Allan Dorans was MP for Ayr Carrick and Cumnock until 30^th May 2024 and will be standing for re-election on July 4th

Since my election in December 2019, with my team, I have responded to requests for help and advice nearly 10 000 times.

We have helped, many times with constituents in real difficulty, struggling to survive, by making sure they get the benefits they are entitled to, better housing or disability support. Many write to demand fairer treatment for animals, an end to the abuse of human rights in numerous countries where the UK has influence, or improvements in the environment. The range of topics is enormous putting great pressure on my team but also offering them very stimulating work – they are never bored.

At the time of writing, at the end of May 2024, after nearly four and a half years in office, we have responded to more than 9 800 cases, with my small team of three full-timers and one or two part-timers at different times. Around one half of those cases have required background research, a response to the constituent and, in many cases, a letter to a minister of the UK Government. Cases like these take typically only a few hours to complete but the others, termed ‘case work’, can take many days of effort spread over months, perhaps years. They require emails and long telephone calls to the, often distressed, sometimes angry, constituent and to government agencies such as the DWP (pensions and benefits), the DVLA (driving licences), the Home Office (Visas and passports), local councils and health boards.

The team of caseworkers have become expert in dealing with, for example, government agencies to help local people get the benefits they are entitled to, to improve their communication with various authorities and to accelerate the issue of passports and visas. Increasingly, we receive very warm and grateful emails when we get results and even when we only empathise and write to ministers on their behalf. Sometimes we get flowers and chocolates. The chocolates are scoffed long before I can declare them in donations.

I have been able to put together a very effective team and their efforts are much appreciated by me. Research by University College London in 2023, suggests that, across the country, MPs staff are often ‘the unsung heroes.’ I fully agree with that view.

Why do some come to their MP with these problems rather than just dealing directly with the professionals who work for the authorities? In most cases, they come to us as a last resort, feeling they are getting nowhere and having become anxious. While the professionals working for the authorities are often under great pressure, must always defend their employers, are under-funded and sometimes under-trained, they are doing their very best in difficult times, after now 12 years of neglect and cuts by the current Conservative Government.

An MP’s team is, by contrast, impartial and has ‘hotlines’ to staff who can use the discretion they have to accelerate the cases we bring to them. Also, MPs have ‘hotlines’ to the media and heads of government authorities know this.

Is mine a particularly busy office, with around 2 000 cases per year to deal with? MPs do not, of course, publish these figures, and different populations, cultures and economies in each constituency make comparison difficult.

There was an attempt by researchers to measure MPs responsiveness to emails from their constituents, in 2021, by Kings College London, but the research ran into such controversy that they could only report on how they might do better next time.

All I have is the Guardian report in September 2021 of a Labour MP in the North of England saying they had typically just over 700 cases in a year and the anecdotal report of a Scottish Conservative MP dealing with around the same number.

The expectations placed on an MP in the 21^st Century are increasingly complex and demanding but, the interests of our constituents, not just those who voted for us but all of them, come first.