London, December 7, 2019 (Yes Punjab News)
Social media platform Change.org has ranked Ealing Southall Labour Parliamentary Candidate Virendra Sharma has featured in the top ten list of best MPs in UK. Sharma has ranked 8th out of 650 MPs. Caerphilly Labour PPC Wayne David gets the number 1 position.
According to ealingtoday.co.uk, Sharma is number 8 of 20 in the UK’s first People-Power-Index – far higher than Labour colleagues former Ealing North MP Stephen Pound (#124) and Ealing Central and Acton’s Rupa Huq (#538)
Social media platform Change.org, say the ranking reveals the top MPs who ‘listened to, and engaged with, their constituents over the last two years’.
The ranking was calculated using ten data sources from the last Parliament (2017-2019) which measure the following, in priority order:
1. An MP’s availability to their constituents. This looks at how an MP is available online (email and social media), offline (holding “surgeries” in your local area and a caseworker), and whether an MP is distracted by a second (or third) job.
2. An MP’s participation in Parliament. This looks at an MP’s participation record for voting in Parliament, so that their constituency is counted when new laws are passed, and how often an MP raises issues from their constituency in Parliament.
3. How an MP listens to the public. An MP’s top priority is their constituency, but they also have a responsibility to the wider general public to bring political attention to mass public campaigns and priority issues by discussing them in Parliament.
Taking the whole Index of 650 MPs, female MPs slightly outperform male MPs. Despite only holding 32% of seats in Parliament, women account for 36% of the top 50 MPs. Men are ranked lowest, making up 82% bottom 50 MPs.
Along party lines, two-thirds of the top 50 MPs are Labour, and almost three-quarters of the bottom 50 are Conservative MPs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, eight of the MPs for the top 10 marginal constituencies at the last General Election are in the top half of the Index, suggesting they work harder to earn their votes.
Commenting on the launch of the People-Power Index, Kajal Odedra, UK Executive Director of Change.org, said:
“Unlike most jobs, there’s no job description for being an MP. So for the MPs putting themselves forward again, and when we’re looking at candidates to see who’s best for the job, how are we judging what a “good” MP looks like?
That’s why Change.org has created the UK’s first People-Power Index. From years of working with ordinary people to campaign on issues that matter to the public, a big motivation for starting petitions is that they don’t feel heard by those in power.
We’ve judged that being a “good” MP is about openness and responsiveness to constituents. Trust in politics is strengthened when it is open, transparent and the public are genuinely listened to.
We want voters to check how their MP ranks when making their mind up whether to re-elect their last MP or not, and we want the People-Power Index to inspire new MPs to prioritise their relationship with their constituents.”
