FOR those who are lucky enough to be in work and have spare money after paying bills, this is a time of year when what is spent can make a real difference to small local companies.

British businesses are gearing up to appeal to shoppers in what used to be described as the pre-Christmas spending rush.

This year though, with crippling rises for everybody in energy bills, inflation soaring and once-available public services such as dentistry vanishing, the spend available for luxuries is shrinking fast. Pay for your child to have a root canal and filling or buy them a Xmas present is going to be the stark choice for many.

Matt Hancock MP’s Xmas present budget, however, is about to be significantly increased. He is the former health secretary who resigned his position in June 2021 after being caught breaking lockdown rules by having an affair in his office.

This week he has been announced as a participant in the television reality programme ‘I’m a Celebrity… get me out of here.’

The programme famously gets participants to eat the genitals and anuses (is that the plural…?) of various animals as part of a ‘Bushtucker’ trial. The selection of Hancock will, undoubtedly, lead to a frenzy of ‘meat and two veg’ headlines for as long as he’s in the programme (Let’s hope he doesn’t win!)

How will Hancock serve his constituency of West Suffolk from a television set in the jungle somewhere? According to anonymous sources he intends to publicise the needs of people with dyslexia.

Perhaps if he donates the entire payment he will receive that would be acceptable but frankly, if a member of parliament doesn’t want to do constituency work they should resign their seat.

Arguably, he ‘should’ donate his TV appearance fee anyway since the only reason for the invitation is his self-made scandal – breaking the ministerial code and his own covid rules while we the public paid his salary. He owes us whatever he earns!

Chris Bryant, the Labour MP who chairs the House of Commons standards committee, has called for a by-election and tweeted: ‘There is something deeply unpleasant about the former health secretary playing around in the jungle when his constituents are facing a cost-of-living crisis and long covid sufferers are looking for answers from the inquiry.’

It’s not just Hancock though. Too many high-profile MPs neglect their constituencies to seek fame or enjoy fancy holidays even as parliament is sitting. Ex PM Boris Johnson only popped back from the Caribbean recently when he thought there was a chance he could be PM again.

So, why do voters put up with this dilettante attitude from their MPs? I think it’s because we’re so used to decades of poor behaviour that we don’t react to it. We are conditioned to expect scandal, absenteeism and neglect.

Here’s a solution. Employees of many businesses must record their time down to 25-minute slots and many people have targets they are required to meet. Why not make MPs do the same?

I see no reason why they should not fill out and publish weekly timesheets. Let’s also give them targets for how many hours a week they spend supporting constituents and doing casework.

It’s about time we expected MPs to organise their work and commitments. It’s time they were accountable to those they represent.

After all, they work for us.