The following message was sent - on Thursday 11 February 2010 - to all Members’ staff by the Central Communications Team of the House of Commons on behalf of the IPSA.

W4MP secured permission to republish it here as part of our aim of bringing to staff as much information as possible on IPSA deliberations and decisions.  We also noted that pensions was a hot topic at the IPSA consultation meeting on Monday 8 February.

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Dear Sir/Madam

May I address an issue that is clearly causing a large number of you concern - IPSA's proposals regarding changes to the administration of your pensions.

In our consultation paper, we stated the following:

We propose that we will not administer the pension scheme ourselves. The House may wish to continue to provide a pension scheme (the Portcullis Pension Plan) targeted at MPs’ staff and IPSA will make contributions to this scheme, or any other that MPs’ staff may select.

Let me be clear that it is absolutely not our intention to return to the position where access to pensions is seen as optional, or within an MP's gift to give or take away. We will require MPs to provide adequate pension arrangements for their staff.

The misconception that appears to exist is that our proposals will necessarily amount to a cut in the level of funds available to MPs for staffing. I can assure you that we have taken no such decision. We are alive to the need for eventual budgets for staffing (not the existing allowance system) to be set at a level which allows for appropriate pension contributions to be made, and we will ensure that this is the case.

The reason for the proposal in our consultation paper, which we see as largely administrative, is that currently the costs of employer contributions to pensions are not met by the employer. This provides an unrealistic picture of what level of expenses are being paid to MPs by the taxpayer. We want to ensure that future arrangements are fully transparent.

The other concern we have heard concerns our proposal not to administer a central pensions scheme along the lines of the existing Portcullis Pension Plan. However, that does not necessarily mean that the existing scheme will no longer be available to you. The House of Commons will also need to make its own decision whether to continue to operate a central pensions scheme for MPs' staff. If the scheme is continued, we will continue to provide funds for payments to be made into it. We will shortly be discussing this with the House.

Whatever happens, we will ensure that all MPs' staff are able to access the level of pension protection to which they are rightfully entitled.

I am grateful to those of you who have responded to our consultation, and hope that this gives you some reassurance.

Yours faithfully,

Sir Ian Kennedy