ABSTRACT
Members under pressure Members of Parliament are called on to carry out the functions of the House of Commons. As we have seen (Chapter 15), the resources available to them to carry out those tasks have increased in recent years. MPs have more resources than before. Th ey have a better salary than before, and they have office and support facilities far in excess of those available to their predecessors. However, the demands on MPs have increased massively in recent decades, on a scale that challenges their capacity to cope with them, even with increased resources. Th e increase in demands on MPs’ time can be ascribed to four sources: public business, organised interests, constituents and MPs themselves.
