I WAS disappointed when Gillian Merron lost her seat in Lincoln at the General Election as I feel it was more a judgement on Prime Minister Gordon Brown than on our Labour MP herself.

I must also admit that I was a little fearful of how capably our new Conservative MP Karl McCartney would perform in his new role.

Already, there are three issues in which I feel Mr McCartney is inadequately representing the people of Lincoln.

The first issue is Mr McCartney's response to the Budget.

On the positive side, the freeze in council tax was welcome, but it is a little irrelevant when Lincoln's Conservative-controlled city council raised the tax only a month or so before the election.

It would be interesting to know if Mr McCartney attempted to use his considerable influence to prevent this.

Furthermore, during the election campaign, Mr McCartney promised to reverse Labour's "tax on jobs", the planned rise in National Insurance contributions from both employers and employees. It was argued that this would choke the recovery.

The Budget has eliminated this rise for employers, but not for employees.

Mr McCartney made no reference to this in his response in the Echo (June 23).

It is evident that Lincoln now has an MP who represents the bosses and not the workers.

The second issue is Mr McCartney's inability to have any influence on East Coast Trains' choice to end any hope of sufficient daily services to and from London King's Cross.

It seems our MP was not even deemed worthy of consultation on this issue and, despite being the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Lincoln for several years, Mr McCartney has failed to build the contacts and gravitas needed to establish this much needed service for the city.

Mr McCartney's response to this in the Echo (June 18) was: "East Coast has made the decision to cut the service. It is not Government cuts."

But East Coast was renationalised last year and, as far as I'm aware, is still nationalised.

Therefore, his claim that the coalition Government was powerless to prevent this is flagrant misrepresentation.

The third and last issue is his desire to reintroduce horse-racing on Lincoln's West Common, in spite of the local community's protest against the idea.

I question the importance of a project that would only create a few jobs for half a dozen weekends a year when attracting greater investment and job opportunities to the area would be more beneficial.

I understand Mr McCartney has close ties to the Lincoln Racecourse Regeneration Company and the Lincoln Racecourse Trust, but I would like to remind him that he has been elected to represent all his constituents and to fight for the prosperity of Lincoln.

As of June 24, Hansard had yet to show that Mr McCartney had made his maiden speech in Parliament. The campaigning slogan of "putting Lincoln first" appears hollow in this context when Mr McCartney cannot even take the time to speak on behalf Lincoln, never mind fight for the city.

Mr McCartney would do well to remember his victory was a narrow one and that the "Labour trolls" he referred to on his Twitter page on May 15 are more than 16,000 strong in Lincoln.

These numbers will swell every time he lets down the people of the city.

Ross Pollard Lincoln.