MP wants public email made private

[Kaloki]

Story here

Personally I support 38 Degrees, his job is to represent his constituents - and if his constituents want him to be aware of their views (whether through 38 degrees or not) then they should be able to.

I think he's in the right, actually. Websites should have links to the MPs' websites asking them to contact them directly.

How on earth can an MP do his or her job properly if he's being inundated by huge numbers of identical emails?

I'm in two minds about this. I heard his interview on PM and he didn't come across very well.

At the end of the day, 38 degrees are only passing on comments from his constituents. They have a right to express their views to him, whether with identical emails or not. They DID publish his address originally Mrs Wobble, but he asked them to take it down. It also seems to me that by not publishing his email address on his own website and blog he is deliberately making it hard for his constituents to contact him - too many MPs seem to think that the website is a one-way street, a place to publicise themselves to voters, but not a way for the great unwashed to make direct contact.

Two emails a day is hardly a deluge. I get more form emails than that at work and I don't consider myself hard done by.

Plus of course, it wouldn't be rocket science to install some kind of filter on his email to divert form emails into a specific box which he could then deal with at leisure or delegate to a form response programme.

38 degrees have gone into their records and found it was 2 emails a day, so not really inundated.

It does seem like a one way street of communication for him.

"He sounds a whiny little twerp doesn't he."

Yes, basically!

Oh poor me, I've been elected and now all these horrid people seem to want me to represent them or something. The cheek of them!

But there is a difference between contacting an MP and loading an inbox with copy and paste exercises (almost spam)!! Surely he has the ability to set up his inbox so that these e-mails are grouped together and dealt with with minimal input??

It is the same issue as at work, arse-covering e-mails usually go in a folder so I can ignore them and get on with the important stuff ...

Surely if you get a bunch of copy and paste identical emails you can justifiably reply with a copy and paste identical reply.

It's a lobby group repeatedly contacting the MP via his private e-mail and not constituents contacting him via his MP e-mail. We all work and we all get lots of e-mails... but we don't expect to get work-related e-mails clogging up our home adress.

No, it's the constituents contacting the MP using the group's template emails. (Have used the 38 degrees site before)

Chil, the emails go to his House of Parliament email. It's not his private email any more than your work email is private.

That's why the Information Commissioner will not act - because it's his work email address and as such, in the public domain.

And these are his constituents contacting him as they are entitled to do - yes their concerns may be aligned to lobby groups (I've sent a form email to my MP about cycling issues for example, prompted by a local lobby group) but that doesn't make their concerns any less valid or less worth of representation.

And as others have said, he's perfectly entitled to send a form response - as my MP did in fact. But it was a good response, and she did follow it up.