MP’s responsiveness down by 13%, says WriteToThem.com

Embargo: For immediate release ​ Links: https://www.writetothem.com/stats, www.writetothem.com, www.mysociety.org ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Contact: Myfanwy Nixon, Marketing & Communications, mySociety. ​ Email: [email protected] ​

● Number of constituents’ emails MPs respond to down by 13% since 2005 ● 50% of messages go unanswered ● New MPs performing worse on responsiveness than incumbents ● Sadiq Khan, and Jeremy Corbyn ‘very low’ response rate

Constituents wrote over 90,000 emails to their MP via the website www.WriteToThem.com ​ this year — and most expected an answer.

And yet, the chances of receiving one have been tumbling year on year, say mySociety, the charity behind WriteToThem. Their annual analysis of responses to the question ‘did you receive a reply?’, posed two weeks after a user has sent a message, reveals a steady downturn in ‘yes’ results through the years.

In 2005, when the data was first run, 63% of those who replied to the survey gave a positive response. Since then, that number has been declining until now — when, going by over 50,000 survey responses, there’s only a 50/50 chance that your MP will respond. mySociety don’t have any firm answers as to why MPs are getting worse at responding — but it’s a trend they don’t like the look of. “Constituents turn to their MPs when they have problems that can’t be solved elsewhere, or when they feel very strongly about an issue”, says Marketing and Communications manager Myfanwy Nixon.

“Responding to constituents’ emails isn’t the only duty of an MP, but it is an important one, and one of the most direct channels they have to engage with the people they represent.

“Some of the MPs in our rankings manage very well, despite having large quantities of mail — Gerald Kaufman, for example, received over 500 mails from users, one of the largest postbags via WriteToThem, but managed to reply to 79% of surveyed users. So it can be done.”

Full figures can be seen at https://www.writetothem.com/stats, where the public is ​ ​ encouraged to check the performance of their own MP.

Best at responding Top performer of all 642 MPs who qualified for inclusion is Jason McCartney, MP for Colne ​ ​ Valley, W Yorks, who responded to over 96% of emails where users submitted the questionnaire ­ 81 out of 84 mails.

Bottom performer Worst is David Burrowes, MP for Enfield Southgate, with a response rate of just 7%, based ​ ​ on his 5 responses to 70 users who returned surveys.

New vs old Think the new MPs, elected in 2015, might be keener to fulfil their duties? Surprisingly, that’s not the case. On average, incumbent MPs responded to 53% of constituents’ messages, while the newly­elected managed only 46%.

Male vs female mySociety were curious to know whether there’s a gender divide when it comes to responsiveness. There is, but it’s very slight, and it’s not biased the way you might have guessed: on average male MPs responded to 52% of correspondence; female MPs to 50%.

Famous figures Notable MPs give a mixed performance. gets a ‘high’ ranking, having ​ ​ responded to 120 of the 174 surveyed users (69%) and Tim Farron is also marked ‘high’ at ​ ​ 71%, having responded to 62 out of the 87 users who returned surveys.

Others do considerably worse. Sadiq Khan responded to 21 out of the 100 who returned ​ ​ surveys, Boris Johnson was just behind with 19 out of 100 and Jeremy Corbyn was at ​ ​ ​ ​ 14%, having replied to only 18 of the 133 users who completed the survey.

Let off lightly , a perennially poor performer in the rankings, escapes this year as the ​ site ‘had bad contact details’: an email address given by Duncan Smith’s office to the site proved to be sending users’ messages to an aide who had moved on. This email address returned auto­replies advising correspondents to use a parliamentary email address which, due to a typo, was invalid.

Under the circumstances there was, say mySociety, every reason to rank Duncan Smith with a zero for responsiveness, though it seems the real issue is poor administration.

Methodology mySociety’s rankings are based only on emails sent through the WriteToThem website. Where response levels were particularly low, a further check was performed to confirm that the site’s database held the correct contact details.

Previously, data has been run to include a calendar year from January to December. This year, the data was run to cover the full year since the General Election, with an additional period to allow users to fill in the surveys. WriteToThem has measures in place to prevent mass­mailings or messages to MPs other than the user’s own.

Users of the site sent a total of 203,429 messages to representatives in the year 2015–16. This included 90,175 messages to MPs, and 113,245 to other representatives, including Lords, councillors and MEPs.

Although messages sent via WriteToThem make up only a small proportion of the correspondence received by MPs, mySociety feel that 90,000 is a good sample size on which to base rankings.