Time to stop MPs’ surgeries

HARROWING details that emerged during the trial of the murderer of Tory MP Sir David Amess have led to an urgent rethink about MPs’ accessibility to the public.

Senior Tory MP Sir Charles Walker tells me that Sir David’s stabbing by an Islamic State fanatic should be a ‘wake-up call’ and wants a review on whether MPs should continue to hold constituency surgeries to give people an opportunity to meet them.

Although the killer cased Michael Gove’s house and plotted attacks

on Sir Keir Starmer as well as other MPs, he finally targeted Sir David because he was ‘the easiest’.

The Southend West MP liked to host Friday surgeries at a church but Sir Charles says such open-house and publicly advertised meetings are ‘from another age’.

He added: ‘With Zoom, email and increased staff numbers, most issues can be dealt with on a much more immediate basis and there’s scant need for someone to meet their MP in person to have their case dealt with.’ The Tory grandee says people who

still need a face-to-face with their MP could arrange a meeting without the location being advertised.

Some argue that scrapping surgeries would make our political system less democratic.

But keeping the archaic practice makes MPs too vulnerable and, I fear, will ultimately deter good people from public office. That will do a lot more damage to democracy than scrapping a weekly meet-andgreet ever could.