The MP's Complaints Service*
| Published date | 01 March 1990 |
| Date | 01 March 1990 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1990.tb01801.x |
The
MP’s
Complaints Service*
Richard Rawlings*
*
A
crowd
of
people waited outside the office
of
the
MP
.
. .
‘It
is
like trying to meet God’, one woman complained.
‘Why, what do you want to ask him?’
. .
.
‘It’s just troubles at home. Last Saturday, they came and arrested my man
. . .
But how does,
he pay poll tax? He has no job’
.
. .
A
scene from Kenya at independence. From Ngiigi,
A
Grain
of
Wheat
(1967),
p.
61
7.
Timeliness
The length of time for cases to travel up and down the grievance chain is important as
is the identification of slow stretches. Speed of process will be observed to dictate the
substance
of
replies, and vice versa.
Also,
this is the opportunity to look more closely
at Mr G’s
modus
operand
and to highlight the influence of local political context caught.
fleetingly in Mr
E’s
reluctance to jeopardise relations with a friendly Labour council.’
Table
6
shows the length of time for which cases raised by Members were open. Single
cycle and multicycle cases are included
so
that the measurement is from the initial plea
for help to the date when the final communication from the respondent authority was relayed.
Table
6
discloses that most cases were open for between
2
weeks and
3
months, with
just over a quarter of cases for longer.
Table
6:
Length
of
time which
cases
which were pressed were open
Conservative Labour
Alliance
Total
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
1
Up to
1
month
22
8
35 33 22 40 41 31 26
Up to
3
months
453 75 53 53 75 40
88
69
-
1
-
-
Up
to
1 week
4 1 1
Up to 2 weeks
37 3 6 3 3 16
3
3
Up to
6
months
146
10
7
12 23 14 37 43
Up to
1
year 102
9
8
3 12 7
28
35
1
year+
37
4
1
-
4 1 11 16
1007
Generally, Members themselves were prompt. The periods of time between receipt of
a
constituent’s request and the representation to authority, and between receipt of the
response
and
its communication to the constituent, were commonly just a few days. There
was then a trade-off between speed and limited investigation2 at the preliminary stage.
Also
Mr
D’s
office, which
in
welfare matters made most efforts at that stage, was efficiently
*The first part of this article appears in the January
1990
issue of the Review at p.
22.
**Law Department, London School of Economics and Political Science. The research was supported
by
the
Nuffield Foundation’s small grant scheme.
I
should like to
thank
Jeanette Kayes for contributing her computer
skills and Michael Radford, Shurouk Al-Sabbagh and Ingrid Sutherland for assisting with the fieldwork.
1
See above, p. 27.
2
See section 3b above.
The
Modem
Law Review
53:2 March
1990
0026-7961
149
lhe Modem Law Review
[Vol.
53
run; the visits to claimants which were such a feature of the service were scheduled for
the week following the surgery at which the MP was first approached. Exceptionally
however, in a surprising number of Mr
G’s
cases a request or response was ‘sat on’. On
most occasions the constituent was only inconvenienced but one or two cases stand out.
Parents concerned about their daughter’s schooling were peeved to learn that their complaints
had not been raised six weeks into term.
In assessing delay, the number of cycles in a case may be relevant. Communications
multiply and it may be some time before the constituent, in receipt of a reply, comes back
for more. But this does not explain the differences between offices evident in Table
6;
the proportions of cases which offices pressed more than once are ~imilar.~ The key is
the reply time.
In the case of central government, no clear pattern emerges in this study from enquiries
directed locally or to region, save in tax where there was praise for the timeliness of the
officers appointed to respond to MPs. Members were well aware that writing to the minister
slows things down; Mr
B,
who reckoned a month to six weeks for even the most routine
reply, knew this from experience. For instance in a case where no special provision was
being made for a remand prisoner who was deaf, mute and unable
to
read or write and
whose mother, on a visit, found disoriented, Mr
B
wrote requesting urgent action. By
the time the ministry got round to seeking further particulars, the man had been released.
It
is interesting to observe, on the one hand, this senior Tory extracting
a
personal apology
from the Home Secretary, but on the other his secretary blaming herself rather than the
Department’s failure to flag urgent correspondence. This was one occasion on which she
felt she should have telephoned.
The major reason why Mr
F
and in particular Mr
G
figure
so
prominently in the categories
of longer case in Table
6
is to be found in local government and more precisely council
housing. Table
7
sets out the particular timings.
Table
7:
Length
of
time which council housing matters which were pressed
were
open
Conservative Labour Alliance
Total
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
Up
to
1
week
1
Up
to
2
weeks
13
Up
to
1
month
74
Up
to
3
months
167
Up
to
6
months
72
Up
to
1
year
53
1 year+ 22
402
-
1
1
8
1
15 20 17
19
13 61
10 4 25
5
2
20
9
1
51 48 133
-
-
-
1
11
34
31
22
12
111
The view in Mr F’s office was that the negative nature of replies led to slow responses
from the local authority. Staff found ‘great difficulty with getting answers from the council,
especially on housing’ and a ‘fair amount of hostility to MP interventions’. There is a
‘large number of them and they know we know what the answer is going to be
. .
.
So
they get fed up wasting their time
.
. .
’
The extreme case4 was that of Mr
G
where the local council, as we remarked, was
politically hostile as well as hard-pressed. When the Member was elected an instruction
was issued that his enquiries were to take low priority. In addition, estate officers, to
3
See
below, p.
151.
4
Colin Moynihan MP has complained of similar problems in obtaining replies from Lewisham council;
H.C.
Deb.,
Vol.
89,
cols.
361-365.
150
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