Can someone explain to Matthew Offord MP what an MP's job is supposed to be

There is a marvellous website where you can find out all about your MP. I have just used it to look up my MP - https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24955/matthew_offord/hendon

All you need to do is put in your postcode and you can find out who your representative in Parliament is.  MP's are elected to represent you. There is all sorts of interesting information on this site, such as who has been giving donations to local MP's and their local parties. Sometimes it is quite interesting. Sometimes it is banal, here are some recent examples of donations to Mr Offord and his party. I am sure a few local residents will find some of these mildly interesting.

Register of Members’ Interests

Last updated: 11 Sep 2017.

2. (a) Support linked to an MP but received by a local party organisation or indirectly via a central party organisation

Name of donor: Mr Daniel Green
Address of donor: private
Amount of donation or nature and value if donation in kind: £5,000
Donor status: individual
(Registered 04 July 2017)

Name of donor: Mr Andrew Reid
Address of donor: private
Amount of donation or nature and value if donation in kind: £700
Donor status: individual
(Registered 04 July 2017)

2. (b) Any other support not included in Category 2(a)

Name of donor: Bestway Wholesale Ltd
Address of donor: 2 Abbey Road, Park Royal, London NW10 7BW
Amount of donation or nature and value if donation in kind: £2,000
Date received: 10 May 2017
Date accepted: 10 May 2017
Donor status: company, registration 01207120
(Registered 04 July 2017)

Name of donor: Mr Andrew Reid
Address of donor: private
Amount of donation or nature and value if donation in kind: £3,000
Date received: 11 May 2017
Date accepted: 2 June 2017
Donor status: individual
(Registered 04 July 2017)

I personally think it is rather touching that people think Mr Offord is doing a good job and feel inclined to donate cash towards the expenses he has incurred running his campaigns. There are more historical donations here - https://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=24955

Sadly for Mr Offord, not everyone in the Borough is quite so impressed with his efforts. I was alerted to one such person by none other than Brian Coleman, formerly a local Tory bigwig, until he rather blotted his copybook. Brian posted the following tweet yesterday.

MP vindicated as regulator refuses investigation of complaint https://t.co/qCc5nClsG9

— Brian Coleman (@BrianColeman251) October 11, 2017

I was intrigued. A few months ago, Local Mill Hill Councillor Val Duschinsky had told me that "there was a person with mental issues who had launched a malicious complaint against Mr Offord". I had sympathised with Val, as clearly people in public life and MP's especially are at risk, as the the tragic Jo Cox case demonstrated. In light of this I was intrigued and clicked through to the article.

What greeted me was not what I expected at all given the headline and quite interesting. The headline in Mr Coleman's tweet implied that Mr Offord had been cleared of all bad behaviour. On reading the article, the detail painted a slightly different picture. The commissioner had said that the complaint was outside their remit. This is a completely different to being cleared. I was intrigued. I looked up the name of the complainant and found they were on Twitter. Not only that, they were a University Lecturer. As a blogger, it struck me that there may be a story. So I pinged the person a message and asked if they would talk about it. In light of Vals comments, I was a tad surprised to find out that the reply I got was sane and rational. I enquired what she wanted to discuss with Offord in general terms. The reply "Some issues with our street, some issues about local business development, and his voting record - particularly related to welfare reductions."

 It all sounded very run of the mill, I couldn't for the life of me see why Offord and his staff had become so difficult. And how did the Times hear about the complaint? This is answered by the complainant in a comment. 

"I contacted the Times as I was hoping that as a local paper they would be interested in the refusal of Mr Offord to respond to requests for a meeting, or to give details about his surgery hours. I am university lecturer (having worked at Middlesex University for a long time), a mother of a small child how goes to School in the local area, and a long-time resident of Hendon. When I contacted Mr Offord's office I said that I did not want to share my concerns over email, but would rather meet personally. I was never told that this was the issue preventing Mr Offord from giving me details about this surgery hours - and I have emailed this morning (12.10.17) giving three specific reasons why I would like to meet with him. This should calm Mr Offord's fears about his personal safety. All Hendon residents should be concerned about the lack of communication from Mr Offord about a simple request for surgery hours. They should be more concerned that the parliamentary complaints commission CANNOT follow up on MPs who refuse to respond to or engage with their constituents. Finally, I will be contacting the IPSO if the title of the article is not changed - as to suggest Mr Offord is 'vindicated' is misleading."

So it seems that the matter was as simple as a constituent trying to contact an MP, not getting a satisfactory response and making a complaint in frustration. The Times clearly realised that the original text was misleading and changed the text & title, giving Dr Sanders-McDonagh her correct title and removing all reference to Mr Offord being vindicated.

I do hope that Matthew Offord now makes the effort to meet his constituent. The reason the information portal for finding info on MP's is called "TheyWorkForYou" because they do. It took me five minutes to find out that Dr Sanders-McDonagh is a well respected University lecturer. I would have thought this is just the type of person Mr Offord should be chatting to. Given his staff stated they had declined the request on the grounds she is dangerous, surely this is now not a sustainable argument.

Back in 2008, I requested a meeting with my then MP, Andrew Dismore. I had decided to quit the Labour Party and I wanted to discuss the reasons with Mr Dismore. There were many issues, with him, with the constituency and with the Labour Party that had disillusioned me. I wrote to him, explained my issues and requested a meeting. It was a very difficult meeting for Dismore, at the end of which I informed him I was leaving the Labour Party. It is fair to say that we did not part on good terms. Despite all of that, I still respected him as he had made the time and bothered to listen. In short, he did his job and explained in detail his actions.

Mr Offord should learn from the example of Dismore, who has never ducked out of difficult meetings, hid behind staff or misused police guidance to avoid difficult conversations with clever academics. He should do his job and if someone who is much cleverer than he is, gives him a hard time, he should embrace the opportunity to learn something. After seven years it is sad that Mr Offord still doesn't seem to really understand what his job should be.