What happens if you write to your MP?

What happens if you send an email to your MP? Do they reply, or do they just ignore you? In fact, how do you write to your MP? How do you find out their name and address?

The last question is the easiest to answer? You just use the excellent Writetothem web site. Just enter your post code and away you go. It works for MPs, MEPs, MSPs and councilors. I used this site a lot to write to MEPs during the EU debate on data retention. The SNP showed up best in this exercise. See my earlier postings for more information on what happened.

What about getting a response from your Westminster MP? The Writetothem web site has compiled some statistics on MPs responsiveness to emails. The full details are on the web site but here are a few snippets.

Firstly, the Westminster MPs are best at responding to emails, and the performance of the Scottish MPs is abysmal.



The next point is that the Conservative MPs at Westminster are much better than the Labour MPs.



However, the Conservative performance was rather spoiled by a BBC report on the activities of one of their MPs. The BBC wrote that -

“An MP sent e-mails - and replies - to himself to improve his "responsiveness rating" on a website which helps people contact their elected representatives.

Conservative Iain Liddell-Grainger was disqualified from the writetothem.com league table after sending five messages from a hotmail account. “

If you want to see how your MP performed you can check this page at the Writetothem web site which has a detailed analysis of the responsiveness of individual MPs.