Labour's welfare reforms have generated considerable interest and debate both within parliament and in the public arena. However, it is far from clear that shifts in political attitudes towards welfare have been reflected in public opinion. MPs act as an important channel of communication between the public and the executive. Constituency work remains an important, and arguably growing (Healey et al, 2005), part of MPs’ work, and, as noted in Chapter Three, some of the changes to the parliamentary timetable as part of the ‘modernisation’ process were intended to help them in fulfilling that role. This chapter examines the role of parliament in representing the interests of citizens, by comparing MPs’ attitudes to welfare, as discussed in Chapter Four, with evidence of public attitudes to welfare collated from the annual British Social Attitudes survey and public opinion polls. The chapter will seek to identify and explain areas of disagreement and consensus between public and parliamentary attitudes to welfare, focusing in particular on questions regarding commitment to state welfare provision, priorities in welfare spending, and attitudes towards funding for welfare provision.

Studies of political representation have offered several interpretations of the representative function of MPs. These often begin with the notion of trusteeship expressed by Edmund Burke on his election to parliament in 1774, when he famously informed his new constituents that while he would put ‘great weight’ on their wishes and accord their opinions the highest respect, he would not be bound by them. “Your representative”, he asserted, “owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion” (Burke, 1808, p 19).

Modern commentators have increasingly questioned the relevance of Burkean notions of representation, or at least sought to limit the occasions when Burke should be applied. In a seminal work on representation published in 1967, Pitkin argued that, while representatives must be capable of independent action or judgement, representative government must be characterised by a “constant condition of responsiveness” (Pitkin, 1967, p 233). Conflict between representative and represented, Pitkin argued, “must not normally take place. The representative … must not be found persistently at odds with the wishes of the represented without good reason…” (Pitkin, 1967, p 209).