Frank Doran did the staff to courtesy of turning up at today’s meeting to discuss the new MP’s queue-jumping edict. At least 80 members of staff from across Parliament packed into the meeting room, and more would probably have joined if even the standing room hadn’t been completely occupied.

For half an hour, staff vented their spleens (politely for the most part) at the regulations, the tone of the email, the vast number of Member’s-only facilities, and the removal of facilities for the staff. Young and old, Labour, Tory and neutral staff all united in their disgust at the discourteous edict that was handed down.

And so, with half an hour left, Frank Doran had a chance to answer the many points raised. And for half an hour, he filibustered. He talked about the Administration Committee’s recent reports on Accommodation and Refreshments, how the changed hours of Business in the House was putting more pressure on MPs doing their work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays - and how this made it difficult to get a sandwich between meetings. If you can see a logical train of thought here, you are more astute than I. Staff began to get restless, mutterring increased, and people openly challenged him to start answering the points that had been raised.

The best he could do was to say ‘I will take that point back to the Committee, and I note the strength of feeling on the issue’. No change of policy, certainly no apology, and no talk even of making recommendations to the Committee (he is Chair after all) to reconsider the issue. Poor show.

But beyond that, he was effectively blaming us, the staff, for the problem. It is our fault for being here. There are so many more of us since MPs were given an improved (but still woefully inadequate) staffing budget, that MPs are feeling more pressured at the facilities in the House.

That’s not an answer. We do your work, we escort your guests, we take you cups of tea, and do all kinds of denegrating tasks for you. If you think that it’s our fault that there’s congestion at the cafeteria till, you have completely misunderstood the relationship you have with your staff. We put up with that congestion every day - you only have to when you choose to use our facilities. And whilst we’re at it, the fact that the population of Parliament decreases by 646 during recess, is no excuse for shutting all the facilities early every day or in many cases completely.

The Secretaries and Staff Association and the T&G who organised the meeting made fundamental cock-up in the way they hosted it. Half an hour from our side and half an hour for Doran’s response gave him plenty of chance to ignore the questions he didn’t want to address. There should have been one question at a time for Doran to answer - we know this is what MPs like least, and we should have exploited it. It would have exposed the crap he was giving us much more effectively.

I don’t think anyone left that meeting happy. I am certainly more angry, not less. I imagine the staff member who worked for Peter Law (deceased), who Frank Doran later referred to as David Laws, will be even more pissed off.

I would like to say this isn’t over, but I fear that future meetings will be conducted between MPs and staff representatives - giving Frank Doran and his colleagues cover from the massed ranks of angry staff and secretaries, and probably enough space to ignore our demands.

redtamarin[at]gmail.com