Why MPs will keep holding surgeries, even if they’re in danger

‘If you’ve got water coming in through the roof then they should be doing something about that,’ says Stephen Timms mildly to one of his constituents. The East Ham MP is sitting in the middle of a long row of tables in the Town Hall, flanked by two caseworkers, each seeing a member of the public who has a problem they hope their MP can solve.

Timms had kindly invited me to sit in on one of his surgeries months ago. I’m currently criss-crossing the country watching politicians of all political persuasions carry out their regular constituency work for a book that I’m writing on what MPs really do – and whether they’re the right sort of politicians. It has taken me to chilly community centres in Glasgow, Cumbrian church halls, bustling inner London libraries – and into some spectacularly messy MPs’ cars, as well. I had wanted to watch Timms at work because his case load in his deprived east London constituency is high, and he is often the MP who contacts the Home Office the most. But there was another reason, one that has a terrible poignance today. On 14 May 2010, Timms was holding his regular constituency surgery. His next appointment approached, stretching out her hand, apparently to greet him. But Roshonara Choudhry wasn’t stretching out her hand to greet Timms. She was holding a knife, and stabbed the MP in the stomach.

Timms was back at work three weeks later, and seems terribly matter-of-fact when I meet him before this afternoon’s surgery. He says his first constituency surgery was a bit odd, but that ‘after two or three appointments, you just get back into the swing of it’. At the very first surgery after the attack, the Metropolitan Police, a counter-terror unit and several police community support officers attended. There had been another threat against him, this time online. The police offered him a permanent knife arch to be installed at all of his surgeries. Timms refused: ‘That would change the way we relate to our constituents,’ he explains. ‘I didn’t want people to have to be scanned every time they walked into my surgery.’ Even though most people would understand that having been stabbed, an MP might want a bit more security, he didn’t want to give the impression that he didn’t trust them.

Yesterday when the news broke about the attack on Jo Cox, Timms’ phone was buzzing constantly with messages from colleagues worried about the memories it must have brought back. He’s not a particularly effusive politician, and the strongest hint he gives of any post-traumatic memories is a shudder while talking about it. At his walk-in advice centre this morning, there was a little extra security. His appointment-only surgery this afternoon has a volunteer showing constituents to the MP or his two caseworkers. That is it: business as usual.

As with every surgery I’ve sat in, the two hours that I spend with Timms is the most eloquent riposte to anyone who produces the hackneyed, lazy rant about ‘out-of-touch politicians’. The man with the leaking roof also has an infestation of mice and damp – and his children are getting ill because of it. Disgracefully inadequate housing, often provided by councils or housing associations, is a regular feature of every constituency surgery. So is immigration. And so is at least one constituent who breaks down in tears. Everyone comes in looking burdened, their voices tuned to a minor key as they set out their problems. Even if Timms can’t do much more to help than write a letter to the powers that be about the problem, most constituents leave looking relieved that at least someone has said that what is happening to them is not OK, and that they are prepared to help them. The wrongs that they try to right and the distress of their constituents are such that it must be nigh-on impossible for someone to lack empathy and spend much time being an MP. Many say that this is the most satisfying part of their job.

There are two things that all the MPs I’ve observed so far seem to have in common. The first is that they all apologise for the state of their cars, even when those cars are absolutely fine (the MP whose vehicle was sprouting visible mould shall remain nameless). The second is that, like Timms, the risk of being attacked in a surgery doesn’t seem to trouble them nearly as much as the prospect of having to separate themselves from their constituents in some way. It is this instinctive desire to stay in touch, even if there is a personal cost, that makes them public servants, even if we are often loathe to acknowledge that.