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Jacob Rees-Mogg’s decision to force MPs back to Westminster despite the ongoing
Coronavirus pandemic has enraged politicians of all parties.
The first example of how a socially distanced Commons would work was dubbed “batshit” by one MP, who along with others lined up in a kilometre-long queue for a vote which took 40 minutes to complete on Tuesday evening.
It has been particularly galling for MPs who have been “incredibly busy” in lockdown, dealing with a “relentless” stream of casework as constituents deal with the health and economic fallout of Covid-19.
HuffPost
UK spoke to five MPs to find out how the heart of the UK’s democracy coped with the biggest peacetime restrictions in living memory, and whether the period could change parliament in the future.‘The workload was huge’All the MPs reported a massive increase in constituents seeking help with health and economic issues, and sharing heartfelt stories of their families’ experiences, particularly in the early stages of the lockdown.
The SNP’s Hannah Bardell carried out an audit which showed a 300% increase in casework for her Livingstone constituents.
Tory Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) described a “huge workload” with 300-500 extra emails a day.
And Labour’s Tracy Brabin said she still had 500 outstanding “policy” requests - work which requires a political response - that she had to push to one side as she dealt with urgent constituency work.Veteran Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael noted: “Casework went through the roof in the first two or three weeks.
“Then the volume decreased but the complexity increased.”
Much of the complex work was helping constituents navigate ever-changing and knotty rules, from when to self isolate or go to work, to applying for universal credit, the furlough scheme or business grants.
Labour’s Wes Streeting says he and his staff in Ilford North were “inundated”.
“We’ve been getting fewer generic campaign emails on issues people care about where you can send the same reply to everyone.
“What we’ve been getting is lots of very personal, individual cases that require personal focus and attention.”
As the crisis wore relentlessly on to its peak and the death rate rose, MPs’ work only increased and became more “urgent and emotional”, according to Brabin.
Veteran Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael noted: “Casework went through the roof in the first two or three weeks.
“Then the volume decreased but the complexity increased.”
Much of the complex work was helping constituents navigate ever-changing and knotty rules, from when to self isolate or go to work, to applying for universal credit, the furlough scheme or business grants.
Labour’s Wes Streeting says he and his staff in Ilford North were “inundated”.
“We’ve been getting fewer generic campaign emails on issues people care about where you can send the same reply to everyone.
“What we’ve been getting is lots of very personal, individual cases that require personal focus and attention.”
As the crisis wore relentlessly on to its peak and the death rate rose, MPs’ work only increased and became more “urgent and emotional”, according to Brabin.Brabin says: “The Dominic Cummings debacle, whilst I didn’t have thousands of emails, people came to me who never have before with very heartfelt, personal emails that need a personal response.
“That is also a task where you have to handwrite a letter to everyone who has taken the time to share their family’s experience.
“So you need to take that empathetic approach that every MP should have.”
Combined with the “relentless” nature of working from home, it became “overwhelming” for some MPs, Brabin says.
And it is even more difficult for MPs’ staff, who are not being called back to Westminster.
Bardell says she has been hosting team quizzes and wellness sessions for her staff over video conferencing, and gave them a “free” week off without using up annual leave to give them a “mental break”.
It has been a “huge challenge”, she says, as “one of the major things for the team is being together to deal with complex, difficult and distressing cases”.
“We’ve dealt with a number of constituents who have lost a family member to Covid and they have been really really difficult cases,” Bardell adds.
Streeting says his staff were “really putting in the extra hours and extra miles”
“A lot of people who work for MPs do so because they are motivated by public service and so they are just as committed to supporting the public as we are.
“I’ve had to say to my team they need to look after their work-life balance and take time out and have rest days.”‘You had far more contact with people’The crisis forced some MPs to experiment with new ways of working.
Stafford says he has held constituency surgeries over video calls and found it made things “a lot more efficient”.
He also plans to continue holding
Facebook live Q&As.
“I was a bit sceptical starting off to be honest but I was amazed with how many people saw it,” the Tory MP says.
“Especially those people who aren’t necessarily politically engaged. You had far more contact with people for whom politics isn’t part of their day-to-day lives.” For others, like Brabin who is working at home with three furloughed adults, it has been harder.
“My office is a table in my bedroom, so I fall out of bed, there’s no travel time when you have the chance to reflect and think, I’m at my desk and then come 7pm I can’t do anymore,” she says.
“And then you almost want to fall back into bed.
“The relentless nature of it has made MPs feel it’s quite overwhelming.
“You lose that variety of meeting people, going to a factory, visiting a food bank.”
Tory MPs have also had help from ministers where others did not.
Stafford said the government had adopted a “sort of war time, hands to the pump” attitude and made themselves available to answer MP’s queries over WhatsApp.
“If you have had a particular question I can
WhatsApp the minister or special adviser and get an official response straight away rather than going through the usual channels of writing a letter and doing that more official stuff,” he says.
“That has been a theme for this, it has worked a lot more efficiently for constituents when it comes to Covid.
“You are getting answers much quicker.
“Obviously non-Covid issues have been massively delayed because every government department is up to its neck, understandably because of Covid.”‘It was way too stilted’While Cabinet Office minister Penny Mordaunt has been hosting Q&As with opposition MPs they have found much of their wider correspondence has fallen by the wayside.
On discovering Tories’ hotline to ministers, Bardell says: “That is news to me.
“We’re finding a complete deaf ear in terms of the small limited companies falling through the cracks for example.”
Streeting says: “I raised an issue about support for my council and I felt that phoning into Penny Mordaunt got that problem resolved.
“But there have been countless other examples where the information and support for government departments hasn’t come back in the same way, so that’s made things more of a challenge.”
As well as helping constituents, MPs play another important role by holding ministers to account in parliament.
Most acknowledge that video conference Commons made that
Job harder, with preselected questions, narrow and time-limited debates and no opportunities to buttonhole ministers.
Stafford says: “It was too stage managed, it was going through the motions of parliament but not actually doing the job of holding the government to account.”
Defending the reimposition of physical voting, Stafford says it’s crucial to give MPs the chance to put pressure on ministers in the lobbies - although how this works with two metre social distancing is another question.
But Carmichael admits on the lockdown: “You miss out on the social interaction, you miss out on the water cooler chat and the gossip.
“And in politics that is a lot.”
Brabin said she would take advantage of the return to Westminster to try and change the law by tabling amendments.
“You feel more able in the building to go into the table office and speak about things you are concerned about.
“And it is about being able to grab people.”
Streeting feels like the comeback will also help widen the debate as the severity of the pandemic declines.
“Normally you have many opportunities each day to get issues on the agenda but we’ve had question times curtailed, we haven’t had adjournment debates or Westminster Hall debates and government business has been quite narrow,” he says.
“People sometimes forget that coronavirus is the dominant issue but there are others that need attention and we need to be able to put to ministers.”‘People are being deliberately excluded’ Bardell however feels the lockdown has highlighted the dysfunctional nature of parliament, which thrives on informal chats in wood-panelled corridors and confrontational debates in the chamber.
The SNP says: “If that is the only way to hold them to account, then we have some real issues with our
Democratic process.
“In many cases the answers have been better and the discourse has been better because there’s less of the boorishness and the shouting and the nasty environment.
“I’m sure it suits some people but it’s not a nice place to be a lot of the time, particularly during PMQs, and I don’t think the public like it either.
“The whole world of work is changing and I think it’s important that parliament leads that and reflects that.”
Boris Johnson has since relented to criticism and will now allow shielded MPs to cast votes by proxy.
But some MPs see the callback as a political move, designed to help the government rather than parliament.
“We hear talk about it being about getting an audience behind
Boris Johnson but of course they’re not going to have that option because there will still only be 50 MPs in the chamber,” Carmichael says.
“They are wanting to send signals about the lockdown ending but they are taking a risk.
“There are 650 MPs, that’s potentially 650 people picking up the virus in Westminster and taking it back home to their communities.”
Streeting says the approach epitomises where the government has gone “spectacularly wrong”, in making a “whole load of really weird decisions largely for political reasons”.
“If we were doing the stupid kilometre-long queue because Jacob Rees-Mogg was saying we haven’t got electronic voting systems set up and it’s going to take a while, that would be one thing.
“But given we’ve been using these voting systems for weeks it is so maddening because it’s clearly just dogmatic, there’s no need for it.”
He adds: “I think cynically they know not everyone is going to be able to return and participate and I think there is an extent to which people are being deliberately excluded.
“We’ve shown we can work from home and that we can work from home quite effectively, and while that’s not an ideal situation and no one wants these arrangements permanently, I think we have shown and to their credit the parliamentary authorities have shown MPs can remotely, get the job done and keep people safe.
“I think we’re modelling the wrong example by encouraging people to return to parliament when for many of them it won’t be safe to do so.”Related... Jacob Rees-Mogg Forces MPs Into 'Absurd' Giant Socially Distanced Queue To Vote I’m An MP, And My Wife’s Carer. Bringing Back Parliament Forces Me Into An Impossible Choice MPs Vulnerable To Coronavirus Promised Proxy Votes In Government Climbdown