Administration Committee
Oral evidence: General Election Planning, HC 362
Tuesday 15 September 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 15 September 2026.
Members present: Nick Smith (Chair); Bob Blackman; Bambos Charalambous; Mary Glindon; Marie Goldman; Navendu Mishra; Kirsteen Sullivan.
Questions 52-68
Witnesses
I: Sir Charles Walker, Baroness Thangam Debbonaire, Mr Nigel Evans and Nigel Mills.
Witnesses: Sir Charles Walker, Baroness Thangam Debbonaire, Mr Nigel Evans and Nigel Mills.
Q52 Chair: Welcome to the Administration Committee’s hearing as part of our general election planning inquiry. Thank you to our witnesses for coming to this second session of our inquiry. We welcome our witnesses, whom I will invite to introduce themselves in a few moments. We are grateful to each former Member of Parliament for coming to the Committee today to speak to us about their experiences of leaving Parliament.
The Administration Committee in the last Parliament looked at the quality of services provided to MPs when they leave the House. As part of our inquiry, we want to look at whether the support put in place after the last general election was effective in helping MPs to transition to a life after Parliament. Can you please introduce yourselves?
Nigel Mills: I am Nigel Mills; I was MP for Amber Valley from 2010 to 2024.
Sir Charles Walker: I am Charles Walker, MP for Broxbourne from 2005 to 2024.
Baroness Debbonaire: I am Thangam Debbonaire, MP for Bristol West from 2015 to 2024.
Q53 Chair: Sir Charles, you were Chair of the previous Administration Committee when it conducted its work on supporting Members when they leave the House. You called that work “Smoothing the cliff edge”, and it acknowledged that departure is a difficult time. Did the support that was put in place after the 2024 election live up to your expectations?
Sir Charles Walker: Chair, for the sake of brevity, it did live up to my expectations. I would argue and give evidence that more needs to be done, and we constantly need to be improving, but I was very impressed by the performance of the House service. Although I am now on the board of IPSA, I am here in my own capacity. IPSA also came through with the pledges it made. You cannot give 10 out of 10, but I would give nine and a half out of 10.
Chair: I see a future on “Strictly Come Dancing” for you. Thanks for that very succinct answer.
Q54 Bambos Charalambous: This is primarily a question for Nigel and Thangam. Reflecting on your experience of leaving the House, how well prepared were you, and what, if anything, came as an unexpected difficulty?
Nigel Mills: Shall I take that first? I kind of expected it—you could see the opinion polls and you could see what was happening. It was not like I walked into the count and got a shock, but there is not much you can do to prepare. You cannot apply for jobs in an election campaign—imagine if it got out. I knew what I would try to do, but until it happens, you do not really know how big a shock it is or how different it is on the Friday morning—going into the office to start winding up versus planning for another term. It takes a while to get your head into it.
I rush to everything—I was cancelling everything on that Friday morning. That may or may not have been the right thing to do, but I was very determined that, at two months, I wanted it done. Until near the end of the last Parliament, it was the case that you had two months to wind everything up, so that is what I got everything set up for. That is what I stuck to. I am not sure I would recommend rushing at things in quite that way, but I knew that that is what would work for me in other situations. I like to get out of the place—it is finished; move on to the next thing. I do not want to be hanging around.
Q55 Bambos Charalambous: Was the experience very different for colleagues who were not expecting to lose? I know some people lost by very small majorities.
Nigel Mills: Yes, for some people, I suppose. If you have a complete shock that you were not expecting, and you do not have any plan for what you have to do or how you are going to go about it, I imagine it would be a lot worse. Maybe Thangam is a better bet for that.
Baroness Debbonaire: Any therapeutic model of trauma identifies loss of job as a form of trauma. When you lose your job on TV in front of your friends and family—although I told my mum not to come; I did not want her to see—knowing that your colleagues are watching across the country, and that you are a 58-year-old unemployed women and are making your staff redundant, I don’t know how you are supposed to prepare for that, especially as, like Nigel says, you fight to win. Even if you know you are going to lose, you have to fight to win. You cannot start buffing up your CV, and I honestly don’t know when you would have the time. I was campaigning 16 hours a day for six weeks. You have to put out a face that says, “I’m going to win”.
It is not just that it is a form of trauma to get to the end of that; it is also slightly mentally deranging, because in my case, my party was going to win. That was part of the problem for me, having to be positive about that—which I was; I was very pleased that my party was going to win. I had some preparedness in that it is that sort of seat—the seat I represented is the sort of seat that always votes against the Government, and it likes to give the Government a good kicking—but how well prepared are you to make yourself redundant at 4 o’clock in the morning? I honestly don’t know how you are supposed to prepare for that.
I mean, I did prepare. I was prepared in the sense that I had prepared my staff via and with my office manager to make sure that they all had CVs. We worked out the emails of which MPs we knew were going to win and we had jobs for most of my constituency staff very quickly. That was a preparedness thing. We did that at six weeks out under a veil of secrecy and said, “You don’t speak about this, I’m afraid, because you can’t let anyone in the constituency know that you think you’re going to lose”. So we just did it to be “prepared”, but being prepared personally? We will probably come back to that, but calling anything an unexpected difficulty about that is just a real exercise in understatement. It is traumatic. Your entire way of life is suddenly changed, and very publicly as well—in a very big and public way. But the biggest trauma for me was making my staff redundant.
Chair: Thank you, Baroness Debbonaire. I am pleased to say we have been joined by Sir Nigel Evans.
Mr Nigel Evans: Mr Nigel Evans. Thank you for the promotion!
Q56 Chair: My mistake; excuse me. Nigel, Bambos was asking the panel to reflect on your experiences of leaving the House. How well prepared were you? What, if anything, came as an unexpected difficulty?
Mr Nigel Evans: What was unexpected was losing the general election in my seat. It has been Tory forever, since the seat was invented. It was only towards the end—we knew the Tories weren’t going to win—that I then started to go, “Hmm, if the swing is much bigger, it could involve even seats like mine that were rock-solid Tory”, with a majority of over 18,000. So I had never done any forward planning, and I was mildly surprised and pleased by the way that people like me were looked after. I think in the past it has been a bit of a disaster, a bit of a cliff edge, and this was not a cliff edge.
We were given adequate time to sort out our affairs as far as our flats, apartments and housing were concerned. Clearing the office has got to be a bit of a rush, that has to be the priority, so actually having somewhere within London to put all the stuff from the office is really useful. I had 32 years of memories, or “tat” as Colonel Bob Stewart would refer to it—it is now sitting in his garage, God bless him. Having that ability to get all your stuff out to somewhere and then plan for the future was good. To be greeted by a number of people on the day you got back was excellent, talking you through the pension arrangements, the redundancy and all of that. There again, my mind was never on the pension, redundancy or leaving Parliament. I think that four months of coming to terms with everything— still seeing your friends and colleagues as well, because 251 Conservatives lost their seats that day—meant that it wasn’t such a shock. It wasn’t as brutal as it clearly has been in the past. So from my viewpoint, I was really grateful there were no surprises.
Q57 Mary Glindon: I want to touch on the winding-up period. What was your experience of it, and how realistic were the deadlines and arrangements for closing down your parliamentary affairs? Did you feel you had the support you needed, and how did you support your staff? What more can the House or IPSA do generally?
Baroness Debbonaire: First, thanks to Charles and other colleagues in the last Parliament, and the parliamentary staff, a lot of things that could have been much worse were not, as Nigel has already touched on. Colleagues who have lost in previous general elections said that some things were literally a cliff edge, so I will always be grateful.
Primarily, on my staff and the deadlines, it helped to have been pretty sure that we were going to move room at least, because I had packed up my office. The arrangements would have been a lot harder if I had not done that, because your pass stops working very quickly—within days. Within seven days, your pass stops working and your car parking is removed, so it is pretty quick. The three-month deadline made a huge difference. We could not get a two-month notice period on my office, so I knew all along that if it stuck to two months, I would have to pay for the other month, and that was common in Bristol—we could not get any flexibility. That was really helpful and saved me money.
Did I have the support? I think emotional support is different from practical support. On practical support, we will come on to arrangements for the reception centre, which I do have some comments on, and my staff have given me various bits of feedback that come under lower questions. I think three months is realistic. It may have just been me being sensitive, but I felt that there was pressure on me to make sure my staff were out the door and no longer getting paid. But that may have just been me misinterpreting, because I would not judge anything on how I was emotionally during that period. As I said, three of my staff were employed by the end of the weekend, so that was great, but that is because we had prepared. We had no help with that from anybody, but I did not need any, so maybe it doesn’t matter. For everyone else it was harder. I will come on to why later.
Without the work that Charles did—sorry, Charles; I feel quite emotional about this—and I know this from comparing notes with colleagues who have lost in previous years, what was a devastating experience probably would have been catastrophic for me and my staff. And we were in the winning party. That has both pluses and minuses. The minus is that people come up to you in the street and say, “Congratulations on winning.” I go, “No, you voted to get rid of me, remember?” and they go, “Oh no, we thought you’d still be our MP.” How does that work? Do I have to explain democracy to you? It is comical. Similarly, my staff were all supposed to be in this happy shiny thing and they were looking for jobs. The grace period we were given was really helpful. My office manager had already retired from paid work originally and I had brought her back into employment. That helped, because she wasn’t rushing off looking for a job, so she could do everything and we could concentrate on the staff. That was my main concern.
I have some practical suggestions later on. I did not have warning—well, it was complicated, but I had enough sense to get myself a private therapist from February of that year. Without the private therapy, the careers coaching would have been less effective, but without the careers coaching, the therapy would have been less effective. I do not think that getting any sort of therapeutic support through Parliament really works at that time. It had to be private for a range of reasons, and I would encourage anybody to do it. I say that because I want people to know it is a good idea anyway.
Sir Charles Walker: I am going to be very brief. I stand by the statement I made in the House and in the report that you should be planning for your last day in Parliament on your first day in Parliament. It is a vocation, not a career. Most people—not all—will leave here as the result of their electorate deciding they would prefer to put someone else in office. Some have the luxury of retiring, as I did, but it is extremely difficult when you leave this place. We have some success stories here, but for most colleagues, the money runs out long before the jobs arrive, and that is even with the improved package that IPSA offered.
If the House is going to be a serious employer—I know that we are not employees—it has to look at ongoing career development, professional development and qualifications, with all the skills that we have, accredited by a top-flight university. We have many in London, such as King’s, UCL and LSE. There are also organisations like Deloitte, which runs the Deloitte academy, for example. That helps people prepare for executive positions. We need to get much more serious about how we prepare colleagues to leave this place, and they need to be responsible to themselves and their families by recognising, on day one, that there is a time expiry on all our presences in Parliament.
Nigel Mills: On staff, the nearest Conservative MP to me is probably an hour and a half’s drive away, so there was no prospect of my staff getting a job doing the same thing. I remember the excitement in my office when they found that it was a four-month period rather than two months, and they all assumed that meant they would get four months’ pay. I was like, “No, that’s actually a limit, not a target.” In all my election campaigns, the casework really dried up. There is not much work left for your staff to do other than literally empty the office. A few of them didn’t really get on with their job searching, because they thought, “I’ve got four months, so I can do nothing for the first month,” and then they slowly started to realise that it was a bit harder than they expected.
There should be some clarity on whether that four-month period is standard, and every departing MP can give their staff four months’ pay regardless of if there is any work for them to do; whether we can do that only for enough staff to justify whatever the workload is; or whether it really is an exception and we should be sticking to the notice periods in their contracts. I was never quite clear whether I was allowed to give four months’ pay. I closed my office after two months; I think I paid them all for three as a kind of compromise.
The redundancy process is a bit strange. They know there is no job. You get your guidance that you have to have a consultation meeting. You have to give written notice of a week, so you come down here, you get your advice, you then go back, you issue these template letters with an appointment for a week later and then you have a meeting where you say, “Well, there’s no job—sorry.” There is not much else you can say. You then have to give the formal redundancy letter, so you burn two or three weeks before actually starting a process. It felt a bit odd, to tell you the truth. I do not know how you fix that with employment law. I do not know how it felt for a member of staff—maybe they got three weeks’ extra pay so they were a bit happy, but it did not feel, to me, a very helpful process.
You are right about the support for staff to get jobs in different sectors. They did not really have access to the CV preparation or interview training that ex-MPs got, which was really helpful. Maybe there is a bit more we could do on supporting staff. Mine all got jobs before the end of their three months, so it all worked out, but I think it was probably worse for them in some ways.
Mr Nigel Evans: Can I back up what the other Nigel just said? I felt a bit guilty about my staff. My getting a P45 at 66 is different from an MP getting a P45 at 36, particularly if they have two kids, a mortgage and all that sort of stuff—it is very different. I did not have a mortgage. All the cushion that has been put in for Members is absolutely superb. The staff do not get that. Nigel is right: it is sort of suggested that, unless you have meaningful work for them, you should really dismiss them immediately. When 251 Tories lose, and you have, let’s say, three staff on average, that is 600 people chasing maybe 30 jobs. The reality for them is brutal.
I do not know if you remember the time when MPs could push in front of their staff to grab a cup of coffee and all that sort of stuff—that was soon elbowed out. My being treated preferentially to my staff is completely wrong; I think that they should be in exactly the same place as me. They, by dint of the job, tend to be in their 20s or maybe their early 30s, and they deserve exactly the same sort of cushion. My staff did not expect to lose. It was all right for me; I did not go into the jobs market like they did. Some of them must have found it very difficult indeed. The one thing I would emphasise is that we look at the people that are with us. I know that, out in the country, we are not going to get too many violins playing by the stories we are telling—I understand that—but maybe we will get a few violins for our staff.
Charles is right to say that it is not a career and that it could end at any time. I looked at it a few years ago and the average duration is about eight years. We know that averages hide all sorts of extremes. I was an MP for 32 years, but there are people who were elected in 2024 and will get their P45 at the next general election—a lot of them, if the opinion polls are to be believed. As Thangam said, it could be a mixture, and some people who you expected to stay will go—like the former MP for Blackburn. That constituency had been Labour for generations and I never expected it be anything other than Labour. I was shocked when I got the result from Blackburn. That MP would certainly not have been expecting what she was faced with.
Nigel Mills: There is one more reason why a soft landing for staff matters: you do not want all your staff resigning six months before an election, because then you cannot do your job. They can read the opinion polls as well as MPs do. I had one member of staff resign during the election campaign. She was very upset about it, but she said, “I just cannot risk you losing, and not having a job and not being able to pay my rent. I have found an offer, and I have to take it.” There is a benefit for the workings of Parliament in parliamentary staff knowing that they have a soft landing in case something goes wrong.
Q58 Kirsteen Sullivan: Following on from those points, how clear was the guidance that you received from the House, IPSA and your own political parties about the steps that you and your staff had to take during Dissolution and winding up? Did you have all the clarity that you needed?
Baroness Debbonaire: I find it really hard to answer that question. I had been through Dissolution before, so I did at least understand Dissolution. Winding up is just so hard to comment on. From my memory—which could be faulty, but I have tried to triangulate it with my former office manager—I think that the House guidance was good, and the IPSA guidance was good, by and large. There were things about pressure, which, as I said, could be in my own head. But I am now hearing from the Nigels that it was not imaginary; it was, “If you did not have anything for your staff to do, we cannot pay them.” They do not get a redundancy package, and they certainly do not get careers advice. To me, the guidance was not clear on that, but I think that is a different question.
For my office manager, there were various practical things that she was more than capable of doing. She was a highly experienced woman who had worked in a multinational company as a very senior manager. This was a doddle to her, but she was not sure that everyone would have found it a doddle. There was good guidance, but it would have been useful to have things such as a clear toolkit for office managers—something really clear on how to destroy data and which data to destroy; on recycling computers; on ensuring that all computers are registered before Dissolution or during Dissolution; and on whether staff can carry on doing casework to close things down during Dissolution. My office manager said she would have appreciated a bit of guidance on that.
Q59 Kirsteen Sullivan: A toolkit that takes you along the timeline?
Baroness Debbonaire: There was assistance on those things, and parliamentary staff were really helpful, so this is definitely not a criticism, but my office manager’s point was that it could be something really clear, particularly about casework. Former constituents contact me even now. One has emailed me this morning about his case notes, and I do not know how many times I have to say to this guy, “I do not have them, and for good reason”. A way of resolving some of those open cases sometime during Dissolution might have helped. It is more than it would help constituents and my former staff; it probably would not make any difference to me. My memory is that the guidance was mostly pretty good.
Sir Charles Walker: I thought the guidance was really useful. The thing that distressed me most was seeing my seven-year-old IBM printer being hauled off by the House of Commons to be put into a skip somewhere or into landfill. I do not understand why I could not be given the option to buy something that could print loads of pieces of paper and CVs.
I think one thing that the House did really well—I did not access it, but I have heard this from colleagues—was outplacement. It funded and did outplacement advice—I hope that continues. My own party also did some career coaching through Mark Prisk. He could reach 30 colleagues; that was what we had funding for. I do not know whether you are going to take evidence from Mark or the outplacement company, but they did some really useful work. The Committee might find it helpful to know how that went and some of the feedback they got.
Chair: We can ask him. Thank you.
Baroness Debbonaire: Disposal of the kit is a big deal. It really annoyed us that we could tell that it was being taken off us to be put in a skip. The way that my iPad was removed from me was particularly and unnecessarily humiliating. I said, “You are just putting it in a skip, though. Why are we doing this? I would buy it, yet you are humiliating me.” It was okay, but it was a waste.
Sir Charles Walker: Very quickly, Chair, Mark Prisk gave evidence for my “Smoothing the cliff edge” report, so he has sort of seen the continuum through.
Nigel Mills: I think the guidance was very good; I came down for the sessions on the Monday morning, I think. Dealing with the staff and getting the legal stuff right was the challenge. I remember that they gave me an A3 piece of paper with the notice periods, redundancy pay and whatever else on it, which you then had to transcribe into a standard letter and get the right thing for the right person. Then they worked out that, if you gave them two months’ notice, they would cross into another year of service, and you had to go and change all the numbers.
On that stuff around employment, I wonder whether there is a way that they could just give you the pack of letters, so that you do not risk messing those up. There was no issue for me—there was not going to be any legal dispute over it—but you could see a situation in which you could slightly mess that up and create a problem.
The rest of it was fine. I booked the IT collection nice and early. Then, on the day, they did not turn up. They rang and said, “Yeah, we’ve got another one in the south, so the driver thought he’d go there first and miss the Friday traffic.” “Well, my office is closing at lunch time; I’ll leave it on the street outside if you want.” Things like that were a bit aggravating, rather than a problem. The support for what you needed to do by when worked pretty well. Even the IPSA stuff was fine. I think they returned some papers with typos at one stage, or something like that, but other than that it was pretty smooth.
Mr Nigel Evans: Richmond House had everything sorted when I went in with a couple of my staff. They were appropriately sombre, apologetic and sympathetic, with handkerchiefs on hand and all that. If heaven had the same sort of arrangement when the deceased come, I feel that it would base it roughly base on the model I saw in Richmond House.
I thought that everything was explained to me. You had opportunities to ask all sorts of questions. Listen, you have to get out of your office, because 650 other people are now eager to establish themselves, and you have to lose your parking space, otherwise where are they going to park? You understand the urgency of all that. But everything else—the cliff-edge work that Charles and his colleagues have helped to bring about—has been absolutely superb.
The one thing that I would suggest—other than all the stuff that the others have mentioned—is to do with email. Losing your parliamentary email is a bit brutal, to say the least. People do not know how to get in touch with you. My one suggestion is that you then shunt everything over to a new email address, such as nigel.evans.exmp@parliament.uk, or something like that. Then everybody will know that, if they need to get in touch with you, there is a standard format and they can just put “ex” in front of “MP”.
That is the cliff edge, I can tell you now. You are told, “Oh yes, transfer everything over,” and all that sort of stuff. Well, you do not get through it all. Just think, after 32 years, how many emails were floating around. I just think that that would be a lot easier. It would also make it easier for ex-MPs to get in touch with other ex-MPs. That is the one solid suggestion I will make to you.
Q60 Marie Goldman: Thank you very much for being here. It is slightly terrifying for some of us, and probably for staff who are watching, but your insight is really helpful. We need to be mindful that other people in the country lose their jobs at a moment’s notice. I am thinking about Jaguar Land Rover, for example, and its employees. We need to remember other staff, but equally, it is a very special situation here.
On handing over to incoming MPs, one thing that did not work particularly smoothly for me as an incoming MP was casework handover. I understand that all former Members were offered advice on handing over casework within the restrictions of data management and confidentiality. Do you feel that that worked well? It may well have worked well for you, but would you have benefited from anything else when handing over?
Mr Nigel Evans: I got my successor in as soon as she arrived. I sat down with her and offered everything she wanted. I was more than happy to give her anything. The ex-MP email thing might have helped if she needed to get in touch about any casework. The door was absolutely wide open—and still happens to be if she needs to get in touch on any issue.
Nigel Mills: As I said, by the time we got to polling day, most casework had been dealt with. A few outstanding replies came in, which we dealt with. In some cases, we went back to the constituent and said, “Do you want us to send it back to you? Or do you want to give us consent to send it to the new MP?” Generally, people were quite happy for it to be handed over, but there were not that many cases. It is not that easy when you have just lost and your staff are being made redundant for them to be in touch with the people who are replacing them in the job they quite liked. That is not a natural situation. We did it and it worked pretty well, but we did not actually have to hand over a large number of cases.
Sir Charles Walker: There were, I think, two—or a few, but not many—long-running cases that I briefed my successor on. He had worked for me in my office when he was 16 or 17 on work placement, which made me feel very old. Mostly, when the election was called, we were getting legacy cases coming in from ministerial offices, which we just passed back to the constituent. Our constituents do not appreciate that when a general election is called, we cease to be a Member of Parliament. As far as my constituents were concerned, I was the Member of Parliament for Broxbourne until the point my successor was elected—then for a few weeks afterwards. We very politely suggested that they wait a few weeks, unless it was really urgent, and then we did some triage. I said, “Wait a few weeks and get in touch with whoever my successor is, and I am sure he or she will be delighted to hear from you.” And that is what they did.
Baroness Debbonaire: I probably do not have anything much to add. Incoming MPs who have beaten another MP are probably not aware that any casework that anyone is going to die over is not being handed over—it will have been dealt with. Therefore, the assumption should be that they start from scratch. Similarly to others, we had worked really hard to make sure that things were resolved for constituents—in our case, I am not sure whether the incoming MP understood that—but we also provided the information about how constituents could get in touch with the incoming MP. I think that that is adequate.
On the confidentiality guidelines, I think we had some good support. I would have been grateful for some advice on how to dispose of confidential waste. We worked it out—it was fine—and we worked out what to say to the constituents. I think we had some help with that.
Nigel Mills: May I just answer Marie’s observations? I was probably about as tight with public money as I could be, and I agree, actually, we should not put MPs in a different place from where a good employer would put people. That would be my default situation.
A good employer, when making people redundant, does try to support them into the next stage of their lives. The support that MPs got on CVs, interview prep and all that stuff, I think a good employer would do. There is a secondary point, though, about if you want to attract the brightest and the best to be MPs. If you said to me, “Look back to when you were 35. Had you known you would get married, have two kids and be out of work at 50, would you take the risk?” I think it is quite difficult in that situation to think that that is a very good idea.
If you want Parliament to function and you want the best people here, showing that there is a soft landing and that you will not struggle to pay your mortgage is really important. If you make it too tight and play too much to the TaxPayers’ Alliance lobby on this, it will do real damage. I say that as somebody who said to you, “Be clear whether you mean to give all staff four months’ pay when they have one month’s notice.” What do you really mean? That is a challenge. Why are we paying people far more than they were legally entitled to? We should think that through. I would just be cautious that playing to that lobby is quite dangerous and will do damage.
Q61 Marie Goldman: I would like to dig into that a bit. This is a public session and there will be people watching this who say, “Hang on a minute. I just lost my job. I had no notice. I went into this knowing that it might not be a job for life, but I probably expected that I might have a bit longer. And it was a bit of a shock to me and probably I had even less notice because something suddenly happened.” I mean no disrespect to the House staff, and I completely agree with you. I would love to be able to pay my staff more. They work incredibly long hours. The office is run by young people a lot of the time. I know some people have more experienced staff, but that is not always the case because we do not pay enough to have really experienced staff a lot of the time. I have huge respect for what they do.
It is just about getting the balance right between what the rest of the country experiences, what MPs experience, and what MPs’ staff experience. We need to make sure to get that balance absolutely right and offer what we can along the way in terms of support, career progression and development and stuff. We have talked before about the potential for some staff to be employed by the House so that they can move around a bit more and have more security. What might you think about that?
Mr Nigel Evans: Funnily enough, Sir Charles Walker was a former staffer of mine. Not only did I not put him off becoming a staffer, but he then became a Member of Parliament and did much better than I did.
I am with Nigel on this. I do appreciate where you are coming from. Among a lot of people out there, as I said, there will be no violins for the MPs, but hopefully they will have for some of our staff who still face that cliff edge. My staff never thought I was going to lose my seat. I get Nigel’s point that you want to attract good people to come and do the work for MPs. If we are going to get our P45s— The changes that have happened since elections in the past should be reflected on the staff as well. Why should they be treated any differently to the Members of Parliament? I really would stress that if we want the very best working here and they are going to be booted out rather suddenly and publicly in the way that it is done, and they have no prospect of getting another job in politics, they should be treated in exactly the same way.
Chair: Okay. That’s great. Thanks, everybody. I have to nudge you. We have four questions to get through, so will have to move it up a gear. Mary, you’re next.
Q62 Mary Glindon: This one seems a bit cruel after what we have heard. What we learned during the inquiry was that new Members would appreciate a Member buddy in addition to a House staff buddy just to listen to what your situation was when you lost your seat or retired. Would you have been willing to return to Parliament to support a new Member in getting to grips with parliamentary life and offer them advice on their office? Do you have any thoughts on how such an offer could work in practice?
Sir Charles Walker: I will answer that—absolutely not. We had left Parliament. The last thing that Lewis Cocking, my successor, wanted to see was me running around the House of Commons. We have an election, people are defeated, they leave and new people come in.
Also, there is a general view. I did a lot of things for a lot of people for no money after I left this place. Luckily, I could take my pension early at great cost to myself and my family, because it is very difficult to get a job. And let me just say that if you want better MPs, treat MPs better. But the idea that I would come back to the House of Commons and do anything for free is nonsense—just nonsense. I am sorry, but it is a cruel question. I really advise all of you to not lose your seat, because no matter how good you think you are, you are not that good. Nigel Mills here did very well, but many of my former colleagues are still struggling to find meaningful work. If you want better MPs, treat MPs better.
Nigel Mills: The last place I wanted to be was here. I came down on the Sunday, emptied my office, did the session on the Monday morning and handed the keys back—this is the first time I have been back since. I am afraid the idea that I would be of any use to a new MP is for the birds.
Baroness Debbonaire: I do not think the new MPs, especially those in the winning party, wanted to see us four losers—I think we were seen as contagious. Coming in on the Monday morning is pretty humiliating anyway, as everyone else is happy and shiny.
It sounds like tough love, but learn the job and get the skills. If you do not know how to do a Bill, go on a Bill Committee to learn how to do it. If you do not know where your office is, ask a Doorkeeper. You have been elected as MPs to be leaders. This is not an old mill owner thing, but if you have been elected to be a leader, do you really need an old MP who is trying to get a job as a buddy? Learn your job. There are ways to learn the job of being an MP, and part of it comes with a certain amount of humility. You need first to recognise that you have a lot to learn; secondly, to recognise that, as Charles said, you will also lose eventually; and thirdly, to make yourself work hard to learn the skills and your way around Parliament—learn what it takes to be a legislator.
Sir Charles Walker: Most of us need to be paid when we leave here, so we need to get a job.
Baroness Debbonaire: Yes—we were unemployed. I have to say, what I wrote down here was, “Are you kidding?” I was a 58-year-old unemployed woman, and there is no such thing as an ex-MP—you have no idea. I am not asking for sympathy and do not feel sorry for myself—I served in a democracy and am very proud to have done that—but you do have to pay your bills. I hope we have made ourselves clear: the answer is no.
Chair: I still see a lot of wisdom here.
Q63 Bambos Charalambous: On career transition, which some of you have touched on, how prepared were you for working life beyond Parliament? Did you use the career transition service, and if so, how did you find it? Also, how important was the emotional support, which Thangam touched on, in the career transition?
Baroness Debbonaire: The two things are separate. I used the career transition service, and there was not a single day when I did not mentally thank Charles Walker. It is a valuable investment in making use of the skills we have gained, but I would not see it as anything other than saying, “This is useful to the world.” Some of us were able to retire, but some of us could not, and some of us will rightly have to work for another 15 years. We wanted to make use of our skills and needed a bit of technical help with wiggling around and thinking, “What are my skills? How do I work them?” You really should not—although maybe some did—be looking for a job until after you lose.
It would be great if the careers transition service was offered to our staff, because I felt quite guilty. I still use my careers transition person; I pay her privately. That was not for emotional support, and it is really important that the two things are separate. Personally, I am glad that I paid for private therapy. Others may think that that ought to be paid for by the House services, but I do not. I would have liked a bit of advice from the House services on how to get a private therapist, but my therapist was invaluable to making the careers service work, and vice versa. It was brilliant.
Chair: If nobody else wants to come in on this, we will move to Marie.
Q64 Marie Goldman: The departing Members’ area was mentioned earlier. Did its location and atmosphere, and how it was brought together, work well for you?
Mr Nigel Evans: Yes.
Nigel Mills: Yes, it was excellent. Everything was there, it was cleverly organised to get you around all the various topics and they were suitably sympathetic. It is not an easy day—mine was the first working day. It was handled very well.
Mr Nigel Evans: It is a bit like speed dating—not that I have done that! You sit for 10 minutes and then you move on to the next one. It is a Disneyland conveyor belt for the politically deceased.
Baroness Debbonaire: I agree with everything that was just said, but the one issue was location. Again, this may have been because of my mood, as I was a losing MP when my party had won, but you walked in to see a gazillion new, shiny, excited MPs going up to the bright, sparkly rooms of PCH, while we were escorted down to a basement. Once you got to the basement—maybe it was not a basement; it just felt like one—the service was excellent and the staff were brilliant. It was like speed dating, but in a least-bad way.
Q65 Bob Blackman: Obviously, you made way for another MP from your party, Sir Charles. Did he take on any of your existing staff?
Sir Charles Walker: No. Many of my existing staff had been with me for 13, 15 or 16 years. To be perfectly honest, one of them was my wife, and although they love each other dearly and have known each other for a long time, I am sure that he would not have wanted to employ her. There was no transfer.
Q66 Bob Blackman: Are any of you still in touch with your ex-staff?
Baroness Debbonaire: Yes—with all of them.
Q67 Bob Blackman: Have they managed to get new jobs and careers outside of your employment?
Baroness Debbonaire: I am in touch with all my staff, and I continue to be a lifelong careers coach for some of them. The pledge I made to the ones that were still with me at the end was that they will have me for life, and they have continued to use me. I am very proud of that, and I am very proud of them.
Q68 Bob Blackman: Have they got jobs?
Baroness Debbonaire: You missed when I spoke about this, Bob, but we had prepared my constituency staff early on, so my office manager and I got them jobs fairly quickly. My office manager had come out of retirement to work for me anyway, so that was fine. Weirdly, it was harder for my parliamentary staff—you would think that with an incoming Labour Government, that would have been easier, but it was not. That was partly because two of my staff were working not for the taxpayer but for the Labour party, because they were my advisers. I dealt with that, but I put on record that the way they were treated was suboptimal.
Sir Charles Walker: My staff got jobs. Our staff have hugely transferrable skills, without the baggage of having been a Member of Parliament, which is a great barrier to future employment. They do not carry that baggage. It was difficult for them, but they were very talented people and were snapped up pretty quickly.
Nigel Mills: My staff all had jobs within three months after the election. References are an interesting one: IPSA will give a reference saying, “They worked for Nigel Mills from 2022 to 2024 as an in-role caseworker,” but if an employer wants any more than that, they have to email my personal email address, which does not feel right. I gave them all a signed, headed-paper letter reference—I am not sure whether I was meant to use the headed paper after polling day, but I dated it as polling day—but how you handle that situation is quite fiddly. Obviously, the MP email does not work anymore, so they can only get to you via a personal one.
Mr Nigel Evans: Fortunately, one had left me just before the election to join the Navy, as we have heard. He was very apologetic: he said, “I know there is an election coming,” but I said, “No—you have a lifetime opportunity here. Go join the Navy,” which, fortunately, he did. I am still in touch with the others. I remember looking across at them during this speed dating exercise, and they were whiter than I was, so I knew that they were concerned about what they would do next. Fortunately, they have all got employment outside of the House.
Chair: Thank you for your valuable feedback during this important session. I end this meeting by thanking you all for talking to us and answering our questions. That concludes this session.