Christopher Pincher and team telephone poll over 1300 residents

Last week Christopher Pincher, Tamworth’s Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman, organised a telephone poll of up to 1300 local residents to ask them their opinion on the MPs’ expenses scandal that has engulfed Westminster.  With the help of 20 young volunteers working from a state of the art call centre, the team made over 1000 calls in just 90 minutes.

Local residents were asked if they agreed with Mr. Pincher that all MPs’ expenses should be published on the internet immediately they are submitted so everyone can see what their MP is claiming and whether they believed the Kelly recommendations [report by Sir Christopher Kelly on updating the parliamentary expenses system] on cleaning up the expenses system should be implemented without delay.  Two both questions over 80% of residents gave a resounding “yes”. 

Christopher Pincher said:

“I am very grateful to everyone who took the time to participate in my survey.  We got an excellent response which just shows how angry people are with the current Parliament and how much they want to see the system cleaned up.  I will send the final results to David Cameron so, if he becomes Prime Minister, he know what local people think about fixing the problem.”

“Our once proud institutions have been badly battered by this scandal and we must do all we can to restore their reputation and public confidence in them.  People tell me what they really want is a General Election as soon as possible so they can elect a fresh parliament with a new mandate.  I hope Mr. Brown stops dithering and calls a quick election so we have that chance of a fresh start with a cleaned up House of Commons.  That is certainly the message of our telephone poll last week.