No office, no desk, no 'phone: the lot of the new MP

Stephen Kinnock: hot-desking while he waits for an office at Westminster

He may have a famous name but he doesn't have an office or a phone yet.

Stephen Kinnock, as the son of a former Labour leader, is one of the better-known among the 2015 intake of MPs.

But like the rest of his intake he has to wait for behind-the-scenes negotiations to conclude before he can be allocated a permanent office at Westminster.

"So no office," the Aberavon MP tells me. "We're hot-desking. I have been given a telephone extension on the system here in parliament but as I don't actually have a telephone or a desk or an office for any of those things I'm not sure what good that does me at the moment." He says constituents can contact him via a number on his website.

Liz Saville Roberts is Plaid Cymru's first woman MP. Unusually, although not uniquely among Plaid MPs, she was also born in England. "I am also proud of the fact that I come from south-east London and have been chosen and succeeded in the campaign to become Dwyfor Meirionydd's Member of Parliament," she says.

"I would like to think that I am challenging stereotypes on a number of fronts but at the end of the day I've always been a woman and I've always come from south-east London so I can't actually feel different in any way."

Craig Williams held off a Labour challenge to hold Cardiff North for the Conservatives. He's benefited from a new induction programme with new MPs offered help from designated "buddies" among the parliamentary staff.

"I've had a couple of tours," he says. "Not that it helps because it's a bit like a rat warren in here. It's like Hogwarts, I think, but it's a great building to get lost in - and I'm going to continue getting lost but I'm sure it'll come before long."

Mr Williams knows where his office facilities are - he just struggles to find them. "I've got a desk and a phone in committee room 17. It's up three floors that way, left-right, left-right. I get lost twice getting there but there's something in committee room 17 for me."

I ask Stephen Kinnock if he has had any advice from his father. The question is met with a familiar throaty chuckle. "What my Dad has always said to me is 'be yourself. You'll get criticism, you'll get people having a go at you, the key thing is to never take it personally. This is the job'."

Before he can get on with the job, he and the other 649 MPs have to be sworn in, taking the oath of allegiance. They have to do this in English, but can repeat the oath - or affirmation - in Welsh, Scottish Gaelic or Cornish. Without it, they can't take part in Commons debates or votes - or even get paid.