Why I'm putting my family before Parliament

Spending evenings with work colleagues is (usually) pleasant. But doing it through necessity practically every term-time weekday evening, unless a special exemption has been negotiated, to the exclusion of family life, is the one and only reason why I have decided to not re-stand as an MP at the next election.

The possibility of a slim majority or a hung parliament where each vote counts, and nobody can leave, and I have to resort to spending the years from, say, 2010 to 2015 telling my children to turn on the parliament channel to see where I am, or else dramatically resign in a mid-term by-election crisis, fills me with horror.

I do not begrudge my colleagues and friends in the House of Commons for not putting reform of the working hours of Parliament top of their agendas.

By definition, they must feel they have got it about right in their own personal lives, or at least come to terms with the sacrifices else - one presumes - they wouldn't be there.

But that's not to say that we can't do better. And now, as we look afresh at the type of democracy that we want to have, is the time to do it.

Politicians from all sides have said that they want to end the "gentleman's club" that is Westminster.

Yet hardly anyone is talking about ending the compulsory evening working hours where people use the cover of votes to enjoy their clubbish dinners and drinks.

Yes, it is better than it was. That's what the experienced ones say: "It was much worse when I came into Parliament - we regularly sat into the wee small hours and people were sleeping in their offices. You don't know how lucky you are."

But since when have core working hours of 2.30-10pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, 11.30am till 7pm on Wednesdays and 10.30 till 6pm on Thursdays been family friendly, particularly if you consider that the voting often doesn't start till the end of each day and each vote lasts around 15 minutes?

Am I alone in wanting to see my young family in that crucial gap between school ending and lights out? That question is too sensitive to be asked.

There is a tension between those MPs who have families in London and those whose families live in constituencies outside London.

The latter group, quite rightly, want to cram as much as possible into a few days at Westminster so that they can be reunited with their families swiftly.

But it is not beyond the wit of man to have a system that works for both?

If that shortens the working week, then let's meet for those extra days in the late summer when the schools have gone back but the party conferences haven't yet kicked off.

We now have an unrivalled chance to reform Parliament's working hours. So my request is simple.

I accept that MPs are not employees and so the right to request flexible working hours when families are young does not apply.

So let's simply have a system that allows us to leave the building at five o'clock like normal human beings - people can always have dinner with their mates in the evening if they want to, not because they have to.

I've told my constituency party that I wouldn't rule out seeking to return to Parliament when either my family is older or the working hours are reformed, whichever is sooner.

My youngest child will be 18 in 2026. So come on, John Bercow, see if you can sort it out before then.

Kitty Ussher is Labour MP for Burnley.