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The Guardian have written an interesting post on their data blog entitled “MPs and Lords attendance and voting: who’s most active?”

“Polly Curtis writes today on Reality Check about The Independent’s frontpage which asks: “Is this Britain’s laziest MP?” naming Sir Stuart Bell, the Labour MP for Middlesbrough, who has not held a surgery in his constituency since 1997.”

Curtis writes:

“It’s impossible to quantify and compare constituency work but it is possible to measure MPs’ activity in the Commons by the proportion of votes they attend each year. In the Lords, the number of days each peer has attended is also recorded.”

The average absence rate for House of Commons votes during January and February is 25.7%. The average rate for Lancashire MPs is 22.2%, with Preston MP Mark Hendrick above this, at an absence rate of 38.5%.

Nationally, Labour’s absence rate attend rate is 33.9% while the Liberal Democrats is 20.2% and Conservatives 17.2%.

I’ve plotted absence rates for all MPs in Lancashire below on a graph. No data was available for Lindsay Hoyle, MP for Chorley, hence the absence of a figure next to his name.

Update: As Danny Lee points out in the comments, Lindsay Hoyle is Deputy Speaker and therefore does not take part in Commons votes.

Photo by UK Parliament on Flickr.