Tory MP for Esher and Walton Dominic Raab is threatening legal action against campaign group 38 Degrees for having the temerity to publish his publically available email address - dominic.raab.mp@parliament.uk - on their 'contact your MP' system.
Tory MP for Esher and Walton Dominic Raab is threatening legal action against campaign group 38 Degrees for having the temerity to publish his publicly available email address – dominic.raab.mp@parliament.uk – on their ‘contact your MP’ system. When seeking the Tory nomination, Raab, an ‘international lawyer’, claimed to be “ready to serve every community…”
Executive director David Babbs today told Left Foot Forward:
“Over the last 12 months, 38 Degrees members have worked together to make all MPs more accountable to us, their voters. Tens of thousands of us have come together to clean up lobbying in Westminster and to call for a new recall law that would mean people could call a fresh vote if their MP wasn’t doing their job properly.
“Now, an MP has got in touch to tell us he doesn’t want his constituents to be able to get in touch by e-mail. As far as we know, he didn’t ask his constituents what they thought before he made that decision. So now, we’re going to ask 38 Degrees members in his constituency what they think, so we can work together to make a change if they’re not happy about it.”
On their website 38 Degrees explain:
“We’ve been in touch with the Information Commissioner and they’ve reassured us that because he is an MP and his e-mail address is in the public domain, he has no grounds to report us. We let Mr Raab know this and he responded by having the House of Commons remove his e-mail address from their website.
“We spoke to the Information Commisioner’s office and again they reassured us that because he is an MP and because his email address is in the public domain we’re in the right by letting his constituents get in touch with him…
“When Mr Raab was an election candidate he gave out his personal email address to use. Now he’s an MP, with an official parliament email address paid for by the taxpayer, he’s telling us to stop people using it and making threats. No other MP anywhere in the UK has ever threatened 38 Degrees in this way.
“Mr Raab is a trained lawyer with friends in high places. Even though he appears to be wrong, he could cause us some trouble and cost us money in legal advice.”
38 Degrees has launched a local poll of members in Raab’s constituency to decide what to do next.
186 Responses to “Tory MP tells constituents: “Don’t email me… it’s becoming a real nuisance””
LeoPugh
RT @JohnPrescott: Oh dear! RT @leftfootfwd: Tory MP tells constituents: “Don’t email me… it’s becoming a real nuisance” http://bit.ly/9OAR5j
Charles
So, did you actually ask or consider Dominic’s point of view before publishing the 38 Degree argument/quotes?
He was complaining about duplicate emails not genuine communications from constituants. I happen to think he has been clumsy about it, but can definitely appreciate his frustration: I personally have to get through around 250+ emails a day, or which around 150 are automatically generated & believe me it takes a lot of time that could be better spent doing productive things
Stuart Whittingham
RT @mydavidcameron: RT @leftfootfwd Tory MP tells constituents: “Don’t email me… it’s becoming a real nuisance” http://bit.ly/9OAR5j @38_degrees
August Mackellaigh
I don’t know what he is complaining about – why doesn’t he just delete the emails if he doesn’t want them, it only takes a second. August Mackellaigh
Andrea Gill
I can understand the issue with auto-generated template emails, however this has had the unfortunate side effect of making me appreciate *our* Tory MP all the more, for responding to the manually amended/expanded 38 Degrees email with a half-handwritten letter reassuring me he would do his best to get them to stick to the coalition agreement on AV.