It seems a fear of technology among MPs could put the brakes on the e-government revolution.

A survey by training and recruitment firm Parity has found only ten per cent of politicians conduct a quarter or more of their correspondence by email. The vast majority still prefer to use post and many respond to electronic messages with a written letter.

This is a more than a bit embarrassing for the Government, which launched an initiative to give everyone access to the internet by 2005 and put every government department online.

Only one of the 151 MPs questioned used email for more than 75 per cent of their correspondence.

Most MPs were linked up to the internet and a quarter received more than 25 emails a week but, when their assistants were asked how they preferred to communicate with people, 75 per cent said by letter, 12 per cent in person, seven per cent by phone, five per cent by email and one per cent by fax.

Parity's managing director Rick Bacon said: "At a time when the Government is pushing forward at a rate of knots with reform and development in the online world, it's ironic that most MPs are still unwilling to embrace communications technology."

So, while the rest of us swap our emails and wonder at web sites, most MPs will, for whatever reason a fear of being swamped with messages they won't be able to deal with perhaps, or spam continue to make it hard for us to communicate with them.

Not that internet-based problems are too unusual though. Although the official Parliament web site, designed by Brighton-based Epic, continues to gather plaudits for its simple but elegant re-design, the Government's site and the party political sites are far from model citizens.

A small minority of MPs have used the internet from the early days and had their own long-standing personal email addresses, while others joined up during the dot.com boom of the late Nineties.

Anne Widdecombe has a "fun"

site, the Widdy Web, but, apparently, no email address, which is a bit odd to say the least.

If MPs can't adjust to an internet-savvy society, they're going to find it increasingly difficult to fight growing voter apathy. We demand a reponse by email.

www.parity.net
www.parliament.uk
www.epic.co.uk
www.annwiddecombemp.com