The Rock Blog

Chris Ford is a CF member who works as a researcher in Parliament.

Working as a researcher for an MP is a strange experience. Much of the work constitutes mundane office work in corridors that could easily be found in any generic office building in the city. And yet, you can go for a coffee in the morning and wind up chatting with IDS in the elevator about the weather before crossing Central Lobby to the Terrace Café. It is, perhaps, this mix of the extraordinary and the routine that makes Parliament such an interesting place to work.

In addition to everyday office duties there is the obligatory diary juggling, trying to organise tours, and fitting in select committee hearings around Ministerial Meetings. There’s always some research that needs to be done on one topic or another but the most important task is undoubtedly dealing with constituent correspondence. A back bencher can receive up to thirty letters a day that all require individual, researched answers. This can certainly be a strain particularly if, as is often the case, there is only one staff member in Westminster. Hours are long (in my case they have been known to reach 70 a week) and the pay is dismal in comparison to what one might expect in the private sector. With this in mind, I am sure you’re asking why anyone would want to become a researcher in the first place. It’s a good question but thankfully it’s easily answered.

Working for an MP was my first full time job after dabbling in different political positions after university and, while the work is demanding, it is also immensely rewarding. It’s the small victories that make the work worthwhile like making sure a constituent gets the pension payments they deserve or battling to keep a theatre open. There are frustrations too when events occur that you simply can’t get involved in no matter how you want to but this is, unfortunately, the nature of modern politics.

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