Mark Prisk MP

Subject: Mr Mark Prisk.

MP

Dear Mr Prisk
One of the most damaging aspects to the letters which flow between a member of a voting constituency such as myself and his/her MP is that it is like talking/shouting into an echo chamber where the sounds coming back are mainly those of ones own voice.
It's all carried out in a very British way with respectful phrases designed to show diffidence and respect when in fact there is little political respect between a somewhat shattered society and its political masters.
Brexit was the final nail which decides our slow decline in international importance. Days of Empire long gone we will soon be trawling the same waters of a small country with a diminishing trade balance and ever growing borrowing. Our ability to borrow will depend on the abnormally low interest rates kept artificially low by central banks after the 2008 banking debacle and the analysis of the credit agencies and the attitude towards us by the sovereign funds from who we borrow will be crucial.
The reason for writing was your dismissive attempt to justify the powers taken on by the current Government to  largely excluding Parliaments role in scrutinising bills in their passage through parliament following the cut and paste of European legislation onto our statute book.
This followed closely by the gerrymandering of the make up and balance of party representation on the ever more important role of Parliamentary Committees.
One of the roles  the Clerks in parliament play is to adjudicate a time honoured tradition to find some sort of balance in reflecting the size of a parties majority with its weight and participation in these scrutinising committees. A small majority or in fact, given the number of MPs in parties who theoretically make up the governments opposition, a minority Government such as the Tories currently command then the clerks do the arithmetic and decide the composition in numbers of each committee. This is to be abandoned in some sort of British version of South American putsch. A total disregard for parliamentary tradition and the fine balance these unwritten rules play in our democratic process.
Remember Parliament and the MPs who attend no longer have the respect they used to have from a public who already feel that Parliament no longer represents their needs. As the economic strain of our departure from the single market begins to bite and people reflect the arbitrary nature of the public sector pay increase, crumbs thrown to them by the Government of just over 1% after a pay freeze of 8 years, people will remember the generous pay increase the MPs awarded themselves, a £9000 a year increase in 2015. Talk of it being an award made by an adjudicating committee outside their control will fall on deaf ears as the implications of our economic plight are revealed and politicians are seen no longer as being custodians of our future but people who can not be trusted, even amongst themselves to leave the mechanism of parliamentary debate as a last bastion of the democratic process.