The House of Commons Learning and Development team has announced new dates for training courses in Glasgow Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield.

To see the details, please look at our Training Courses page.

If you would like any of the training courses to take place in a location nearer to your constituency office, please let the Learning and Development team know and, if there’s enough interest from other MPs’ offices to make it viable, they will do their best to accommodate your request.

The EU Referendum will take place on Thursday 23 June 2016, but do you feel that you know enough about the issues in order to make a properly informed choice?

The House of Commons Library has produced a very useful set of papers which will, hopefully, give you the information you need, including:

• Timetable
• Who can vote
• Impact of staying
• The UK ‘deal’
• Impact of leaving
• Alternatives to membership
• Further reading

So, why not go and have a look?

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/eu-referendum/

A press release from  the Equality and Human Rights Commission warns that thousands of people could be at risk of being denied jobs and services each year due to unlawful, discriminatory adverts, the Equality and Human Rights Commission warns today.

A post on the EHRC website says: “Complaints about adverts which discriminate against older workers or on the basis of sex appear the most common but people are also being prevented from having a fair shot at work opportunities because of their disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other characteristics, according to evidence gathered by the Commission.

The Commission has a series of short guides and checklists for those who place and publish adverts to help them advertise in line with equality legislation.

The advertising guidance is

• Advertising: A good practice checklist for advertisers and publishers
• Frequently asked questions about what is lawful advertising for: jobs; goods, facilities and services; and accommodation
• What equality law means for advertisers and publishers
• Making an enquiry about a discriminatory advert

This week openDemocracy has introduced a new  series ‘How do parliaments shape democracy?’ in collaboration with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), a group offering British expertise in both parliamentary- and political party-strengthening.

WFD aims to use the openDemocracy platform over 2016 to explore some of the most pressing issues facing the sector: such as, what are the obstacles to parliamentary strengthening? How to identify democratic trends and combat democratic backsliding? What’s happening in Russia’s near neighbourhood, in response to the rise of Turkey’s HDP, and what can we learn from poldering in The Netherlands?

As reported in The Guardian, Sir Joseph Pilling is to review the independence and effectiveness of theIndependent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso). The appointments panel, which is separate from Ipso itself, has a majority of non-industry members.

More on IPSO

 

The good news today is that after it was announced that the practice of printing laws on vellum would end in April, the Cabinet Office has agreed to meet the costs in order to continue.

As all w4mp correspondence is carefully written in charcoal ink on vellum here in our scriptorium before being transcribed by specially trained pangolins, we are relieved to hear the news.

Please take note of this important service available to those working in Westminster.

Places available at the House of Commons Nursery

The House of Commons Nursery, located on the First Floor of 1 Parliament Street, is a bright and modern facility with a maximum capacity of up to 40 children (aged three months to five years). The setting offers a stimulating and secure environment for children’s personal educational development.

The Nursery is operational 51 weeks a year and is open from 8.00am – 6.00pm, Mon to Fri, with additional pre-booked evening sessions available Mon to Thurs. More information about cost and eligibility can be found on the second page of the flyer, attached at the bottom of this post.

The Nursery was recently rated “Good” overall by Ofsted and a copy of the report is available on the Ofsted website for you to view: Ofsted Full Report 2015 and 2011

The Service Provider

The contracted service providers are London Early Years Foundation (LEYF), a Westminster based organisation established in 1903. LEYF are rated ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted with exceptionally trained staff and individuals who display great enthusiasm in delivering best-practice childcare. To find out more about LEYF’s values and involvement in the community, please visit LEYF’s website at www.leyf.org.uk . 

For further information or if would like to view the facilities, please contact:

Jo Mills on 020 7219 2948 / millsJO@parliament.uk

We look forward to hearing from you!

See this Nursery leaflet for more information.

The nursery prenatal yoga classes have been very well received and additional participants are still very welcome to join the current course which takes place every Friday 9.30-10.30 (until the 8th February 2016).

The six-week course is taught by qualified yoga instructor and Club Manager of Westminster Gym, Lauren Griffin.  The course will continue to run on a rolling basis with the next set of classes starting from Friday 19th February 2016.

Anyone can join this six week course at any point, however pre-booking and payment is still required either at a cost of £30 for the full six weeks or will be calculated based on how many weeks are left of the course at the time of joining.

When: Every Friday 9.30-10.30am

Location: Westminster Gym Studio

The course is open to all parliamentary passholders. Please note that participants must be 14 weeks pregnant or more to join this class.

HMRC has supplied us with the latest guidance on Tax and National Insurance contributions for MPs and Ministers.

This guide is to help MPs and Ministers’ with their own personal Tax and National Insurance only; it is not a guide for constituent casework.

If MPs and Ministers would like a copy of this document, please contact us and we will send one via email.  Please note that we will only send this to @parliament email addresses.

Part 6 of the Energy Bill 2015-16 proposes an amendment to the Climate Change Act to adjust the performance measure used in the UK’s statutory carbon budgets. The new measure would include UK territorial emissions only. With this change, credits or debits from the EU Emissions Trading System would not contribute towards the UK’s performance against its carbon budgets from 2028 onwards.

This POSTbrief introduces the carbon budgets, explains the proposed change and outlines the implications of the proposed change.

Measuring Performance for the Carbon Budgets