Door-knocking is essential for representatives like me to find out what people are thinking.
When I knock on people’s doors, I sometimes hear the following refrain:
"Why don’t politicians all work together?
"To hear them squabble across the House of Commons – it’s like listening to school children!"
On Wednesday lunchtimes, I think this is an entirely fair critique of our Parliamentary democracy.
In many Parliaments, MPs sit in a space where they can collaborate.
Yet the House of Commons chamber is adversarial.
Parties are pitted against each other based on the understanding that there is one governing party and one opposition party.
Watching on the television, you can hear proceedings better than MPs can when sitting up close on the green benches, such is the jeering.
England has entered an era of five-party politics.
In Devon, the contest is likely to remain one between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.
But elsewhere in England, other parties are vying with Labour to break through.
It is no longer sensible in my view to operate based on the “first past the post” voting system, in which the winner takes all.
In some areas, first past the post could mean MPs getting elected on as little as 25 per cent or 30 per cent of the vote.
That is not sustainable for British politics, and it is time for proportional representation.
For readers who are sick to the back teeth of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition being locked in a Punch and Judy spectacle, I can offer some reassurance.
There is a lot of sensible cross-party cooperation that goes on behind the scenes, in Parliamentary committees.
I sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence & Security Committee.
I have also been a regular guest at the Business & Trade Committee, and successfully invited the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Committee to visit us in Devon.
The reports we write help inform Government decision-making.
We write them on a cross-party basis, and through working alongside our political opponents, we learn where the common ground lies.
This is the sort of mature deliberation that I hear people telling me they want to see.
Not the wretched Prime Minister's Questions ritual, where party leaders try desperately to belittle or one-up their opponents.
In times of war overseas and international crises, they need to be reminded that we are all on the same side.
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