Maternity Pay And Cover For MPs

Date published: 18 June 2019

IPSA’s Chair, Ruth Evans, has commented on maternity pay and cover for Members of Parliament.

"Members of Parliament are paid in full while on maternity, paternity or adoption leave. They receive a full salary from the day they are elected until the day they leave Parliament.

“IPSA provides additional funding for all MPs’ offices to cover absences. To provide MPs with extra money, IPSA asks for an explanation to be provided of how the additional money would be spent.

“We support proposals to allow maternity cover for MPs, and this would be for the House of Commons to take forward. We will work closely with Parliament on any changes they wish to introduce and on providing the funding to support this. The IPSA Board will be discussing these issues next week, and meeting the Speaker’s Committee in July, to support any move by Parliament to assist MPs.

“In the last few years, we have more than doubled the funding available for MPs’ dependants to support family life and will continue to strive to modernise our rules.”

ENDS

For more details contact IPSA's Press Office: communications@theipsa.org.uk

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Notes to Editors:

  1. IPSA was created in 2009 by the Parliamentary Standards Act. The Act was amended in 2010 by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. Together they gave IPSA three main responsibilities:

    • To regulate MPs’ business costs and expenses

    • To determine MPs’ pay and pension arrangements

    • To provide financial support to MPs in carrying out their parliamentary functions.

  2. IPSA is independent of Parliament and the Government. This allows us to take decisions about the rules on business costs and expenses and on MPs’ pay ourselves, without interference.

  3. The Scheme of MPs' Business Costs and Expenses ('the Scheme') governs what MPs can and cannot claim for. We review our rules regularly and consult the public when we do so.

  4. Every two months we publish around 25,000 claims for costs and expenses by MPs and their staff. Once a year we publish aggregate data for MPs’ spending and other aspects of their activity.