First of all, I want to say thank you. Thank you to the large number of constituents who got in touch (or spoke with me while I was out and about last weekend) simply to wish me well and send their condolences after the senseless death of my friend Sir David Amess.
People always say nice things at a time like this, but I can assure you every single thing you’ve heard is true. David was a gentleman, a great friend to younger MPs and he understood constituency comes first. He told me early on in my time, it is the day-job, and he was right.
The horror of last Friday – I had just come out of our hospital after opening the new pharmacy building and was frozen to the spot when I heard – has, if anything, intensified since.
I think MPs are both shocked at what’s happened and not in the slightest bit surprised, if that makes any sense? It’s happened before and we fear it will happen again.
For obvious reasons I won’t go into the detail, but the fact is my team and I have operated within a much-heightened security regime for many years now; before the murder of dear Jo Cox even.
It is not fair to say there’s only been a focus on MPs security in recent days. Operation Bridger, established after Jo’s death, has to some extent supported us and that’s been widely talked about.
But, as I said on the TV last weekend, there is an element of risk in what we do and we cannot eliminate that completely.
The message I get loud and clear from constituents is that you value the direct engagement we have in Winchester and Chandler’s Ford. Whether that be a quick word in the supermarket, visits I do, events I attend or the regular street surgeries I hold; including Summer Tour recently concluded for this year.
While tributes in the House of Commons (and the special service in St Margaret’s Church) on Monday were lovely, attention is rightly turning to how we preserve all of that while being responsible to ourselves, our staff and above all our families who make doing this job possible.
As one of the now more experienced members of the House, I am engaging with our Home Secretary and the Speaker – as well as Hampshire Police – to examine how we do that.
As I said above, everyone has been so nice in recent days and we can only hope this new spirit of kindness and civility is here to stay – even when people don’t get the answer they want on this policy or that.
Much has been said about social media and I can promise constituents I will be looking extremely closely at upcoming online harms legislation through my role on the powerful Digital, Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee.
Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are, in my opinion, the publishers of our age and we should look at anonymity online and encryption where it frustrates law enforcement but let’s not shoot the messenger to the exclusion of looking at ourselves.
Something about our political discourse has become really nasty in part so let’s dial it down and look up as well as down. How we communicate with each other in the real world translates online and visa-versa. So from hereon, every time we engage politically – online, in an email and even while cycling - we should ask ourselves whether we’re part of the solution or part of the problem.
