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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Indeed. As my hon. Friend says, she referred to it as social work. I have always believed that the job of a modern Member is very different from that of somebody 40 or even 30 years ago. For a start, the advent of 24-hour news, e-mails, which arrive at 3 o'clock in the morning, mobile telephony and all the rest of it has meant that the electorate expect us to be available far more and to return their phone calls, messages, e-mails and letters far more frequently. The number of letters on a policy issue that a Member would have received in the 1960s in any one week would have been fewer than 10. Today, I guess that most Members receive in excess of 250 letters a week on policy issues or on an individual casework issue. If we want fewer Members, but our answer to that is to give them more members of staff, thereby increasing their expenses, we will actually deracinate Members from the communities that they serve. We will make them less accessible to voters, and that is why I believe it is wrong to cut the number of Members.