SIR - I can understand why Mike Foster wrote his angry letter (May 18) on my apparent claim that he had failed to ask a single written parliamentary question in the last year.

The only problem is that I made no such claim - the report in the Worcester News on which he was relying was based on a misunderstanding.

As I have explained to Mr Foster, and as he accepts, I did not say that he had not asked any questions. Rather, when your reporter rang me to ask to about a news story from Mike Foster on voting records, I responded by looking up and quoting from a political website called They Work For You, which records the parliamentary activity of MPs.

I was seeking to explain that voting records are an inadequate measure of effectiveness and that you need to look at many other indicators, including speeches made, speed of response to correspondence and numbers of questions asked. Even then, the numbers game is a poor indication - quality matters more than quantity!

While the website is usually reliable, on this occasion it appears to have been completely wrong. Mike Foster says he tabled 70 written questions last year. I have spoken to him and suggested he takes up his complaint with the editors of the website and not with me.

The great majority of MPs work hard for their constituents in many different ways - letters to ministers are perhaps the most important, and there is no public record of them. When I explained all this to your journalist, I was not, as Mike understandably but wrongly believed, trying to score points.

Peter Luff,

MP, Mid-Worcestershire