Links between the House of Commons and MPs Staff

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Whether you work in Westminster or the constituency, you will have had contact with different elements of the House service, for example when getting a pass, getting your IT set up, or accessing information online.

Our friend Chris Sear has been asked to act as a contact between the House and staff working for MPs. He has worked in the House for a number of years and recently has been responsible for delivering the constituency regional events, and many of you would have met him at these events.

Chris is particularly keen to hear from you about your experiences of engaging with the House including the services you use – or find you can’t use; how you access House services digitally, and any problems you have faced in engaging with the House. He will use this feedback to identify and deliver improvements in how we work with you.

Finally, if you are willing to be included in face to face conversations or focus groups, please let him know.

Chris can be contacted on searcm@parliament.uk and looks forward to hearing from you.

 

CommonsVotes app

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The new CommonsVotes app, launched in November, is now the quickest way to find out how MPs have voted in the Chamber. Full division lists are made available on the app around 15-20 minutes after the result is announced.

About the app

CommonsVotes takes advantage of the electronic system for recording divisions on tablet devices, introduced in early 2016, to make the full breakdown of votes – showing which way MPs voted following debates in the Chamber – available quickly in an format easy to use and analyse.

The app sorts the division results by Ayes vs Noes and – within that – by party, and users have the option of bookmarking individual MPs to view their voting record.

CommonsVotes app

Download the app

The CommonsVotes app is available for free download in the Apple iTunes store and the Google Play Store for Android.  The app has now been downloaded more than 7,000 times.

UK Parliament app store

CommonsVotes joins a suite of procedural apps built by PDS, including HousePapers which makes available digitally papers relating to parliamentary business in both the House of Commons and House of Lords, including the Order Paper and copies of bills.

New Health e-Hub App

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Please note that links to the old Parliamentary intranet have been removed as of October 2023. Please use search on ParliNet to find relevant current details, if available.

https://parlinet.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-members-staff/

The new Health e-Hub app has launched, providing a dedicated resource to support your personal health and wellbeing.

Key support features available from Health e-Hub include:

  • Personal and work life advice and support
  • Physical and emotional health support
  • Medical information and guidance
  • Support videos and webinars on-demand
  • Mini health and wellbeing checks
  • Four week wellbeing challenges.

The Health e-Hub app is available for free download in the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store.

See the full story here.

Get involved with the Speaker’s School Council Awards competition

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By Buyerlerdeqalardim (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Speaker’s School Council Awards has launched to celebrate the achievements of young people.

Run by the Education Service, this fantastic awards scheme invites schools to tell us about a school council or other student-initiated project that has made a difference in their school, local community, or even globally. Get involved by encouraging your local schools to apply!

Schools can enter the competition by registering and completing a short application form on the Speaker’s School Council website.

The closing date for entries is Friday 19 May

To find out more about the scheme, visit the Speaker School Council website  or contact Annie Waddington at waddingtona@parliament.uk or on x6260.

Loss of Confidential NHS Correspondence

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Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Jonathan Ashworth, is to ask an Urgent Question in the House of Commons on the loss of confidential NHS correspondence by NHS Shared Business Services.

The issue has been covered extensively in the press- according to The Guardian

Thousands of patients are feared to have been harmed after the NHS lost more than half a million pieces of confidential medical correspondence, including test results and treatment plans.

In one of the biggest losses of sensitive clinical information in the NHS’s 69-year history, more than 500,000 pieces of patient data sent between GPs and hospitals went undelivered over the five years from 2011 to 2016.

The mislaid documents, which range from screening results to blood tests to diagnoses, failed to reach their intended recipients because the company meant to ensure their delivery mistakenly stored them in a warehouse.

The Urgent Question is expected at 3.30pm, following the conclusion of Oral Questions to the Communities and Local Government Department.

Timings are approximate as Parliamentary business is subject to change.

Our new appearance

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We’ve changed the look and feel of the w4mp website to make it work better on mobile devices and also improve some elements of accessiblity.

We hope you like it – but if you have any comments please let us know at editor@w4mp.org

w4mpjobs will be updated next month when this design has bedded in a little.

What Goes On in The Other Place?

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The BBC Two documentary ‘Meet the Lords’ is broadcast at 9pm on Monday 27 February.

With exclusive access to the members and precincts of the House of Lords, the BBC Two documentary Meet the Lords presents a unique look at the work, role and membership of the second chamber of Parliament.

For more behind the scenes information and access to members of the Lords, follow the House of Lords on Twitter and Facebook.

Need a Helpline?

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The Helplines Partnership website lists hundreds of helplines on many different topics, including:

  • Addictions
  • Animals
  • Bereavement
  • Carers
  • Children and Young People
  • Consumer
  • Crime
  • Cults
  • Disability
  • Domestic Violence
  • Dyslexia
  • Education
  • Emotional Distress
  • Employment
  • Family and Parents
  • Gender Identity
  • Health
  • HIV and AIDS
  • Housing and Homelessness
  • Immigration and Asylum
  • Learning Disability
  • Legal, Civil and Welfare Rights
  • Lesbians, Gay Men and Bisexuals
  • Mental Health
  • Missing Persons
  • Money and Debt
  • Occupations and Forces
  • Older People
  • Pregnancy
  • Prisoners and Ex-Offenders
  • Rape and Sexual Abuse
  • Terminal Illness

Parliament’s New Website

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Cristian Lorini [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Please note that links to the old Parliamentary intranet have been removed as of October 2023. Please use search on ParliNet to find relevant current details, if available.

https://parlinet.parliament.uk/house-of-commons-members-staff/

Work on Parliament’s new website is progressing and a simple first cut of Member information will be live in March 2017 on their prototype site: beta.parliament.uk.

This very basic information will be tested by external users of the website and the feedback will help move on to the next phases of the project. This will include a new visual identity, a style guide and design approach, a dynamic publishing service, and a data-driven service built on a new unified data platform.

Colleagues in Parliament will get a preview of this prototype on 17 February. The new website will be quick and easy to update and it will be more resilient as it will be hosted on cloud infrastructure.

The team works in the open and shares their work on the Digital Service blog, on Twitter using #ukparlibeta and through regular show and tells which are open to everyone.

To read more, click here.

 

The Need to Know Project

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By Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom (Witton Station – Mind the Gap Uploaded by Oxyman) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Full Fact, along with The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK Statistics Authority and the House of Commons Library, is launching  a project to identify and fill gaps in data and analysis in the UK.

The project is designed to answer important questions about eight different topics which include crime, immigration, education and housing. Full Fact want to fill the gaps in data to produce reliable and well-communicated information. This will help ensure that public decisions and debate are based on the best information available and will help prevent people from making claims that will need to be corrected later on. To find out even more about this project, click here. 

Full Fact are also looking for your examples of data and analysis gaps for their eight topics. To view these topics and find out how to get involved, click here.