Is there anybody out there?

When New Labour were returned at the last General Election with a huge majority and a chorus of 'things can only get better', many people believed that we had created a political utopia which would go unchallenged for the next five years. A former Government press officer examines whether it is worth campaigning against a Government with such a majority.

Given we had a Government with a popular mandate - and a majority of more than 170 - there seemed no reason - or no point - in opposing them either in Parliament or in the constituencies.

The pollsters will probably show where new Labour won the election - but it doesn't need an analysis of the data to illustrate that so called Middle England and the 'floating voter' put Mr Blair where he is today.

The typical voter that Mr Blair had to woo and win was 30-40something; well-educated; politically-aware; possibly from a traditional Labour background, with a recent history of voting Conservative or LibDem because they felt they had something to safeguard - be it school fees or mortgage or small business; but someone who wanted to be reassured that business was safe in new Labour's hands - and they could then be coaxed back to the philosophical party of their youth.

Then, following the last General Election, few people would have been more shocked by the result than Mr Blair and his advisors - while a majority of 40-50 would have been practical and manageable - all of a sudden they were faced with a Parliament of MPs who never expected to win the seats - and a majority which meant they could do pretty much what they wanted for the next four or five years.

And maybe that was when people began to doubt that 'things could only get better'.

On the one hand, it is mathematically obvious that this Government can railroad through any measure it wants. But should the Government stop listening to the electorate or should the electorate stop debating with the Government particularly on a controversial issue? Is any dialogue with a Government with such a majority a futile exercise...or not?

IR35 is an obvious example of this. It was announced with all the impact of a dead slug in the Budget last year. It didn't even merit a mention on the floor of the House and found itself a rather pathetic number 35 on the list of Inland Revenue press notices.

Also significant is that it targeted a group of people who - by the very nature of their businesses - had no representative body or union or collective means of lobbying against this measure.

Inland Revenue press notice number 35 should never have made it beyond a tedious technical debate in the Committee Stage of some Finance Bill, when some technically-astute back-bencher could have used it to score points against an ill-briefed Minister.

That might have been the theory - but in practice IR35 became the biggest issue in many MPs' case-loads; it was a recurrent theme in MPs' surgeries around the country; it hit front page headlines in some of the national newspapers; it was the subject of a Prime Minister's Question Time; it was the reason more than 700 individuals descended on Parliament in November 1999 to discuss the matter with their MPs; it's taken one Paymaster General perilously close to the political wilderness; and it is the reason that something which should have remained the 35th press notice from the Inland Revenue has hit the antennae of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.

At the end of the day, IR35 might still become law - because a Government with such a vast majority has no need to listen to reason - but the one thing that contractors have achieved is that never again will any Government department consider them to be a 'soft touch' or 'an easy target'.

Many contractors have written to their MP or the Minister - and maybe, when faced with the standard Dawn Primarolo 'cut and paste' reply wondered if it was worth the postage.

In the mid-1980s, I was on the other side of the fence, working as a Government press officer in a major Whitehall department - nowadays I would have been known as 'spin-doctor' - for a Minister in Thatcher's Government.

At the time, 'Maggie' was at her height with a majority of about 120 and looked like she could railroad through just about anything she wanted.

Nevertheless, one of my jobs was to examine the Minister's post bag and try to identify issues before they became a matter of political embarrassment or importance.

The general procedure, and I doubt it has changed much under the current regime, is that a constituent would write to his or her MP requesting information or expressing concern about a particular issue. That MP would either be able to reply directly - or more usually would forward the letter to the Minister responsible asking for advice. The letter would then be wrapped in a particular folder and sent to the civil servant in the Minister's department for a suitable drafted reply. Naturally, if the civil servant had already replied to a similar letter, the same reply would be used. The draft reply, plus the original letter, would then return to the Minister for approval and sign-off – possibly the first time the Minister had seen it -, and then sent back to the MP, who would then forward it to a satisfied (or not) constituent.

As I was 'gate-keeper' to the Minister's post-bag, I would see many letters on many subjects either sent in directly or via constituency MPs. As a general rule of thumb, I would not be overly concerned about 1,000 identical post-cards or 3,000 signatures on a petition - as this was an obvious indication that it was part of an orchestrated campaign. However, alarm bells would start ringing if there were a dozen or so individual letters on the same subject coming from different parts of the country with no obvious link between them. If that number hit 50 or 60, then there would be signs of twitching among MPs who were worried about their seats and the Minister would begin to show signs of anxiety at being the orchestrator of an unpopular measure. If those individual letters started to run into three figures, we knew we had a problem - which, even if we contained at that moment, was likely to come back to haunt us.

Many people who visit MPs' surgeries do so because they have genuine, but nevertheless parochial concerns. An MP can do his or her best by liaising with local councils to sort out such concerns. However, when a constituent arrives at a surgery with a genuine concern about the Government policy on a particular issue - that's a problem for the MP. He usually has to take it up with the Minister concerned - and a standard reply can back-fire significantly - often on the MP who has had no idea he's been fobbed off with a 'cut and paste' number, nor would the constituent know unless he or she was linked into a group of people who were comparing replies.

It's particularly worrying for a local MP when a constituent starts talking about 'not voting' for the MP at the next general election - bear in mind that if one constituent feels sufficiently motivated to write a personal letter - there are probably a hundred or so who are as affected but won't put pen to paper. For every one person affected by a Government measure, he or she has a partner, a mother, a father, a neighbour, a friend, whom he will be out to convince to support his stand-point in the ballot box. It is the personal letter or visit which does make the difference.

So maybe with a majority such as this Government, we can't change policy. But individuals who choose to lobby their MPs can make a difference; those MPs can make a difference with Ministers; and ultimately, Ministers, might listen to the will of the people.

It doesn't take huge numbers to begin to make an impact - and it certainly is the quality rather than the quantity, which begins to worry the decision-makers.

If you want to make a difference, the Office of Fair Trading is asking for comments on a report about competitiveness in the professions; the

Finance Bill is still in Parliament and is the responsibility of the

Chancellor and his Paymaster General, Dawn Primarolo; the Prime Minister is still promoting e-commerce and wanting the UK to lead the world in IT, while his Ministers push through this legislation; there is an e-Czar, Alex Allen, who initially expressed concern about IR35, but who seems to have gone quiet on the subject recently; there is a Minister for E-Commerce and Small Businesses, Patricia Hewitt, who should understand the damage this legislation will do; there is a Champion for Small Business, David Irwin and there are more than 600 constituency MPs who were elected to represent the views of their constituents - or lose their seats next time around.

If you want to make a difference - this is the last opportunity to tell the politicians they've got it wrong.