Thanks to David Cameron’s stubbornness, it looks as though MPs will enjoy
their summer recess without being summoned back to Parliament early, in
spite of one of the worst periods in international affairs for many years.
The Prime Minister has returned to his second summer holiday, and presumably
other MPs are doing the same: relaxing on beaches, clearing their moats:
whatever it is out-of-touch Westminster bubble dwellers are supposed to do.
Except, as any MP will remind you given half the chance, that’s not what the
summer recess is for. MPs, like teachers, can get a little chippy when you
suggest that they’re not working flat out the whole time. In recess, they
return to their constituencies to try to catch up on everything left hanging
while they are at the Commons.
One study found that a third of MPs spend up to half their time solving
problems on behalf of their constituents. For another third it’s more like
three quarters. Quite right, you might think. Why aren’t they spending all
their time solving voters’ issues? And then you look at the sort of queries
that make up the 200 new cases many receive each month.
Moat-clearing it ain’t. When I sat in on Labour MP Tristram Hunt’s
constituency surgery in Stoke recently, I watched as a stream of people
entered with bags stuffed full of horribly big piles of paper that showed
just how horribly they were being treated by the state, the landlord, the
bank, or [fill in blank]. They dumped this heaving mass of letters, bills,
final demands and court summonses on the trestle table Mr Hunt had set up in
one corner of a vast gym. Then they asked him to sort them out.
MPs must give the impression they are all-powerful: why else would a woman
have asked the Tory MP Tim Loughton for advice on how to make the man who
had dumped her change his mind? Perhaps the man who left a 3am voicemail
with another MP telling him he was having a heart attack had similarly high
opinions of his representative (when a panicked caseworker phoned back the
following morning, the chap was fine).
No comments:
Post a Comment