.
Date:
29 January 2015
To:
Liam Stoneley
From:
John Wilson, Research Analyst, Parliamentary Research Service
Request:
Cost of parliament
Date of request:
26 January 2015
You asked:
1. Do you have any reports or articles that breakdown the cost to run Parliament, either by
the day, hour or minute and how that was calculated?
a) I have compiled the following table that provides a breakdown of costs by the time
periods you specify. It shows for example that parliament cost $310 per minute in 2014.
b) Article: See Nick Wilson, Nhung Nghiem, Rachel Foster, Linda Cobiac & Tony Blakely,
“Estimating the cost of new public health legislation”,
Bulletin of the World Health
Organization http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/90/7/11-097584/en/
2. I would also be interested in what this cost encompasses. For example, when the
Parliament is in Committee, does it only use the salaries of those Members in the
Parliament or all 121 Members?
These costs are based on the appropriations for Vote: Parliamentary Service and Vote:
office of the Clerk. It excludes appropriation expenses for DPMC, PCO, and Ministerial
as they are considered governmental or executive agencies.
It should also be noted that:
a) The costs include, inter alia, the salaries of all 121 MPs and their accommodation and
travel expenses, the funding of their parliamentary and out of parliament offices, the
parties’ support staff and research units, the salaries of the staff of the Parliamentary
Service (Library, Security, Catering etc), staff and operational costs of the Office of the
Clerk.
b) Increasing the number of bills passed, the number of sitting hours or the number of
minutes spent in committee does not increase the minute or unit cost of Parliament – just
the reverse. As the amount of legislation passed or committee hours increases, the unit
cost of parliament decreases. Contrast 2012 with 2013 for example, where despite a
higher budget in 2013 more sitting hours saw the cost per sitting hour decrease.
