Love working with people in a highly rewarding customer-driven environment? If so, Houses of Parliament would like to meet you at our Recruitment Open Day on Thursday 23 February 2017.

There are jobs to suit everyone at Parliament and members of staff will be available to talk to you about current and future job opportunities, as well as careers in their areas. Staff will also be on hand to guide you on how to apply for jobs through the Parliament website.

Tickets are free but places are limited so you will need to book a ticket in advance.

Recruitment Open Day schedule

Date: Thursday 23 February 2017

Entry time: Between 4pm and 6.40pm (timed ticket entry)

• Venue: Westminster Hall, Houses of Parliament
• Examples of some of the customer-focused jobs you can find out about are:
• Visitor Assistant
• Retail Assistant
• Barista
• Committee Assistant
• Waiter/Waitress
• Doorkeeper
• Education Assistant
• Reception and Facilities Coordinator
• Enquiry Executive
• Bookings and Marketing Assistant
• Security Officer

You can also meet representatives from Parliament’s award winning Workplace Equality Networks and the Recruitment and Diversity and Inclusion teams.

During the open day you will have the opportunity to join one of the short talks by our Visitor Assistants about the fascinating history of 900 year old Westminster Hall .

How to book your place at the Recruitment Open Day

As places are limited, tickets must be booked in advance. You can do this by calling our Bookings Team on 020 7219 4114 (Monday to Saturday, 9am to 5pm). Alternatively, you can request a ticket via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

If you would like to find out more on the day, the Bookings Team will be happy to assist.

There is no need for you to bring your CV to the Recruitment Open Day.

Work and Pensions Committee

Monday 30 January 2017 Meeting starts at 3.45pm

Witnesses: Damian Hinds MP, Minister for Employment, Department for Work and Pensions, and Sarah Newton MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Vulnerability, Safeguarding and Countering Extremism, Home Office

We have launched our crowd funding campaign this morning on Crowd Funder. Goal: To take our student team to the Houses of Parliament as guests of our Colchester MP Will Quince.  

We will be commenting more on this as we go. 

One in ten centres in England, Wales and Scotland will shut, union officials have said; the Department for Work and Pensions claimed the number of redundancies would be small

Jobcentres are due to close under reforms to deal with “under-used” buildings, putting thousands of staff jobs at risk as benefit claimants move online.

One in ten centres in England, Wales and Scotland will shut, union officials have said, in a move that Labour called “reckless at best and perverse at worst”.

The Department for Work and Pensions said that four out of five claims for jobseeker’s allowance and 99 per cent of applicants for universal credit now submitted claims online. The number of redundancies would be small, it added.

Unilever’s underlying sales were up 3.7%, and net profits grew 5.5% to €5.5bn (£4.7bn) – although currency changes meant revenues fell 1% to €52.7bn (£44.8bn).

Polman was asked on a conference call this morning whether he regretted the company’s public face-off with Tesco over its decision to demand higher prices from the retailer, after the falling pound increased some of its production costs.

He said: "The decision to increase prices in the UK was definitely the right one. We’ve seen a 20% decrease in the value of the pound, and we have to look at the effects of the long-term currency changes, otherwise you end up being unsustainable. You now see many others in the industry doing what we’ve done."

Polman was dismissive of the tendency of the media to make a big deal of stories about prices going up and pack sizes going down – such as the revelation that Mondelez was changing the familiar shape of Toblerone to cut costs. Polman said: "There’s nothing new here – we should get used to it."

Reproduced courtesy of Campaign Magazine

ABC Comment: Shrinking portion sizes is a way that food price inflation is being hidden. The sorry case of Fish Fingers now reduced to what some would say are childrens sizes is very sad. The once mighty Yorkie bar - alledged to keep truckers going. Today the once mighty chunk of chocolate is a shadow of its former self. 

A disabled person on the DWP’s Work Programme was three times as likely to be sanctioned as to be found a job, according to evidence given to the Scottish Parliament’s Social Security Committee by Inclusion Scotland.
 
New powers will allow the Scottish Government to design new employment services for disabled people and those at risk of long-term unemployment.
 
Third sector groups giving evidence to the committee welcomed the Scottish Government’s commitment to ending the use of sanctions in devolved work schemes.
 
Academics at the University of Glasgow have found that the Tory sanctions regime has “detrimental financial, material, emotional and health impacts” and pushes those on JSA and ESA into debt and reliance on foodbanks.
 
A report by the National Audit Office last year revealed that the administrative costs of the brutal benefit sanctions system dwarves the income removed from those on lowest incomes.

You can follow todays proceedings live:

Child Maintenance Service and Child Support Agency opening hours will change from 6 February 2017. To allow staff to better respond at peak times, telephone lines will close 30 minutes earlier each evening, when fewer calls are received.

The new opening hours are:

Monday to Friday, 8.00am to 7.30pm

Saturday, 9.00am to 4.30pm

For existing Child Maintenance Service cases, parents and employers can access the self-service website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

New maintenance arrangements can be made by contacting Child Maintenance Options on 0800 988 0988.

The Committee today publishes correspondence between Rt Hon Frank Field MP and Caroline Nokes MP, Minister for Welfare Delivery, regarding call charges on telephone services provided by DWP and third-sector partner organisations.

The Committee is concerned at charges faced by people calling to transact or seek advice on benefit claims, especially when waiting times are long. In particular some charities funded by the DWP continue to use 084 and 087 numbers which can cost up to 24p per minute from landlines or 57p from mobiles. The DWP told the Committee that it is conducting a review of telephony and is seeking reduce call volumes by improving digital services.

Rt Hon Frank Field MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

“Vulnerable people and those on low incomes should not face expensive charges for seeking advice on or trying to process their benefit claims. I welcome the DWP’s review of telephony and will be monitoring its progress closely. The Government is rightly seeking to expand digital services but it is important that people who need to use the telephone are not left behind.”

For call charges:

Call charges for different phone numbers are available online at:

                           Click on image

Ambulance services are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with rising demand for urgent and emergency services, per the National Audit Office.

Demand for ambulance services continues to grow rapidly. Contributing factors may include the increasing numbers of elderly patients with multiple conditions, an increasing number of alcohol- and mental health-driven issues, the availability of primary care services in the community and how patients seek help. Between 2009-10 and 2015-16, the number of ambulance calls and NHS 111 transfers increased from 7.9 million to 10.7 million. Increased funding for these services has not matched rising demand, and future settlements are likely to be tougher.

Introducing new models of care, such as resolving calls over the phone by providing advice to callers, has helped but there are signs of stress, including worsening performance against response time targets. In 2015-16, only one ambulance trust met the three response time targets. Today’s report, however found a general consensus that commissioners, regulators and providers place too much focus on response times. The majority of patients currently coded as Red 2 do not derive clinical benefit from the arrival of an ambulance within 8 minutes, but the 8-minute target has led to a range of behaviours which undermine efficiency, such as dispatching resources before it has been determined what the problem is, whether an ambulance is required; and dispatching multiple ambulances to the same patient and then standing down the vehicles least likely to arrive first.

In 2015-16, around 500,000 ambulance hours were lost due to turnaround at accident and emergency departments taking more than 30 minutes, which equates to 41,000 12-hour ambulance shifts. Transferring the care of a patient from an ambulance to an accident and emergency department is expected to take no longer than 15 minutes, with a further 15 minutes to prepare the ambulance for the next call. In addition, most ambulance trusts are struggling to recruit and retain the staff they need.

Today’s report also found that each of the 10 ambulance trusts in England has developed its own operating framework, with differences in workforce mix, fleet mix and estate. These differences have contributed to variations and inefficiencies in performance. For example, across ambulance trusts in 2015-16, the proportion of incidents where one or more vehicles were stood down after mobilisation varied from 4% to 46% and the proportion of call handled over the phone varied from 5% to 15%.

According to the NAO, ambulance services are finding it challenging to engage with the wider health sector due to the growing number of stakeholders that trusts are required to work with. In addition, the wider system does not always make good use of the ambulance services' experience or recognise the impact that changes to other local services have on the ambulance services.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said today:

“Ambulance services are a vital part of the health service but much of their ability to work better greatly depends on other parts of the health system'.

“Until clinical commissioning groups see ambulance services as an integral part of that system it is difficult to see how they will become sustainable and secure consistent value for money across the country’.

Commenting on the Government response to the Committee’s report on Intergenerational Fairness, Committee Chair Rt Hon Frank Field MP said:  

“We will continue to press for cross-party consensus on the replacement of the triple lock after 2020. The Government is right to say pensioner benefit spending has dipped slightly as a share of GDP, as accelerated increases in the state pension age have kicked in; but official projections show that, without reform, it will rise relentlessly from that point. The triple lock has been valuable but it is unsustainable. The Committee has recommended an alternative which would maintain pensioners’ living standards and protect them from the effects of inflation.”

Full inquiry details: Intergenerational fairness 

The triple-lock guarantees that pensions rise by the same as average earnings, the consumer price index, or 2.5%, whichever is the highest. The Work and Pensions Committee said continuing with it was "unsustainable" and "unfair" on younger families.

Tories were most successful among voters aged 65 or above and Labour only had a clear lead among those in the 18-34 age bracket, per Ipsos Mori. The over 65's were the main group voting to leave the EU. Many young people are indifferent to politics.