NICOLA Blackwood MP has been attending children’s groups for 15 minutes in the run-up to an election for a shameless photo opportunity.

If she truly cared about supporting the parents and carers of young children, she wouldn’t have sat by idly as dozens of children’s centres closed down due to the Conservatives’ savage, nonsensical cost cutting that will cost the tax payer much more in the long run and their smug assumption that churches and volunteers would step in to offer something similar for free.

As incredible as these people are, they could never have been expected to deliver the same level of expertise and range of services that the children’s centres set up under the Sure Start programme did.

I visited Nicola’s surgery in October 2015 to express how vital the children’s centre in Cutteslowe had been for our family and countless others like us, but unfortunately she showed no empathy or interest, merely hostility that I had taken up 15 minutes of her precious time on a Friday evening.

Does that sound like the kind of person you wish to have as your elected representative?

ALEX PALMER South Avenue, Kidlington