No. Paragraph 84 of the Guide to the Code of Conduct states that “Other non-financial interests are not normally registered, though it may be necessary in certain circumstances to declare them. Such interests include: other trusteeships, for example of private estates; unpaid ordinary membership of voluntary organisations or pressure groups; membership of churches or other religious bodies or organisations. The Registrar is available to advise Members in cases of uncertainty.”

In June 2012 a working group established by the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker reported on the operation and funding of all-party groups. The working group had three members of the House on it. It heard from the then chairman of the House of Lords Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct; conducted an email survey of members of the House; and held a discussion meeting open to all members of the House.

Following the working group’s report the House of Commons Committee on Standards began an inquiry into all-party groups, taking its first evidence in June 2013. In view of concern that the inquiry had yet to hear from any member of the Lords, in July 2013 the Lord Speaker wrote to the party whips and the Convenor of the Crossbench peers to alert them to the inquiry and the fact that members of the House of Lords were entitled to make submissions.

Shortly before the Standards Committee’s report on All-Party Parliamentary Groups was published in November 2013 the chair of that committee wrote to the Lord Speaker alerting her to its emerging thinking and enclosing the new rules which that committee was proposing. The Committee’s report, and the proposed new rules, were agreed by the House of Commons on 13 May 2014.

Since the House of Commons passed the first resolution regulating all-party groups in 1985, decisions on the rules for all-party groups have been for the House of Commons. The Register of All-Party Groups is maintained by the House of Commons Registrar and complaints of breach of the rules are investigated by the House of Commons Commissioner for Standards.

No representations have been made by the House of Lords authorities to the Speaker of the House of Commons about the decision that only MPs can chair All-Party Parliamentary Groups. Since the House of Commons passed the first resolution regulating all-party groups in 1985, decisions on the rules for all-party groups have been for the House of Commons. The Register of All-Party Groups is maintained by the House of Commons Registrar and complaints of breach of the rules are investigated by the House of Commons Commissioner for Standards.

The maximum amount of financial assistance available to opposition parties will be: £259,357 to the Liberal Democrat party in the period 8 May 2015 to 31 March 2016; and £577,871 to the Labour Party in the period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2016. The amount given may be less, depending on claims.

For each subsequent year, the maximum amount for the previous year is increased by the percentage (if any) by which the retail prices index for the previous March has increased compared with the index for the March before that, and (if the resulting amount is not a whole number of pounds) rounded to the nearest pound. The full-year equivalents on which the calculation will be based are £288,525 for the Liberal Democrat party and the amount set out above for the Labour party.

Financial assistance is available to assist the Opposition, the second largest opposition party and the Convenor of the Cross-Bench Peers in carrying out their Parliamentary business.

The tiles in St Stephen’s Hall were not in a special pattern to mark the spot of Spencer Perceval’s assassination as some have suggested; they were poor repairs done after the original tiles were damaged during the Second World War. A plaque has been erected in St Stephen’s Hall near the spot where Spencer Perceval was assassinated.

It is difficult to estimate the amount of asbestos that is present in the Palace of Westminster and on the parliamentary estate because asbestos materials of various types have been widely used (often concealed in ducts and voids, and buried in the fabric of the building) over the years. Before the dangers of asbestos were known it was used extensively in building works due to its strength and resistive properties. Extensive surveying has been undertaken to inform Parliament’s management of asbestos and robust controls are in place to cover checking for the presence of asbestos and the safe execution of works.

Parliament’s Asbestos Management Plan complies with the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 and follows Health and Safety Executive (HSE) guidance. Risks associated with asbestos-containing materials are managed in line with the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The plan is reviewed annually and has been independently audited.

Each presence of asbestos is judged for removal or management in situ on its own merits, in line with best practice and HSE guidance. All staff in the Parliamentary Estates Directorate undergo mandatory training in asbestos management which provides information and advice about the dangers of asbestos, including asbestos-related diseases. Contractors and their staff are also required to undertake this training, or to provide evidence that they have done equivalent training. The removal of asbestos would be part of the minimum outcome of the Palace Restoration and Renewal Programme and is therefore addressed in all the scenarios that are described in the recent Independent Options Appraisal.

The Parliamentary Estates Directorate has links with Historic Royal Palaces and the occupied Royal Palaces. These bodies, along with the Government Historic Estates Unit and the National Trust, share knowledge gained from both the execution of works affecting the historic fabric of their buildings and the extensive research which precedes any such operation. The Restoration and Renewal Programme has had informal, off the record discussions with Historic Royal Palaces from time to time.

The Liaison Committee will undertake its usual review of Select Committee activity across the Parliament when it meets early in June. As part of that review, I will invite the Committee to consider how best to seek the views of Members on the future shape of Select Committee activity. This will lead to a Report to the House.

My original reply set out national insurance and income tax deductions made from all gratuities. In addition, a 3% card commission deduction is made from table gratuities paid using credit and debit cards. This will be reviewed.

The clock, known as Lord Grimthorpe’s regulator, was bequeathed to the House of Lords by Edward Heywood. Lord Grimthorpe was also the designer of Parliament’s Great Clock.

Upon Mr Heywood’s death last year, the clock was delivered to Parliament and potential locations for its display were discussed by the House of Lords Works of Art Committee. As it is a wall mounted timepiece, there were limited locations in which to display it, and the niche at the end of the Content Lobby proved to be ideal as it could be viewed by Peers and is relatively safe from accidental damage. It can also be easily accessed for regular winding and maintenance.

Before it went on display in the February half term Recess, the mechanism and case were restored. There will be a piece explaining the clock’s history in this month’s Red Benches and a short note about it produced in due course.

Between 1 January and 31 December 2014 the House of Lords Administration advertised 81 job vacancies on either the intranet (for internal vacancies) or the parliamentary website (for external vacancies). All external vacancies were open to internal applicants. Of the 81 job vacancies advertised, 42 (51.85%) were advertised to external candidates on the parliamentary website. In many cases, externally advertised vacancies were also uploaded onto job boards and specialist websites.

There are frequent deliveries of mail from the mail screening centre to the Estate. Mail received from the centre before 6.40am is delivered to Members’ offices between 9am and 10am. Mail received between 6.40am and 10am is delivered between 12noon and 1pm. Any mail received later is delivered the following working day.

Delivery of courier items received at the Parcel Office between 8am and 3pm is attempted within two hours. Items received after 3pm are delivered by 10am the following working day.

Royal Mail items requiring signature received before 1.30pm are delivered in a round beginning at 2pm; if items are delayed another round is carried out at 4pm.

All Catering and Retail Services staff, with the exception of staff grade A and above, receive a share of gratuities and function service charges, including those paid on debit and credit cards. The formula for working out the share for each permanent member of staff is based on contracted hours. Gratuities are distributed three times a year through payroll after deductions for National Insurance and income tax. A proportion of gratuities and function service charges is paid to zero hour staff (none of whom has a contractual exclusivity clause) split on a pro-rata basis according to the number of hours they have worked.

The move to Office 365, which necessitated the storage of parliamentary data on Microsoft servers, was a core part of Parliament’s ICT Strategy to deliver improved services, connecting Members to the information that they need from anywhere, at any time and from any device.

Parliamentary ICT worked in collaboration with the Parliamentary Security Director, the Senior Information Risk Owners of both Houses, counsel, other parties and the supplier to assess the risks of the proposed new arrangements. Any risks in relation to conventional cyber-attacks were assessed to be sufficiently mitigated and the risk of potential cross jurisdictional action was considered to be negligible (for example, under the USA PATRIOT Act) given the reassurances that were received.

It would not be for me to comment on possible or actual activities of another country’s authorities.

The recommendations from the Speaker of the House of Commons’ Commission on Digital Democracy are presently being actively considered by the relevant bodies in each House, including comparing existing plans and projects to the recommendations made. As most of the recommendations in the Report concern the House of Commons this answer only covers ongoing work which involves the House of Lords.

The Digital Democracy Report recommended that all published information and broadcast footage produced by Parliament should be freely available online in formats suitable for re-use. In July 2014 the House of Lords Management Board, in parallel with its House of Commons equivalent, committed to making this happen. Significant work has already been completed to develop the data.parliament.uk platform which publishes parliamentary data in easily re-usable formats. The aim is that all parliamentary data that is in the public domain will be available on data.parliament.uk but for some types of information this will take significant work. Current House of Lords Hansard is already published on data.parliament.uk in XML format; Hansard archive data going back to the year 1803 is also available as XML files. The Register of Lords’ Interests is another dataset published on data.parliament.uk platform; this is available as an API which returns data in various formats including JSON and XML. A full list of datasets currently available can be found from the Parliamentary website: www.data.parliament.uk/dataset. Further sets of data will be added in the coming months

Parliament encourages the reuse of material made available. Use of Parliamentary material is governed by the terms of the Open Parliament Licence (further details can be found on the Parliamentary website: www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/open-parliament-licence). The Open Parliament Licence is designed to allow Parliamentary material to be used freely and flexibly, consistent with the way public sector information is made available for use under the Open Government Licence.

The new Director of the Parliamentary Digital Service will join Parliament in March 2015 and take responsibility the new Service from April 2015. He will be tasked with developing and implementing a digital strategy for Parliament that will put digital first, making the best use of digital technology to strengthen the United Kingdom’s key democratic institution while enabling citizens to access Parliament in new and meaningful ways. The new digital strategy will outline the resources and skills needed to deliver it, as well as policies about data and plans for future ICT projects.

The House of Lords Administration directly employs 572 staff (including part-time staff); a small number of these staff may not necessarily work all the time on the estate.

The number of staff employed indirectly through third parties is not centrally counted but the two Houses have a contract for approximately 180 office and property service staff employed through an agency (whose work is not necessarily confined to the Lords estate) and the Catering and Retail Services of the House of Lords employed 321 agency staff in 2014 for a total of 16,732 hours to supplement their core workforce.

The above figures do not include shared services and joint departments where the House of Commons is responsible for their employment, such as Parliamentary ICT and the Parliamentary Estates Directorate.

The House also employs, from time-to-time, consultant staff.

Presently there are no plans to change the number of staff employed indirectly through third parties.

The latest version of Outlook was included in Parliament’s rollout of Microsoft Office 365 during 2014 as part of the Improved Access to Services (IATS) project. IATS also delivered other new services but the costs of that project identifiable as directly related to Microsoft Outlook were £355,667 in 2013-14 and £158,802 in 2014-15 (including VAT).

In addition, Parliament provides each user with Microsoft Windows and its associated Office 365 software at a cost of £98.75 (not including VAT) per user per year.

The service has been deployed to over 7,000 users on the Parliamentary network and the overall system is working to specification. A number of users have reported some issues. In particular they have raised concerns about the design of the new Outlook interface and some have reported problems with passwords needing to be re-entered. Both of these issues have been raised with Microsoft.

If any Member is experiencing difficulties then Parliamentary ICT (PICT) is ready to offer assistance.

In total, 2,234,763 items of mail were received in the Palace of Westminster in 2014.

The Administration does not count which House each item goes to but estimates that approximately 25 per cent (558,691) of these items were destined for the House of Lords. These figures do not include parcels, courier items or internal mail.

The chairs recently placed in the River Restaurant were previously in storage and so there was no cost in this financial year. The new chairs provide greater back support than the benches formerly used. Those benches have been placed into storage; no estimate has been made of their salvage value.

The House of Lords Administration offers three internships: one in the Committee Office and two in the library. These posts are salaried. In addition, the Administration offers an apprenticeship in the library and up to 24 work experience placements for school students.