Overworked, pay cuts, little family life and media pressure - welcome to life as an MP

THEY may have been pilloried for their electioneering and extravagant waste of taxpayers' money in the expenses scandal - but the working conditions of the average MP at Westminster have had a "devastating" impact on their personal and family lives, a report has claimed.

Long hours, demanding constituents, pressure from the media and the lack of any boundaries between work and leisure time were cited as reasons for dissatisfaction.

More than half of new MPs surveyed by the Hansard Society said they had taken a pay cut by being elected to the Commons in 2010, with almost a third saying that the MP's salary of 65,738 represented a drop of 30,000 or more in their annual income.

Despite this apparent downgrade, some 82 per cent of those questioned said that they intend to make politics a long-term career and more than half aspire to become ministers. The survey, entitled A Year In The Life, took evidence from 59 of the Commons' 232 new members in August and 57 in April to find out how they were adapting to life at Westminster.

Having arrived in Parliament expecting to work a 60-hour week, the new MPs said that they were in fact working an average of 69 hours every week. Some 7 per cent said they were working more than 90 hours and just 2 per cent less than 50 hours.

One MP told researchers: "I have no leisure time. I rarely see my family.

"It is very hard. I work all the time, even at home."

Another said: "Thank goodness my wife is supportive and I have no children. I have virtually no life of my own now."

• From business to back-benches

The new MPs split their working time between Westminster and their constituencies by a rough ratio of two-to-one, but said that their constituencies took up most of their time, with a 28 per cent share going on constituents' casework and 21 per cent on local meetings and events - compared to just 21 per cent spent in the Commons chamber.

The survey found half of new MPs were dissatisfied with the Commons sitting hours, which regularly involve debates late in the evening.

But just 14 per cent expressed dissatisfaction with the parliamentary calendar, which gives MPs around 19 weeks away from Westminster each year.

However, despite the public storm over MPs' abuse of their expenses system in 2009, some 79 per cent of those questioned expressed unhappiness with the new regime operated by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, and 85 per cent said the induction they received from IPSA on first arriving was inadequate.The new expenses system was branded "bureaucratic", "inflexible", "cumbersome" and "time-consuming".

One MP warned that working conditions would drive some MPs out of politics, saying: "Parliament's woeful inability to confront and modernise pay and conditions for MPs is a tragedy.

"We are now living through a post-expenses period in which parliamentary morale has collapsed and in which a new generation of untainted MPs are finding it impossible to cope with split life, seven-day-a-week life, young families etc on 60,000. Many will leave."

The author of the Hansard Society report, Matt Korris, said the results raised questions over the way Parliament carried out its business. He said: "There is a strong sense that many of the new MPs find the lifestyle attached to the job to be overwhelming. Nonetheless, they identify loss of family time, communication with friends, financial hardship, and ill-health as real and detrimental consequences of becoming an MP.

"These findings - that the new MPs are working long hours to the detriment of their personal and family lives - raise questions as to whether the current systems and modes of working are the most appropriate and effective."