MPs get £10000 to work from home petition against

[blossompie]

Can anyone link me to the petition against MPs getting £10k to work from home if it's still ongoing? Thanks

Read up on it then I'll give you the link.

They are not "being given 10k to work from home"

This is very misleading op.

They are not being given 10k to work from home'. They are being allowed to claim (with receipts) money spent (max 10k) on equipment to allow them and their staff to work from home - computers, paper etc.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-politics-52231592

A bit different to what is being posted on Social Media 🤦🏻‍♀️

Not everyone is set up to work from home so staff might need to claim, with receipts, for items to help them work from home from that £10,000. Examples might be:

Laptop
Monitor
Desk
Chair
Mouse
Keyboard
Printer
Printing ink
Stationery
Stamps
Webcam

I work for an MP.
About 3 weeks ago my colleague went to the shops and bought 5 very basic PAYG Nokias. One each for everyone in the office. He said "I'll make a claim to IPSA for these. There's a fund to cover it" I thought: "Well that's good, I certainly don't want to use my own minutes on work stuff and I don't want randoms having my number"
A couple of weeks later Facebook explodes with people up in arms about this.
It's very weird experiencing the mundane reality and then the completely manufactured outrage.

Oh for goodness sake 'money spent on equipment' - what??? How on earth are they different from every other person having to work from home? Oh yes, I know , they have access to an open (public - or taxpayer funded ) purse.

Please stop defending these people. They are not even doing their (one) job of protecting those people putting their lives on the line every day....

They're not that different from other people working from home. And neither are their staff.
That's why most MPs offices won't spend anything like that much.
The money is for office stuff for all the staff: not the MP themselves.
10,000 is the upper limit. Everything needs to be reasonable and receipts shown.
I'm not sure why the upper limit is so high tbh as IPSA are normally quite strict.
My suspicion is that they wanted as many people as possible off the parliamentary estate and working from home without the delay of a lot of back and forth with office managers about what is/isn't allowed.

The Times on Saturday reported this allowance as a necessary expense.
They also anticipated the outrage that would break in social media.

May I ask what this petition is for? Do you want to stop then getting this £10,000? If so may I ask why?

This is a non event if I am understanding it correctly. I have worked from home. My employer supplied me with a laptop and phone. Isn't this just the same thing?

They aren’t being given it. I’m starting to get concerned at the level of intelligence in this country

Possibly because after the expenses scandal and the fact that many MPs employ family members this seems a huge amount of money to cover a lap top and printer.

Hope they keep records and the stuff goes back if people leave.

Oh for goodness sake 'money spent on equipment' - what??? How on earth are they different from every other person having to work from home?

Its not - my employer and my partner's employer (not MPs!) have both paid for equipment for us as we don't usually work from home - a keyboard for my partner (to attach to his laptop) and a basic laptop for me as the IT team have said it's more secure to work on a 'work' laptop than our crappy family one. My sister works in admin from home and her company are paying for things like paper and envelopes.

So spending on equipment to remote work is NOT just limited to MPs offices.

Grow up, learn to read and think and stop starting stupid petitions

My employer is covering reasonable expenses for working from home. I have a laptop, monitor and an office chair paid for by them. They will refund the cost of additional equipment and phone calls. Why should the staff of the MPs’ constituency offices; the people who help deal with the problems the public refer to the MP, be out of pocket? Do they have to be treated worse than everyone else because they work for an MP?

If you’ve ever spent any time in a constituency office or spoken to constituency office staff you’ll understand perfectly why they need an ample budget for equipment. The offices are already tightly funded with a lot of work happening on a voluntary basis. That work involves vulnerable members of the community whose data must be protected properly - emails about their medical treatment or other personal matters cannot and should not be bashed out on a shared family laptop - and neither would it be correct or desirable for MPs or their staff to be contacted on personal phone numbers for their own safety. MPs and staff do a huge amount of very valuable constituency work that must continue, or even escalate now, and to do that they need access to proper equipment and secure systems.

You’d think with all the boredom people would have time to think, check out and read about stuff before signing stupid petitions. The ignorance of people is astounding. The mob.

Love the laziness of this OP! You've really leant into slothness here. Can't be arsed to read and understand a story then doubled down by not being arsed to find a petition to complain about it

Hmmm! It shouldn’t be unreasonable for an employer to provide resources for working from home, but from where I’m standing, (teacher,) I’m asked to use my own laptop and broadband to work from home as well as using my own phone and landline to do welfare checks on vulnerable kids and let’s not get started on the costs I cover in normal working times.

Ok I will research it. A bit more. I do believe £10k is excessive and have never heard of this in the private sector?

My employer supplied me with a laptop and phone. Isn't this just the same thing?

It's exactly the same thing! I work for an MP and that's exactly what I've been given to wfh.

Noeuf If you stop and think for 3.5 seconds you’ll realise it’s not just “a laptop and a printer”. Some MPs staff are international phone calls to overseas constituents - that’s a few £100 right there; could easily run into the thousands by the time lockdown ends.

Professional licences for software run into the £100s as well.

Also, do you really want the staff for the Secretary of State for Defence; or the Home Secretary; working using an unsecured Plusnet connection? That extra security costs extra.

It won’t just be for expenses to claim back either - a lot of that money will be “charged” by the IT department for the supply and set up of a laptop/desktop; or done via normal purchasing for DSE equipment.

Dogsaresomucheasier Just because your employer is shit, doesn’t mean you should drag the rest of us down to your level.

It’s perfectly reasonable to expect an employer to contribute to costs incurred as a result of doing your job.

Maybe this is something you should be raising with your Union rep rather than expecting the rest of us to have to be out of pocket as well?

never heard of this in the private sector

Never heard of what? Employers treating their staff well?

We can order monitors and whatever other stuff we need. As a pp said it's to do with security/ confidentiality as well.

I do believe £10k is excessive and have never heard of this in the private sector?

You’ve got to be kidding? You’ve never heard of a private sector company providing equipment to workers for use outside the office? So bankers buy their own at home trading desks? And my husband and I secretly paid for our own laptops without realising? And the thousands of work BlackBerrys out there were all bought by the users?

Give it a rest, you know fine well that lots of employers pay for employee equipment. Why should the work of Parliament be any different?