Eve Burt was only 23 when she began working for her husband, Alistair Burt, now the MP for North East Bedfordshire and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. At the time, she was the youngest working wife in the House of Commons.

Now 50 and still working as her husband’s office manager/ executive secretary, she is adamant that voters will be the losers if the Kelly proposals go through.

“Constituents will get a reduced service if spouses are barred from working,” Mrs Burt said.

“I don’t plan on answering the work phone seven days a week like I do at the moment, and it is unlikely to save money, as Alistair will employ another member of staff.”

The “talk of being ‘phased out’ sounds quite sinister”, she said. “How can you make a bunch of people redundant who’ve got contracts? And what would House authorities do about people who form a relationship within the House — not unheard of! Are we going to go back to the days of women having to give up careers?”

Mrs Burt’s day begins with some pillow talk with her husband and boss about constituency meetings, followed by a rush to sort out his shirts for the week. She organises most aspects of his working life from the diary meeting they hold on a Sunday evening at home.

When The Times met her in the office she shares with her husband in Portcullis House, a stone’s throw from the House of Commons, her working day, “running Alistair Burt plc”, had ended at 11pm the night before, with Mr Burt asking a work question. Mrs Burt admitted that the 24-hour nature of the job did sometimes get too much.

“I say, ‘I don’t care, I just got into bed’. The job never stops,” Mrs Burt said.

For this she is paid £33,500, which is not the top of the permitted range. The couple feel their working partnership has strengthened, rather than tested, their relationship — in the same way it did for Mr Burt’s parents, a GP and his wife who organised the surgery.

“The job is so all-encompassing, it’s quite hard on marriages when people don’t get to see each other. Quite a lot of our friends in this business have divorced.”

Mr Burt said: “The assumption that this is dodgy is deeply unfair.” His wife added: “We should be required to be open and accountable. If someone thinks we’re unfit, it should be perfectly able for that appointment to be double-checked.”

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