Bulletin, 29 September 2022 (living wage, conference travel, reimbursements)

Some brief updates this week, and a reminder of the new publication date in November.

Please note our phone lines will be closed on Friday 7 October for staff training, and that all payment card transactions for August 2022 and earlier must be reconciled and validated by 8 October 2022.

This week's bulletin contains information on:

• Living wage

• Conference travel

• Reimbursements

Living wage

Last week details were announced of the new voluntary Living Wage rates, which are independently calculated by the Living Wage Foundation.

This year the rate increased by 10.1% in the UK. It is now £10.90 per hour for the UK and £11.95 per hour for London.

To ensure that MPs are able to pay the Voluntary Living Wage to all staff if they choose to, we have increased the maximum of the Intern payscale to £23,302.50 per annum from 1 September 2022.

The MP staff contract and job description tools have been updated to reflect this for any new Interns you may employ.

If you want to award an additional increase and backdate subject to your staffing budget, to any current Interns please complete the MP contractual changes form, using IPSA Online and submit/approve within our usual monthly payroll deadlines.

Conference travel

During this conference recess, many MPs and some MPs’ staff will be travelling to party conferences.

A reminder that travel and accommodation costs for these events are not something that can be claimed from IPSA.

Rule 3.4 in the Scheme lists examples of activities that are not considered Parliamentary, including attendance at political party conferences or meetings.

Reimbursements

Last week there were some delays in payments being made for reimbursement claims.

Any claims affected should have been paid in full yesterday, Wednesday 28 September. Please accept our apologies for the delay.