The late Edward Lyons once said that Members of Parliament were not delegates, they were and are representatives.

At the time he said it he was fighting a rearguard action to remain Labour MP for Bradford West against constituency party members who were trying to de-select him.

Mr Lyons lost that particular fight and went over to the newly-formed Social Democratic Party. He meant, of course, that being elected did not deprive an MP of his right to make independent judgements irrespective of the wishes of the people who voted for him.

An MP’s first job is to represent all the people of his constituency including those who did not vote for him. He’s not sent to Parliament to be a talking head for single-issue interest groups or a particular culture.

So when Bradford West’s Respect Party MP George Galloway was accused by Heaton community campaigner Elizabeth Hellmich of ‘not doing anything for us’, he could have replied that he was not a messenger boy.

In turn, his constituents could ask, as the constituents of any MP could ask: What are you there for?

Of all Bradford’s recent MPs, Ann Cryer, who represented Keighley from 1997 to 2010, is the obvious example of an elected politician who fought a battle for what she thought was right in spite of antagonism towards her by some in the Bradford Labour Party who tried to get her expelled.

Like Mr Lyons, she believed that MPs are autonomous individuals, not party hacks. Irrespective of the growing authority of extra-Parliamentary bodies such as the European Commission in Brussels, which itself is influenced by the World Trade Organisation in Geneva, Mrs Cryer used her position as a backbench MP to change the law.

She said: “There has been a diminuation of power within the UK Parliament. But you can use Parliament as a platform for change. I did.”

With the help of former Halifax Labour MP Alice Mahon, a Liberal-Democrat Peer, Lord Leicester, and Jack Straw, former Labour Home Secretary and then Leader of the House of Commons, Mrs Cryer succeeded in getting through both Houses of Parliament the Bill that brought in Forced Marriage Protection Orders.

For five years she was a member of the Parliamentary Committee of the Parliamentary Labour Party when Tony Blair was Prime Minister. The committee, comprising six peers, six MPs and six members of the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, met every Wednesday afternoon at 2pm.

Mrs Cryer said: “Cathy Ashton, who was in the Lords, asked Tony (Blair) for Parliamentary time in the Commons to debate the Bill. Tony said, ‘What about it Jack?’ Jack Straw said he’d get back to me, and true to his word he rang my mobile and said, ‘we can manage it’.

“That’s me, an MP, manipulating people who could get things done. It took another 18 months but we managed it. Alice Mahon and I in 1999 persuaded Jack Straw, who was then Home Secretary, to set up the Home Office Forced Marriage Unit.

“Both Alice and I were given a hard time by unelected Asian leaders. But while they were doing their damndest to get rid of me, a lot of Asian women, and white women, were working in the opposite direction.

“There’s always a way round things if you persist and push and perhaps bore people.”

Councillor Ralph Berry, a former probation officer and the man in charge of education services in Bradford, is eager to swap the goldfish bowl of City Hall for the bigger pond of the House of Commons in the 2015 General Election.

He said: “By then my children will all be out of statutory education. Parliament is full of university graduates and party researchers but with no experience of the world. You are only useful to the party if you already have an interest you have cultivated.

“I wouldn’t go along and say, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I wouldn’t be a delegate, oh no, not a blank sheet. Democracy needs creative, original, challenging back-benchers.

“You have to make people believe it’s worthwhile sending people down there. Policy driven by focus groups stems from management theories followed by John Major and Tony Blair. Focus groups are shallow and lacking in relevance at times.”

MPs can make a difference to the lives of others.