ABSTRACT
Every year, tens of thousands of people benefit from the ability of ‘their’ Member of Parliament to intervene on their behalf. Many MPs encourage constituents to bring their complaints or problems to their ‘surgeries’, which are frequently weekly-at least during the parliamentary session. The problems can range from the trivial to social security or housing troubles, an immigration case, consumer law, serious illness. Of course, MPs vary greatly in their interest in this welfare work and in their ability to perform it well. A larger claim, however, is made for MPs collectively. They are said to be the defenders of the civil liberties of the population as a whole, through the democratic power of parliamentary sovereignty. Their role is to improve the protection of people’s rights and liberties through legislation, to scrutinise government legislation so that it meets the public’s needs and to hold government accountable face-to-face in the political cockpit of the nation-the chamber of the House of Commons. This chapter assesses how well Parliament performs these tasks to uphold the liberty of the subject in the United Kingdom.
