Obviously I do not go quite as far as that, but when we had the firebreak in Wales—the Labour Government in Wales have dealt with all of this much better, delivering a clearer message all the time, but that is by the by—some of my constituents said to me strongly that they did not want me to come to Parliament, because they thought it would be inappropriate for me to do so as they were not allowed to travel. I make no judgment—some MPs felt they had to come, some felt that they did not, and all the rest of it—but the truth of the matter is that there are different rules in different parts of the country, and there will be different rules in different parts of England in the forthcoming weeks. It would seem to make far more sense, on an equality basis, to allow everyone to participate on an equal basis.
The Leader of the House denies this—I am sorry to be so obsessed with the Leader of the House, but I was looking forward to a long speech and we have barely had a word from him today, which is a terrible disappointment to us all—but on occasion he has intimated that we cannot really do our job as an MP unless we are here. My experience is that, of all my 19 years as a Member, this has been the toughest year as an MP in terms of the understandable demand from constituents. Most arrives by email, not from people physically coming through the door—several Members have mentioned that they have not held surgeries in person, but have been doing them online. On social media, Facebook in particular, I have been dealing with many thousands of cases every week. Some questions are not right—such as, “Is Lidl open?”, or, “How much are nappies in Sainsbury’s?”, neither of which I knew the answer to, but in a way, it has been a good thing for Parliament that many MPs have had engagement with their constituents that they never had in the previous year.
It is tough, because there is no point going on holiday this year as an MP, because frankly, at all hours of the day, we have been dealing endlessly with requests from constituents. A lot of the job we can do perfectly well from our living room, back study, outhouse or stable, depending on how grand or ungrand the house is.