Norfolk voters say MP is ignoring them after email blunder

Constituents said they felt an MP had ignored them after he sent a generic reply to 82 of them that copied in all their personal email addresses.

Voters in South Norfolk said their Tory MP, Richard Bacon, had also not replied at all to several emails.

Last week, the prime minister's spokesman said MPs who were not available to help constituents were "not doing the job".

Mr Bacon said he was replying to each email individually.

After the email was sent to constituents, some of them began to contact one another because they then all had each others' email addresses.

Some shared their experiences of a lack of replies from Mr Bacon.

Stuart Ellison, from Rockland St Mary, was one of the recipients, and said he had written 25 emails to the MP since 2018 but only had one proper response and 11 were ignored completely.

He told BBC Look East: "I feel because he is our voice in Parliament that effectively our voice is being silenced.

"I think that has a grave effect on our ability to engage with the democratic process."

Mr Ellison said he had written emails about homelessness, the effects of austerity measures on people on low incomes, and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

"All of which are quite difficult issues for the present government to address and I think it's just more convenient to ignore these protests," he added.

Caitlin Scott, from Shotesham, was another who received the automated reply, and said she had sent 10 emails to Mr Bacon in the past six years but only had one reply, in 2016.

"Many of his constituents feel he holds them in contempt because he can't even be bothered to acknowledge many of the emails sent to him and that he's not concerned with their problems," she said.

"We do see the role of the constituency MP is to help people with their problems, listen to them, respond to them, and instead there's just silence.

"If we are paying his salary, why can't he even answer emails?"

Last week, after the row about MPs' second jobs, a spokesman for Boris Johnson said MPs should be "visible in their constituencies and available to help constituents with their constituency matters".

He added: "If they're not doing that, they're not doing their job and will rightly be judged on that by their constituents."

In a statement, Mr Bacon said he received a large number of emails and replies to each one individually.

He added: "When issues of particular public interest arise - such as the recent debate over sewage and storm overflows and also the report on Owen Paterson from the Committee on Standards - this can prompt campaign emails where very large numbers of people who have signed up to a campaign website send an email to their MP.

"In these circumstances it can take longer to respond."

The MP has referred himself to the Information Commissioner's Office after he shared 82 of his constituents' email addresses.

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