TAVISTOCK College students have learned about the role of Parliament direct from their local MP.

Geoffrey Cox, MP for West Devon and Torridge, visited the A-level law students to explain how laws are passed and the role MPs carry out in their constituencies.

He told the sixth formers: 'An MP is intended to provide a scrutiny of the laws going through the House of Commons. These days governments have such a programme of legislation that they use guillotine motions to limit the length of debates.

'Quite often, we'll be debating things that are quite fundamental, like ID cards, and whether you all should have to go to some police station and let them take your DNA and photograph your retina and put it on a database. The programme motion meant we could only debate it for a few hours.'

Mr Cox told students there were huge pressures on MPs because of their constituency duties. He said he held surgeries almost every Saturday where constituents brought him queries about housing, planning, child support or tax benefit problems.

'I have at any one time hundreds of caseworks going on,' he explained.

'I get two or three hundred emails and letters a week and I have staff in Parliament and the constituency.'

Mr Cox is also a QC – a high ranking barrister – who founded his own chambers in London. He expressed his belief in the importance of MPs having outside work in order to keep them 'honest and free minded'.

'Career politicians' incomes all depend on climbing the ladder of government so when the whips say jump they tend to ask how high,' he said.

'It used to be the case that a farmer or a businessman or a doctor or a lawyer would go into the House of Commons. They'd have another career and have more independence of mind because they weren't looking to climb the ladder.'

Mr Cox said he was inspired to become an MP when he was taken to Parliament at the age of eight. He recalled going through the doors and being thrilled and excited by the fantastic speakers.

'There isn't a day that goes by that I don't walk in and still get that little thrill and honour and feel that I represent 85,000 people.

'It's tragic that the last 12 months has seen it mired in this scandal because it's a terribly honourable thing to do and it's terribly rewarding.

'This expenses scandal has been a disgrace. It never occurred to me to put my flat screen TV on the taxpayer. Who should buy my furniture but me? The situation should never have been allowed.'

Mr Cox said MPs earned £65,000 per year but a good QC could earn ten or 12 times that.

'By coming into Parliament I took a very heavy pay cut,' he said. 'I still practise because it gives me independence of mind.'

Mr Cox has accepted several Tavistock College students on work experience placements in Parliament and at his chambers, and encouraged others who were interested to contact him.

He said: 'It was a great pleasure to meet the students and to discuss with them the law and the way law is made.

'They asked probing questions, and I hope some will go on to practise law and perhaps even to become MPs and legislators themselves.'