in three different places, belonging to cousins or friends, for the first seven months before recognising that I could not sustain it and needed to get a flat in London. Then, you are basically just house hunting for two weeks, in among everything else. That is such a waste of an MP’s time. Then, you are sorting out things such as signing up for electricity contracts. If the House Administration can do that for us and say, “Here is your flat. Stay there for three months, six months or a year. You can sort your own thing after if you want,” to take all that admin burden off of people, it would be really helpful.

Being elected as an MP for a smaller party presents its own challenges during the immediate post-election period. What was your experience? What can the House do to improve the support offered to MPs representing smaller parties or no party?

For me, the IPSA buddy system was great; I had a dedicated person, Gina. I would have loved to have spent a day or afternoon with her, face to face, going through things like being an employer. As luck would have it, I had employed people before, so I had an understanding of that, but not everybody would. Coming from a smaller party, you do not have the resources that you might have within the Labour or Conservative party, or even the Lib Dems. They have a really big Whips’ Office that can help you with this—we do not have that. Therefore, although having a dedicated person was great, having a face-to-face meeting, rather than constant Zoom meetings, would have been very beneficial for me. That is about not just understanding, but the practical issues of where to find things. I will be perfectly frank: if you have not been on the IPSA website before, it is not the most user-friendly website. You have to find job descriptions, wage bands and all the other bits you need to start advertising jobs. Having a sit-down for three hours, or whatever it would have taken, to go through all of that would have been far more beneficial for me—speaking personally—than having a Zoom meeting.

I wrote down that we need extra support with ready-to-go staff to get offices set up; and we need IPSA to set up offices and accommodation, including searching for flats and doing all the admin. Another member of my group said IPSA should provide interim staff support for new MPs, particularly for admin-urgent casework, understanding parliamentary process and supporting set-up; the light-touch briefing sessions do not scratch the surface when there are no basics in place. That will make the first few months more bearable and reduce the backlog that the permanent staff face when they start. That member of my group also asked to have a bank of London flats and a constituency office in each constituency, rented by IPSA on an ongoing basis, to avoid lots of time searching and doing the time-consuming set up and admin. That honestly is not about being a small group. It is harder in a small group, but I think those principles probably apply to pretty much everyone.

In the focus groups conducted not long ago, some Members expressed frustration—as you have touched on—at the volume of emails that came in without any staff to respond. They said it might be helpful for those emails not to be switched on until later. What do you think about that? While you are thinking about that, can you explain what else you used your laptop for in those early days?

I really disagree with the proposal that our emails should not be switched on. I think voters should be able to reach their new MP immediately; it was really good that they were able to reach us. I do think, however, that we should have a one, two, three-month moratorium on all the lobbyists contacting us. You might get 300 emails in a day, and 100 of them might be from people saying, “Please come to my drop-in.” It is hard at the start, when you are still finding your way. So, constituents, yes, absolutely should be able to contact their MP straightaway. What we need to support us to respond to that is the help of experienced staff. On using the laptop, like Ann said about working in the Library over at Derby Gate or whatever, we were working mobile right from the start. It was useful to have the laptop and the iPad to be able to work on the train and so on, right from the beginning. One member of my group asked that all MPs be issued with a work phone immediately, right from the start, as standard. That is probably a sensible idea. I just had one phone, but many people like to be able to switch off from work occasionally. Ann made the point about it being quite difficult, for example, when you have no office. I remember desperately trying to find a place to have a private phone conversation. There is nowhere; you cannot do it in the Derby Gate Library because it has a mezzanine and all sorts of things. There was nowhere to have a private conversation, or even to do a media radio interview down the line. I remember sitting in the Ladies’ Room—not the ladies’ toilet, the Lady Members’ Room—doing a radio interview, desperately hoping nobody came in. If we cannot have our offices from the start, there should be many more small meeting rooms or work rooms, where you can go and work in privacy on your laptop to get stuff done. One thing that was brilliant was the Members’ support room in PCH. You can just drop in there—still now—at any time and somebody will help you with your IT or IPSA or whatever. That has been fantastic.

IPSA is only there on a Wednesday. I have to tell you that I was a weekly visitor to that desk, every Wednesday, for a long time, until I found my feet. Somebody said to me—and I cannot remember if it is true—that of your two email accounts, the MP account had an out of office, but your private account did not. I cannot remember whether that is right. Just check that—it should be on both of them. Like Ellie said, I have no problem at all with constituents getting in touch straight away, but we could have a three-month moratorium on the lobbyists. As it happened then if it was three months, it would have been back in October, in which case we were all back, we had all found our feet and we had all at least seen an office, if we had not yet moved in. I have to say, the time it took me to sort the office lease out was absolutely ridiculous. We found an office. It then had to go to a solicitor in Carmarthen to check it and then come back. That whole process took about three months. I do not understand why. I understand everything has to be right, but surely there must be in-house solicitors who can check a lease without us having to wait for a private solicitor within Carmarthen. The amount of time that took was, I thought, a waste.

If I may follow up on that, I take your point about constituents needing to be able to contact you, and I totally take your point about, ideally, lobbyists not being able to contact you in that time. I remember having to play whack-a-mole with my own inbox, and it was impossible without staff. But you do need your laptop for other things as well. Laptops are not just about emails; they are also about websites and the things you need to sign up for, such as Caseworker MP.

And writing a maiden speech.

Yes, writing a maiden speech or searching for accommodation. There are so many things you need to do with your laptop, so I can understand why it is helpful, including with being able to connect more easily to the parliamentary networks, which are secure. I think that is really important. But what do you think about the idea of potentially harnessing the power of AI in the future to help sort out those inboxes? It is fairly obvious that some of the things that were coming in from constituents were just saying congratulations. They could perhaps be put into a folder for review, but the AI might suggest that that would be a fault. Not that you have to rely on it, but just so it can be helpfully categorised. It may not get it right 100% of the time, but it might just be helpful. I wonder what you think about that. I see Ellie looking slightly sceptical about that.

I joined in with the parliamentary AI Copilot pilot about a year ago, because I am sceptical about AI but wanted to understand and explore it. The one thing that I wanted it to be able to do was go through the hundreds of emails in my inbox every day and identify any that were identical apart from the name of the constituent sending them. You know when you get 50 emails that are all the same in a single day? I wanted AI to pick them out and send them all to Caseworker so that I could deal with them later through my Caseworker system. I said to the people who were presenting this pilot scheme to me, “This is the thing I need it to do. It’s simple.” Instead, they showed me how AI could do me a presentation on how it would relieve me of admin jobs and leave me time to do the creative things. It was utterly extraordinary because it would not do the admin stuff, and instead it wanted to write PowerPoints. It was just ridiculous. It is true that, ideally, AI could be really helpful in doing that, including, within Caseworker, logging the cases, but of course you need humans to check that there are not any mistakes, so it is not a silver bullet. But yes, that could be very helpful.

I do not do AI. End of story.

Fair enough.

I am sure I will at some point, but I am not going there at the moment.

Perhaps if there was some very good training.

Colleagues, we are on question 5. You have got 10 questions for the first panel, and then we have another panel, so I am sorry, but we will have to nudge you to speed up.

You have both touched on the buddy system, which you found very useful when you became MPs, but we have had feedback from people saying that they would value a buddy who was a returned MP. What are the best ways to support you with things like the ad hoc questions you might have had during the induction period?

Looking back, I did not use my buddy to the extent that I could have done. That is simply because of lack of experience. He was great on the first day, and then I did not touch base until a week after, when he took me around again, after I had explored a bit more on my own. Mine was a staff member from the House, and he was great. Having lived experience from the other side or an ex-MP would have enhanced that experience.

I don’t think for any of us there is a particular need for that. We had access to an ex-MP if we had any questions anyway. The buddy was useful for walking us around on the first day and saying which room was where, but actually it is a different sort of buddying that we need after; it is somebody who absolutely knows their way around security vetting, getting staff set up on the system, running Caseworker, and all those sorts of things. An IPSA account manager who handholds you for months is actually what you need, not—from my perspective—an ex-Member, or a buddy as per the first day.

Good morning, both. You touched on this a tiny bit in some of the excellent responses that you have given. IPSA and some MPs have suggested a temporary pool of staff that could help new Members before they recruit their own staff. Would either of you have used this?

Yes.

Yes, I think I would have done here, although we have a small pool of staff here with Plaid. We have six members of staff now and they were fabulous in fairness, but it is constituency work and casework that just did not get done, to be honest, for the first two or three months really. You tried very hard to get on top of it, but you physically could not do it on your own. So yes, I think I would have done.

If there was this pool of staff, would they have to be from the same political party as you? Would you be happy to share a member of staff in that situation—temporary staff—or would you want a dedicated member of staff? How would that have worked?

I would have preferred a dedicated member of staff. I think they have to be of the same political leaning as you because you have been elected with a political view in mind by your constituents. We are centre left. It would have to be a person who thinks in the same way as I do, to be honest. What I would have wanted help with is casework, employment—finding staff—and the admin work that took time to do.

My feeling is slightly different. Yes, absolutely, to a bank of staff. People who are already on the system and can start helping you to answer those emails from literally the very first day would be really useful. In terms of political leaning, I think if somebody is working more as a parliamentary assistant, then yes, they need to at least have understanding and sympathy for your political perspective, but if somebody is doing casework for you, in my view it is actually much more important for them to have experience of how to help people with housing queries or council issues, or to understand the locality. I could absolutely see a situation in which, even if in a particular locality the MP’s party changed, the people who were doing the casework, which is just about public service for individuals, did not. I have no idea whether any of my staff are members of the Green party; maybe one of them is out of many. Staffers often aren’t members of a party. They often work for different parties over time, because so much of the skill is about public service to the constituents and helping them to navigate through systems that have failed them in one form or another. It is that experience and understanding that is needed if somebody writes in. I had a constituent write in very quickly who had a terminal illness and had updated the DWP. Their benefits had been stopped completely and they needed somebody to help them connect with the DWP. That is not a political issue at all. I think a bank of staff would be really useful.

Practically, would you be happy for them to work remotely or in a shared office space with you and perhaps other Members? Is that very important?

Any, whatever.

And me—any. The only thing I’d like to add is that, because my constituency has a high level of first-language Welsh speakers, it’s been really important for me to have a Welsh-speaking team within my permanent staff, because if emails come in both languages, having an understanding of the Welsh language, being able to provide a written answer in it and vocal competency in Welsh is really important. Apart from political leanings, having a Welsh-speaking team has been really important.

I want to talk about your experience of setting up a constituency office. You have explained some of the difficulties. Would it have been helpful if you would have rented your predecessor's office?

My predecessor had his office in a building owned by the Conservative party—that shouldn’t be allowed to happen—so no, that wasn’t an option. But if, heaven forfend, I am ever no longer the MP for North Herefordshire, I think it would make sense to constituents for the office to remain the same, to have that continuity and for the MP to be able to inherit it, at least in the beginning, as already set up. It took us five months to get a landline phone number—five months. My constituency office manager, who had been in place for three months, was tearing her hair out, and the person before them tried, too. It was just ridiculous. I know that Hannah’s office has not had the same trouble getting a phone line. Perhaps it is a rural-urban thing. We are in a town of 12,000 people and we couldn’t get a phone line installed.

Mine was in Ammanford. There’s a Senedd office in Ammanford, so I just wanted to make sure that we had visibility and that we were spread all over the constituency. My office is now in Carmarthen, and the Senedd Member is in Ammanford. We are spreading ourselves around the constituency, which makes it easier for people to visit and come to a surgery wherever is most suitable for them.

We know that other Parliaments will involve their families and partners in the induction process—perhaps at social gatherings and otherwise. Is that something that you think would have been helpful? Would you like to see that, or some variation of it, in respect of the induction of new MPs in particular?

I will share with you the experience of Gareth, my husband. He came up with me on the first day, and the four of us had a lovely gathering outside in Victoria Gardens. Then, we came into Parliament and I met up with my buddy. Gareth was put in, I think, room M in Portcullis House and he stayed there for three hours, on his own, without any food or drink—without anything. He was in that room and he did not know where I was, but I knew where he was. The Plaid office thought he was with me, but he was in that room. Looking back, that should have been dealt with a lot better. He’s a grown man and he was fine, but if you had young children, I sincerely hope that they would not have been put in there on their own. Perhaps people thought that other people would be there, but there was nobody there apart from him. I think that really needs to be looked at. If your partner or your children come with you, they should be looked after a bit better than he was.

Do you think there should be an ongoing element to that? I do not mean locking him up in room M every Christmas, but what about another form of interaction? The adjustment to our work-life balance is an issue, especially if the work style is very different from what we have done before. It takes its toll on family and private life. Is there some way to ameliorate that with the way in which Parliament allows Members, their families and immediate close ones to interact with this strange and wonderful place?

For us, it would not work because we have a farm and we have cattle to milk. But, for the vast majority of people, I think that receiving an invitation at the end of each term—say Christmas, Easter and the end of summer—where partners can come for a gathering on the Terrace, or if there’s something on in Westminster Abbey that we can bring them to, that would be lovely.

My view is quite different. For me, it’s very low down on the list of priorities of things that need improving.

So lock him up in room M for longer?

No, no.

I am joking and being facetious.

There are so many things about supporting us to better serve our constituents that, for me, are more of a priority than involving my family here.

We have just touched on the subject of children. For those Members who do have children, what might the House do immediately after the election and during one’s time as an MP? What information on childcare provision in Westminster would be helpful for—it says here “candidates”, but I think probably for MPs?

My children are now in their 20s, so it is not an issue, but I have a colleague with primary age children who says that childcare in Westminster is not relevant to them. What is important to them is a timetable that enables them to spend as much time as possible in the constituency with their family. Practical suggestions include having no sitting Fridays, so building private Members’ Bills days into the normal Monday to Thursday parliamentary week; moving sitting times on Wednesdays a couple of hours earlier so it is more practical for MPs to get home that evening if they do not have to be in Parliament on the Thursday because there are no votes and they are not participating in any debates; and considering moving the last two sitting hours on a Monday to a Tuesday and starting Tuesdays two hours earlier, so the London-based MPs can get home with some evening left to spend with their children, and MPs and House staff do not start the week really tired.

I think that is excellent. There is a crèche here, which I am sure helps people with very young children, but trying to balance school life with this place is very difficult. On the other side, you might be a carer for your elderly parents, and that balance needs to be addressed as well. It is not just about children; it is about caring responsibilities for elderly parents and family members in general.

Yes—and partners.

Absolutely. So, I agree: I think those suggestions are brilliant. We have a system within the Plaid where some of us come in on Monday, some of us go back on Wednesday night and some of us then stay on Thursday. We have a rota system, which works well for us. Llinos, for example, with two children, will leave on a Wednesday night so she is home Thursday and Friday. That is the way we have done it, to try to accommodate people.

What was your experience of the induction with IPSA? How easy was it to follow IPSA’s processes? Are there any areas that were unclear or could be improved?

I have said my views. I think we need a 1:1 roundtable with your dedicated IPSA person, rather than Zoom meetings. That would have been far more beneficial for me. The drop-ins on Wednesdays are great, but they can be there on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays if they want, especially at the beginning. I was very lucky with Aled. Without him, I think I would have drowned, really. He was such an asset to me, such a help with his experience of working with Ben and his knowledge of the system, and such a huge support.

My constituency office manager does a lot of the interaction with IPSA on my behalf now. Our chief of staff did a lot of that early on. I could not tell you who my IPSA account manager is, I am afraid, which is a bad on me, but it goes to show that there is not a close link there. I still find these days, even though I am quite organised with bookmarking all the useful places on the various parliamentary websites I need for security and IT and all the rest of it—actually, the thing that works is IT, because you ring them up and say you have an issue and they sort it for you immediately. With everything else, it feels like there is still a lot of navigating around to be done, and a lot of things that I keep having to try to remind myself about doing. I remember attending the induction sessions with IPSA because I had to, so it was kind of a tick-box thing, and I was paying attention but I do not think I could recall anything specifically that I was told at that point. I am not quite sure what the solution is, but an ongoing, permanent relationship with somebody who handholds for you and basically does a lot of stuff for you would be really good.

Smashing. That was a quick canter around the course, and we are really grateful, Ellie and Ann, for your evidence. It was really worth while and will be included in our wider report, so thank you for your time this morning.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. Witnesses: John Slinger and Sarah Smith.

Sarah and John, thank you ever so much for giving evidence this morning. We are really grateful for your time. I am going to have to ask you to canter through this section, because the last one went on longer than we had planned, but I noticed that you both sat in here diligently, hearing what colleagues had to say, so I think that will help us all now. Will you please introduce yourselves?

I am Sarah Smith, the Labour MP elected in 2024 for Hyndburn in east Lancashire.

Welcome, both. Tell us about your experiences of the induction process, including the new Members’ reception area, the Chamber briefings and the other induction sessions in the Committee Rooms, please. What could be improved?

For me, navigating that while holding a four-month-old baby brought a whole range of other challenges that I believe we will come to a bit later, given some of the things that you are keen to learn from this session. When I reflect on what I can remember of those first two weeks—frankly, I was barely sleeping, so forgive me because I may have forgotten more details than some other colleagues. We all have different learning styles—that’s the truth—so there is not a perfect answer. I recognise the huge efforts made by the House staff—and, I am sure, previous Committees and so on—to put together what we did have when we came in in July 2024, but I think that there is an opportunity to simplify what we need in that first week or two, and to challenge the prioritisation, while working with the Whips to ensure that completing some of the lesser priorities in week one or two still gets done. I absolutely acknowledge that you then get pulled into the machine of Government and of Parliament, and it can be hard to prioritise going back to complete some of the foundations that you need, but if you worked with the Whips in making those mandatory and having the Whips ensure that their Members satisfy those criteria, you could extend that programme, so that it was not just within the first two weeks but perhaps over the first month or six weeks. I also found that there were some specific challenges. For example, we were such a big intake that sometimes it would take two Committee rooms to get us all in and then the tech would not work. If you came into the second room, you found that you could not access the session, or it took 20 minutes to fix that and so you missed half of it. It is just about making sure that if we have another big intake, some of that has been worked through and the tech support is available to fix what should be quite basic issues. By the way, I would absolutely underline that, even though it was the hardest couple of weeks of my life, I do not deny that it is a positive, wherever possible, for people to be physically present for those couple of weeks, because it is so instructive in establishing yourself, and it is as much about relationship building as it is about information loading. However, having virtual hybrid options, while still encouraging people to be here most of the time, at least would give those of us who had challenges—it would not have been just me—in sitting physically in that room a chance to still be able to access the information, because that was not possible; you still had to be in the room to receive the information. I remember one of the sessions that was probably the most impactful, which was the one they did around the code of conduct. That was a fabulous session and I thought that it was really well delivered. I remember it still to this day. I am not sure that every MP from every party attended it, sadly, but I do think there is learning from that particular session and how it was delivered. Could there be a bit more variation in some of the other sessions as well, again around how we remember things? It is partly about how it is delivered to us, and maybe we can challenge how some of the delivery was done to help the information embed in people’s minds a little bit more. There are some essentials in the early week. I think that in your consultation some questions were asked about when you access your laptop, for example, and your emails. I do think that, okay, it is overwhelming, but you have to be able to be plugged into that, because the first thing is that people want to be able to invite you to things, or add things to your calendar, or whatever it is, and fundamentally, that is the best way to do that. Understanding the Estate and being able to get around it is one of the key skills you need to learn. That did not happen for me, because I could not meet my buddy on the day that I was supposed to. Frankly, I think I only met my buddy once; that particular issue did not work for me. But understanding the estate, having a space to be able to base yourself and get some work done, knowing what support is available to you, and understanding the IPSA offer, finances and HR is important in that first week, and the Chamber etiquette session was really good and really important. Then there is the stuff around your pensions, the legislative process, how you hire and how you set up your office. Hiring and setting up an office is the first question that people are asking, so I think you have to start talking about that in week one, but I think the sessions on the legislative process, pensions and some of the other things could easily be pushed back further.

I have been here 16 years, and I hope to crack it soon.

We have already heard quite a bit about email accounts, laptops and computer usage. Sarah, you touched on it a little as well. You heard the previous session; do you want to add anything about the deluge of emails you have received and the importance of having a laptop early—or not, as the case may be?

I think that having the laptop is needed. If you took it away from people, you can just imagine that you would hear everybody in the next Session saying, “I can’t believe you wouldn’t let us into our emails for four days,” or whatever you decide the cut-off is. There is some expectation management needed for people as they come in—we did get it a little bit—that says, “You’re going to get hundreds of emails and you don’t have to answer them all,” but I think that the more important question is how we better provide earlier staff support for the new intake. There has been quite a lot of talk about creating a pool of available and experienced staff who could be a temporary hire for the new intake of MPs. You could then immediately have somebody who can at least start to organise your inbox so that, when you get your staff in place, they can hit the ground running. With the expertise of the person next to you, they can start to say to you, “These are the three you actually do need to think about this week,” because, in any effective MP office, the MP is dealing directly with a chosen number of the whole intake of emails, and getting the MP working that way early is a better way to tackle the problem of that overwhelm.

Can I ask a quick follow-up? Do you think there is a danger that, by not providing the support that has been asked for in this way in those early days, some constituents might be put at risk because of the things they might contact you about, which might get buried in the inbox because you are not getting the support you need to go through them?

You both mentioned the budding system that was set up when you became MPs. We have had feedback from some MPs that they would welcome the chance to have a buddy who was a returned MP. Do you think that would be helpful, and do you have any thoughts about how best to deal with ad hoc questions that you might have had when you got elected?

On the buddying opportunity, for me, the way it was set up with staff did not work on this occasion. It was theoretically for one day. I wasn’t there on time that day because I was breastfeeding or something. I really think that we need somebody from the House side who is more freed up to do a little bit more with us over those first few weeks. The reality was that my buddy was excellent but they had another job, and this was obviously a bit of a tag-on that they thought would take a couple of hours. It could not quite flex to when I was available and things like that. Even more helpfully, speaking to former Members about buddying seems the most obvious opportunity. These people are probably often really keen to give back, if they were asked and if they wanted to. On buddying within existing Members, there is probably a really good opportunity to do that cross party. In the early days when you come in, you are often consumed by your party. Certainly, there were so many of us in our intake, that it took so much energy trying to get to know your own lot that you missed, potentially, the opportunity to start to build relationships on the other side of the House, which we know is so essential to how we operate as a Parliament. I would certainly consider three groups where there could be some buddying. Maybe there is a choice for new Members about which of those they want to work with. I am not saying that everybody wants all three, but it would be good to have that option.

You touched on a pool of temporary staff for new Members. First of all, would you have used it? Would you have wanted somebody dedicated to you or someone you could share? What kind of things would you have wanted that person to be able to help you with? Could you have worked with them remotely, or would you have needed to be with them in a 1:1 situation?

I was exceptionally fortunate—not everyone was—to find staff in the constituency quite quickly, because the Labour MP in the neighbouring seat lost and some well-qualified staff were looking for a job. Down here, I had nothing. It would have helped to have pool staff available from day one to hire for two months, with the skill sets to organise my inbox, support me with comms, help get my office set up here and advise in the constituency, especially with new staff, and do a bit of diary management. It would help to have those things in motion and to have people who could say, “If you can’t get to this induction session, I’ll go and make sure we get the notes and bring them back to you”, or, “This is where else you will be able to find that information and I’ll make sure you get it”, or “If you need to get to Committee Room 3A, this is where it is.” I would not have minded which party they had worked for previously or anything else. I would have just wanted somebody I could trust to crack on and give me good advice on basic tasks. It would have made a world of difference.

I have a couple of quick questions. I do not know your backgrounds, but I wonder whether you were in local government or any other form of government? Obviously, if you do not have any background at all, coming into this place is an “Oh, God!” moment. What preparation did you make when you were selected as a candidate, to consider what you would need to do if you were elected?

I had been a councillor in local government for a short period. I became the candidate a month before the general election, at which point my baby was three months old. The preparation I was able to do as a candidate was very little in that final period. I had obviously thought previously about what the reality of being a Member of Parliament would entail. I had come into politics on purpose, not seeking to work here before I was elected because I wanted to bring a different type of experience from my time in the charity sector, working on the frontline with communities on how to bring about change. That meant that, fundamentally, no, I did not realise or understand the sitting hours and how they worked, or fully understand what all those demands would look like. No doubt, if I had been selected as the candidate earlier, the party would probably have taken me on that journey. In my particular circumstances, I was not able to access that. I am sure some individuals from smaller parties might come in without having access to that information. I think in that first weekend getting a sense of that as early as possible, so that you can talk it through in more detail with your partner and so on, is quite important.

For example, what was your experience in acquiring a constituency office?

As I said, I was fortunate to have someone experienced come into my constituency team, but it was a massive fight for them, even though they had the experience of doing it before. We had to move office from the previous one, due to location and a few other things. The biggest challenge we faced was finding an accessible office, which was obviously important to me. In many towns and high streets such as mine, that is rarely available. We ended up using some of the budget to create and put in a ramp and do other things to the office. I realise that is not something you guys can fix. Potentially, the idea of moving to a model where each MP does not need to get a new office would be a positive one. The limitation my office has found from working with IPSA on the pilot to transfer our lease into IPSA’s hands is that we cannot, under those terms, do a sublet with anybody. It is quite normal that MPs work in some way with their local parties in that sort of arrangement, so we were looking to explore that pilot but, on that basis, we have actually decided not to.

Finally from me, what experience did you have of people coming to you who maybe had gone to your predecessors and perhaps, shall we say, not got a very satisfactory response? They might have then thought, “Ah, there’s this new MP; I’ll try them and see whether they can actually do something for me.”

We had some of that. I think we were recommended to do this, but I arranged to sit down with my predecessor; she got approval to transfer some cases over to us, and we did go through that process. But there were other cases that came to us where they had had some previous experience, and maybe had not seen the email to confirm the handover or whatever, and were making some issue of that. I think that is the opportunity of a new MP and a new team: to take on some of that challenge. That is how the changeover can happen.

That is particularly true in terms of dealing with the local authorities, because unless you have those arrangements set up quickly, you are going to get overloaded with stuff that, arguably, is not an MP’s job, yet—

We could get into a whole other discussion on that.

The reason I asked that question is that we are obviously looking at preparations for the future—both guidance that can be given to candidates and preparations for the House—when people are elected.

We all remember the difficulty in our first few days of having to deal with some sort of social services emergency, and not having the tools available to jump straight to action.

We all know that other Parliaments run induction programmes or have social gatherings for Members’ close families. What do you both think about the induction process regarding the tumult that this new way of working introduces to one’s personal life? Also, what could Parliament do better on an ongoing basis to try and bring in Members’ close family to share the weird and wonderful way that this place works?

Absolutely. If we are going to have the most diverse and representative Parliament, we have to continue to make the case for families for people from all walks of life as to how being in this place can work for them. We know that the statistics on the impact that this place has on people’s mental health, their families, divorce rates and addiction levels are truly horrifying. That is particularly the case when you add the increased level of attack that particular groups of MPs come under on social and mainstream media. It is becoming harder and harder for parties across the spectrum to persuade candidates to stand. This is part of tackling that problem. It would be a great idea to invite other halves into this place, whether it is once a year or a couple of times in the first year. For example, the Speaker does put on some children’s parties at Christmas and a couple of other times in the year, which is lovely and there is an opportunity for the plus-ones to come to those. However, that excludes those that do not have children. Why can we not have something that might just be for the adults as well? How often do MPs and their other halves get to have a date night? We know that it is pretty rare. Let us encourage and support families on this to be a really good example to employers across the country. That could be offered by Mr Speaker or other parts of the House and very much in the cross-party spirit.

I will move on to childcare. How do you think the House should support Members who have young children, both immediately after the election and during their time as an MP? What if any information on childcare provision in Westminster would be helpful for candidates?

I am going to indulge slightly in explaining what the first couple of weeks were like for me. I was elected on the Thursday and we had to work out by the Monday where we were going to stay. There are some specific allowances that need to be considered for anybody who might come in, in the future, in my position: someone with a baby, particularly one under six months but arguably even one under a year—because you are still on maternity and your baby is up several times a night. We had to work out where we were going to stay and put everything into the car; there was no way the train was realistic. For us it is a five-hour drive if you do not have to stop but with a baby you have to stop, so realistically it was an eight or nine-hour drive for me each way in that first couple of weeks. Fortunately, my husband’s job gave him the flexibility to come down with me. We had to work out everything that we needed, pack it in the car, spend the whole of the Sunday getting here, set everything up in an Airbnb—fortunately we were able to find and sort that—and then turn up here with a very unclear sense of what the week was going to look like and what I actually had to be in. I could not discern or understand any of that as a newbie. At times in that first week, I left my baby screaming with one of my friends who was kind enough to come to sit in one of the rooms that was made available for us—that was pretty heartbreaking—because apparently I had to be in whatever session. For the swearing in, he needed to feed at that moment but I had to be in that queue at that time. I left him in the family room with somebody else and dashed in to do that moment. It was all quite traumatic in a way. There are ways that it could have been easier. I think for that situation, which may occur again, there should be consideration of some local accommodation that would meet a family’s needs. We needed a living area; it was not realistic for us to just be in a hotel room, so we had sorted our own Airbnb, but fundamentally you can either find that in a hotel—and it costs a bit more but I think that should be covered—or you could find a local Airbnb and say to a person in that situation, “Here is one that we’ve identified and it meets the budget criteria.” The other specific thing was that the budget covered me only for the nights I “needed to be here”, as I understood it. That meant we had to pack everything up, do the drive back and do it again into another place for the second week. I think that was entirely unnecessary. It should have been outlined to me that in my situation a reasonable adjustment was, “This is your location for the two weeks; choose whether you want to do the dash up and down or just stay down for the first couple of weeks to do this process and save yourself that pain.” You could have recommended a nanny agency. They exist; it took me some time to find them down here. In the end, the first week was so awful that my mum very kindly brought herself down here. She also stayed with us and supported me through that second week. Not everybody’s mum can do that. There could have been different options. I was then told that I did not have a nursery space, so the Leader of the House had to intervene to make sure that I secured that a few months later, when my baby was six or seven months old. I think that for everyone in that situation, their first phone call with the House should include a conversation about the fact they have a small baby and about the reasonable adjustments for accommodation, and include support on how they could access immediate childcare. I think they should also have the right to meet with the Leader of the House because it was the Leader of the House who was able to fix the things I faced. That was a chance; I knew Lucy, so I immediately reached out to her. Another newbie might not have known that that was the route to getting the kind of intervention and support that you needed. Also, within the conversation around induction, I think the Leader and a senior Whip within your party should have that meeting and then give you real advice such as, “If you really have to narrow down what you have to attend, here are the things to do your best to get to.” The other thing that never happened—I realise it was because of the legal framework—was that no one ever discussed with me the option of maternity leave. I realise that was because I was coming into the job and we have changed the law a bit on that now. It was never actually mentioned to me, for example, that I would get my proxy vote. It was not a big deal because of the timings. I came in in July and did the first two weeks. It was then pretty much straight into conference recess and I actually started in the October. But if that election had been called in January, would I have had the conversation to say, “You can get the two months of proxy”? I do not know if that would have kicked off that conversation, but it should be expected that if you are coming in in that first six months, you can have the conversation about your proxy and make sure that you are not feeling like you should be here when you do not have to be. In that, as I say, slightly exceptional circumstance, on that return to work the House should offer a refresh induction and support in those first few weeks. I was just back in it full on, settling into the nursery and trying to catch up, and it could have been a bit more supported.

That was really instructive. Thank you. John?

Well said. Colleagues, I want to end today by thanking you for talking to us and answering our questions.

“Bizarre” captures it beautifully. Thank you to the witnesses for talking to us and answering our questions. You have given us a lot to think about as we set the scene for this inquiry and plan for further sessions. We are very grateful. We will now conclude this session. Thank you.