The first duty of a member of Parliament is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain. His second duty is to his constituents, of whom he is the representative but not the delegate. Burke’s famous declaration on this subject is well known. It is only in the third place that his duty to party organization or programme takes rank. All these three loyalties should be observed, but there is no doubt of the order in which they stand under any healthy manifestation of democracy.
— Winston Churchill, Duties of a Member of Parliament (c.1954–1955)
Theoretically, contemporary MPs are considered to have two duties, or three if they belong to a political party. Their primary responsibility is to act in the national interest. They must also act in the interests of their constituents where this does not override their primary responsibility. Finally, if they belong to a political party, they may act in the interests of that party, subordinate to the other two responsibilities.
Member of Parliament role at this moment is very crucial to contribute to the national census during the Covid-19 pandemic that contributes to MCO.
There are no national data that can indicate accurately how many people lose their job and how many people has to take pay cuts.
MPs should start collecting such data so that it be crucial to help many government agencies to formulate solutions towards jobs creation in the months to come when the economy is recovering post-MCO.
Data that should be included are
1. Type of jobs lost / type of job under pay cut
2. The skills they have
3. Wage scale
4. How many lost jobs in the area and what kind of jobs
Such data will be able to contribute to a localise census that can gauge what kind of help each individual and businesses needs.
The role of an MPs is more than debating and reading law but also to help build national census and provide solutions when such census data is available. Only then the MPs will know what kind of assistance does his/her constituents need and channel such grievance of request to the government.