Patel insistent that face-to-face advice surgeries will continue

THE Home Secretary and the Speaker of the Commons have insisted that the tradition of face-to-face meetings with constituents must continue, as MPs refused to be intimidated into cancelling routine advice surgeries yesterday.

Speaking on a visit to the site of Sir David Amess’s death, Priti Patel said that MPs “cannot be cowed by any individual … to stop us from functioning to serve our elected democracy”.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, who also travelled to Leigh-onSea to pay tribute to Sir David, insisted that “the very essence of being an MP is to help and be seen by our constituents”.

He said: “They are the people who elected us to represent them, so surely making ourselves available to them is the cornerstone of our democracy?”

The interventions came after Tobias Ellwood, the former Conservative minister, recommended that “no MP has a direct surgery until you can move to Zoom”, the video- conferencing platform. He later tweeted that he was simply seeking a “temporary pause in face-to-face meetings” while MPs’ security was reviewed.

But other Conservative MPs lined up to announce that they were pressing ahead with their surgeries yesterday, as Sir David “would have wanted”. In some cases the advice clinics were watched over by local police.

Alec Shelbrooke, who held a constituency surgery in Elmet and Rothwell, West Yorks, yesterday, said: “We cannot let events like this diminish the deep relationship between an MP and their constituents.

“This is a relationship I value deeply: I want my constituents, regardless of whether they voted for me or not, to be able to approach me in the street, in the pub, at the supermarket or at one of my surgeries.”

Kieran Mullan, the Tory MP for Crewe and Nantwich, tweeted: “Surgery today, we must not let people force us to do things differently. David would not have wanted that.”

Craig Williams said he had a “busy surgery” in his Montgomeryshire constituency yesterday and “thought of

Officers at the site of Sir David Amess’s surgery yesterday

Sir David Amess throughout”. He thanked Dyfed-Powys Police for “their presence and reassurance”.

Robert Largan, Conservative MP for High Peak, tweeted: “Thanks to everyone who came to my surgery this morning, especially those who just came to say hello & wish me well. It really does mean a lot. I’ll keep on doing my weekly surgery, all year round … We all need to stand up for our democracy!”

Yesterday, it emerged MPs could be offered routine police protection or private security guards at weekly constituency surgeries under the Home Secretary’s review of MP’s security, which was announced on Friday.

The killing of Sir David during his advice surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, came five years after the murder of Jo Cox, the 41-year-old Labour MP, in a daylight attack outside her West Yorkshire surgery. In 2010, Stephen Timms, another Labour MP, was stabbed twice at his surgery but survived the attack.

Asked if Sir David’s death could lead to an end to face-to-face advice surgeries, Ms Patel said: “We are open to surgeries, doing our job. We will continue to do that. Let’s think about David right now. A man of the people. He was killed serving his own constituents and constituency members. We will carry on, we absolutely… We live in an open society, a democracy. We cannot be cowed by any individual … to stop us from functioning to serve our elected democracy.”

The Home Secretary added that MPs were elected to serve constituents in an “open way”, but added that “there are safety and protection measures that we have to undertake too”.

Yesterday Diane Abbott, the former shadow home secretary, suggested that she would like to be separated from constituents by a Perspex screen.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4 PM, she said: “I would prefer going forward to meet constituents behind a screen, as we have now for Covid and so on – that might be quite complicated to arrange but at least you know someone’s not going to just lean over the desk and stab you, which could happen now.”

But Ms Abbott warned against posting police outside advice surgeries, saying that doing so could be “offputting to ordinary people”.