During the two days although I had to arrive late to work experience, I was able to get involved in lots of interesting and new work that I had not done before and learn about the nature of constituency office life. Firstly, we spent the morning going through casework exemplars and looking at how Michael Tomlinson would react to different constituent emails and scenarios.
After this we prepped for our debate on introducing a year of compulsory national service and I took the position of closing statement, and we discussed plans for rebuttals. After lunch we then spent the afternoon stuffing envelopes to ask constituents to fill in a parliamentary survey and we went through who we would put in our dream ‘fantasy cabinet’ which included a range of people both fictional and real.
Although I was unable to join the visit to parliament and meet the civil servants, I did manage to have a chat with Michael about his advice and the relationship between MPs and civil servants as well as the fast-track scheme.
On the second day we began by knocking on doors to deliver the cost-of-living surveys we had prepared the day before and this was a great experience as we were able to speak directly to people about matters that are clearly important to us all.
Probably my favourite part of the work experience came once we came back to the constituency office as we held the debate. This involved a structured format like that of the house of commons and Michael acting as speaker. There were many rebuttals, and the debate was a success although unfortunately our side of the motion did not pass.