Niche but interesting alert! The Committee on Standards has made a recommendation about the register of interests of MPs' staff It highlights the difficult balance between transparency, accountability & security interests but also possibly narrows the use of the register in an unsatisfactory way

The register is a list of names of all staff with a pass sponsored by an MP, and certain relevant employment, gifts or benefits they receive. Changes mean this will include all staff with access to the network, more than double the current list - essentially extending to constituency based staff

Expanding the list raises security and safety concerns for constituency staff who are not currently identifiable by name, unless they or the MP choose to do so. The decision of the committee is that in expanding the list, they remove staff names from the list and replace them with job titles.

Not knowing who, by name, the entries relate to will make it harder to clock non-registration of interests. The Committee acknowledges this but on balance decided security concerns mean the reduction in transparency is 'proportionate' Note some disagreement between members & the Commissioner on this

For anyone interested in MPs' staff (me!) this is very interesting, there is no central list of job titles / number of staff working for MPs unless you FoI IPSA for the data - so will this mean we will have a full list of job titles by MP?!! Unsure...

The primary purpose of the list is a record of interests, but it's also a record staff in lieu of any good public data. If this list only contains the job titles of staff with interests to register then it is unsatisfactory as a tool for transparency and as useful data on how MPs staff their offices