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Casework: should you be doing it?
Latest revision: 27 February 2006
As well as reading the 2004 article by Pilgrim (see below) have a look at the Commons Library's authoritative Standard Note "Members and Constituency Etiquette" which was updated in February 2006.This note discusses the conventions that have developed as a result of the relationship between individual Members and their constituencies. It covers the issues of constituency casework, raising matters relating to another Member’s constituency in the House, and visits and speaking engagements in other constituencies.
Click
here to read our pdf version 
63KB. Lots of good information in there which you really need to have as
part of your essential toolkit.
Seen this punchy article by Pilgrim in the June/July 2004 edition of Progress magazine? It's entitled "Basket case work" and asks important questions about casework undertaken by MPs...and that inevitably means you, their Staff.
Let us have your thoughts on this, using our Feedback Form. Individual identities will not be revealed but please let us have your job title and the region your constituency is in. See section below for your responses.
Here's the pdf
version
206KB. With grateful thanks to Progress for permission to publish
the article on w4mp. Their website is at: www.progressives.org.uk
And here's the full text of the article:
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MPs
are not social workers. By pursuing the complaints of individual
constituents they are simply putting more pressure where it is least
needed. MP’s
casework is a good thing. In a parliament ignored by the media, where
the government tightly controls every clause of the legislative
process, it is the most useful thing backbench MPs do. MPs are taking
on an ever-higher number of cases a year, employing more and more
staff to service them. Casework is a very Good Thing. Right? Really?
The transformation of MPs from representatives and legislators into
social workers is, in fact, a nuisance that could rapidly grow into a
problem. MPs
have always championed their communities, and reached out to help
those individuals who have been badly let down by government.
Traditionally, a constituent would call on their MP if, for example, a
family member died abroad and there were problems getting the body
back, or if they had suffered gross incompetence from government. But
now, MPs increasingly offer themselves as first points of access to
government and local authority services. Or rather, they offer their
ever-growing army of nineteen-year-old American interns and recent
graduate staffers as points of access. This
raises problems. First, it puts additional pressure on some parts of
the public services that are, frankly, struggling. Take the
immigration service. We know about their huge backlog, only now
finally being overcome. They have had to set up vast bureaus to deal
with the massive – and rising – tide of MPs’ letters. Let’s be
clear. These letters are not, on the whole, personal interventions
from MPs responding to unique cases of incompetence. These are form
letters, mail-merged by staffers and interns. They mass-produce
special pleading. But they still require an answer and investigation
from their addressees, and so they direct staff and staff time away
from the core, and often urgent, task of improving service for all. Immigration
is no special case. Wherever there is most pressure on the public
services, a deluge of rote letters from MPs adds to the burden. The
head of the hospital, the senior administrator in a hard-pressed
office, must stop their work and personally answer the MP, who is
essentially asking nothing more than: ‘why can’t my constituents
receive special treatment?’ As MPs’ casework becomes more central
to their role, they automatically seek out hardest-pressed areas of
our public services and increase the burden on them. Is
there any discretion about whether MPs take on a case? How many MPs
judge a complaint on its merits and how many simply take it up, often
without checking out the facts? Asking politicians to be stern with
their own voters is like asking the turkey to decorate the Christmas
tree. As a consequence, they often advocate vexatious, spurious
constituent cases to public service providers. And what about those
constituents that do not like complaining, or who cannot get to
Saturday morning surgeries? Are they to be queue-barged on a grand
scale, by those fellow constituents willing or able to deploy their
elbows to get at public services more quickly? The
problem is one of unilateratism. No one MP can reassert reason on
their own – they would be eaten alive. In fact, the indiscriminate
growth of casework has been largely driven by Liberal Democrats who
make uncritical individual advocacy the basis of their offer to a
constituency. So
what is the solution? The right model is provided by the Parliamentary
Ombudsman. She takes on cases of misadministration in the public
services, referred to her by MPs. Baseless cases are discarded.
Substantive ones are pursued. Because the office is national, she can
home in on failing government offices, by collating complaints. Rather
than endlessly increasing MPs’ staffs to deal with casework, their
central resource – the Ombudsman – should be given increased
capacity and resources. This way, constituents get objective and
professional help through their parliamentary representative. So what is left for MPs? Their real role. To advocate their communities. To work in strategic partnership with councils, community groups and charities to lead, to regenerate, to represent their community. Egregious individual cases can still be championed – and given individual attention. But right now MPs are operating and marketing themselves in exactly the same way as the ambulance-chasing lawyers who urge people to sue the council and the NHS; and they threaten eventually to place a similar burden on our public services.
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24 June 2004: It would seem that most of the feedback so far is not in agreement with the sentiments of the Basket Casework article from Progress. However, as someone who is literally drowning in casework which does not actually fall under the MP's remit, I can see where the author is coming from. I get numerous calls every week on issues such as "my door frame needs replacing" or "my neighbour has painted the fence and I don't like the colour" (I kid you not), and I really don't see what on earth this has to do with the MP's stated remit of "MPs are there to help only with those matters for which Parliament or central government is responsible." (House of Commons Information Office Factsheet MO1: "You and Your MP"). I very often pass cases on to our local Councillors or other agencies. I don't accept the comment that we shouldn't give the work to Councillors because they are underpaid, under-resourced etc. They chose to stand for the position, so why should I do their job for them when I've got a large number of relevant cases myself? I don't tell the Constituent to get lost, I politely inform them that they would be better served by someone else and give them all the information they need to contact that person. In the case of written requests, I also forward the letter on to the other person/agency. It's not caused me any problems in the past seven years, so I shall continue to do it. K - caseworker for NW MP. 17 June 2004. As someone who's been doing casework and surgeries for London MPs on and off for the past 6 years, I can understand where the clearly frustrated author is coming from. However, what is being missed here is that through casework a constituent may gain their only experience of direct contact with their elected representative. The fact that such contact is clearly on the rise is on the one hand a good thing for democracy and the public perception of the availability of politicians, yet on the other, a potential problem that must be managed - for some but not all of the reasons the author asserts. The author's belief that a strengthened and better funded Ombudsman is the answer is plain wrong. MPs welcome casework and will continue to do so. Many do it out of genuine belief that feedback on Government systems is valuable in itself. For others it's use comes by feeding in directly to publicity and local campaigns. What is actually required is better trained staff, better resourced offices and better regulated/ scrutinised systems in order to ensure that the casework service being delivered by MPs is accurate, appropriate and of the highest standard. This is unlikely to occur whilst we have MP's unwilling to allow the beady eye of public scrutiny into their own back rooms. It is even less likely whilst House authorities remain in denial about the real role of MPs. Some steps have been taken toward better staff training and resourcing in recent years, but until the Serjeant & Co abandon their 1940's attitude towards casework - as an irrelevant add-on to an MPs assumed role - we will have to continue to muddle through in an amateurish fashion until the system finally becomes totally unsustainable. Incidentally, during a recent argument about resources, the Assistant Serjeant at Arms told me that MPs shouldn't be doing constituency work from their offices in the House of Commons. They haven't expressly forbidden it, but given half a chance... R - caseworker for London MP. Feedback on the basket case work. Yes, it is true that many of our main complainants are basket cases. I can recall an MP telling me 20 years ago that 1/3 of constituents with problems need an accountant, 1/3 a solicitor and the rest a psychiatrist. Time has proved him pretty accurate....Regular reviews of MPs' allowances usually have bright ideas about despatching constituents to councillors, helplines and so on, without telling us how we'd explain that to the the (unpaid, under resourced and possibly of a different political complexion) councillors or the angry constituent, who firmly believes he has 'gone to the top'. Perhaps if the Chief Execs of the various agencies were all up for re-election every few years, and all their staff lost their jobs overnight if the CEO wasn't re-elected, MPs' offices would have fewer calls for help....... No name supplied but works for MP. 15 June 2004 This person is clearly an idiot and has no real idea about Constituency casework. MPs staff to investigate cases to see if they are worthy of taking up? Great idea. Meanwhile, everything else, including 'worthy' cases, can just wait whilst I play detective. Get real. Office Manager for MP and MSP. 13 June 2004. It's all very well talking about an MP acting like the Parliamentary Ombudsman and dismissing cases, but does she have to be re-elected every 4-5 years?! It's often on the basis of being a good constituency MP that people vote for a candidate or against if they're not. It can be really frustrating writing a letter in which you know the reply you are going to receive, but it is the MP's job to take up matters on behalf of a constituent, regardless of whether you necessarily believe they have a case or not. E - caseworker for Scottish MP - 11 June 2004. |
