Absentee MPs - where are they now?
At the General Election hustings on children’s social care, held in June 2024 in response to the long-standing failures in Herefordshire, Jesse Norman assembled with seven other candidates vying for our votes.
His performance at that event dominated the coverage in the Hereford Times:
Jesse Norman, Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire until Parliament was dissolved ahead of the general election, said he had witnessed what amounted to “a colossal failure in accountability” in cases raised with him by local families.
“It’s an absolute outrage that I have constituents who are in this kind of pain, and we are unable to make local authorities make the difference when it’s in their power to do so,” he told an election hustings in Hereford devoted to the children’s services issue.
“The hiding and bureaucratic tricks are unacceptable.”
Was Jesse’s “outrage” staged?
Mr Norman did “outrage” extremely well before being elected, but where has his outrage been since? Is there any evidence that the outrage was genuine, or was it staged for votes?
On 23rd August 2025, Jesse Norman received an invitation from the Families’ Alliance for Change to attend their first conference. The date of the conference? 25th October. He was told that a leading academic in children’s social care would be speaking about parent blame and the crisis in children’s social care. It’s not often that Herefordshire hosts conferences on children’s social care and attracts leading academics as keynote speakers.
There was no reply from Jesse.
On 8th October 2025, Jesse received a second invitation to the conference.
At 3.07pm on the day before the conference and over two months after the original invitation was received, this somewhat perfunctory reply was sent from his constituency PA:
Dear FAC Herefordshire
Thank you for your email inviting Jesse to attend the Conference at the Kindle Centre about children’s social care on Saturday morning
Unfortunately, due to prior diary commitments Jesse is unable to attend.
Kind regards
Gill
Gill Rivers | Constituency Office PA
Unconvincing response
Responding two months on and at the eleventh hour is just plain rude. Claiming prior diary commitments as the reason for non-attendance on the day before the event is deeply unconvincing. It would have been more convincing to claim the invitation never arrived!
The impression this and other failures to engage have left behind is that Jesse has long since lost interest in concerns over Children’s Services.
In May 2025, Cllr Liz Harvey resigned from the Council’s Children’s Scrutiny Committee after the Scrutiny Officer succeeded in arguing for the public’s right to ask questions at scrutiny meetings to be curtailed. Unlike Herefordshire’s MPs, she was at the conference, along with four other county councillors and one city councillor. She wrote a prompt and generous thank you note to the organisers as follows:
Please pass on my congratulations and thanks to everyone involved in making today’s conference such a success.
This is such an important issue. We can and must do better. The campaign and the conversation must continue.
Questions to Jesse Norman MP
So, questions to our MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire:
Does he think the crisis in children’s social care is still an important issue?
Does he think we can and must do better?
Is he interested in continuing the conversation?
We might also ask this.
Is he interested in stepping up to challenge the “hiding and bureaucratic tricks” which continue to harm the lives of families in Herefordshire?
Ellie Chowns MP
Ellie Chowns, MP for North Herefordshire, was also invited to the conference and also did not attend. She at least had the courtesy to reply promptly to decline the invitation. Regrettably, she didn’t send anyone from her office in her place despite being encouraged to do so.
Since their impassioned speeches at the General Election Hustings, neither MP has covered themselves in glory on the issue of children’s social care . To describe them both as avoidant or absentee does not seem wholly unfair.
Perhaps they could prove to the public that they are still engaged on this issue and call their own joint public meeting. There is much to discuss, not least the Schools White Paper on SEND reform which is causing all kinds of concern within the county. Had either of the MPs been at the conference, they would have heard how often and how catastrophically families dealing with additional needs are let down by the system.
If invitations to a public meeting on children’s social care are issued by our MPs, parents, carers and other stakeholders will not only reply promptly but will also attend in numbers.