November Newsletter

Dear MP Watchers, 

 You probably felt the same as we did to hear Justin Rowlatt’s BBC scoop that this year’s COP hosts had decided to use the opportunity to discuss oil contracts rather than focus on climate change!

But we think there are heartening elements to the backlash.

For instance, this fantastic short featuring Olivia Coleman and directed by Richard Curtis of MakeMyMoneyMatter. And now Channel 4 have a brilliant two-part series called The Great Climate Fight, where presenters are showing how slippery our leading politicians are in avoiding vital conversations.

Oh, and surprisingly, electoral spending limits have suddenly almost doubled without debate. 

 We have some great things to tell you in this edition.

 Banner Drop and Green Carding

Gratitude to everybody who came along, as well as those supporting from home, for the successful banner drop and to the green-carding of MPs outside Parliament on 21st November. The action was created by a broad coalition of environmental campaigning groups including scientists, doctors and psychologists. It was a wonderful happy day and both the national team and local groups mingled.

 What is green-carding? It is our democratic right to go and see our own MPs by visiting Parliament and requesting a green card. You then complete the form and hand it back to them. Either your MP or a representative will come and meet you, if they can’t then you will receive an email. Read more about a first-time experience of Green carding here .

 Whilst we were there, we took the opportunity to record some of our group members. All films on the day were put together by our amazing campaign filmmaker Guy Ducker, and have been well received in the Twittersphere. Gemma Roger’s film was also retweeted by Byline Times.

 If you do like the films please share these tweets, as it helps to boost our campaign and peak interest in our work.

 Resources

 We have some fabulous videos to help you in our collective quest to hold our politicians to account!

 In our Monthly Tuesday evening catch up meeting, Daisy presented ‘What makes your MP tick’, some slides about building a picture of your MP, to really help bolster your campaign. This is training that we aim to roll out in the near future, if this is of interest to you, email us today at contact@mpwatch.org and be among the first on the waiting list. 

 TRAINING UPDATE 

The last training series of 2023 started last week with a heartening number of new recruits. The next training will begin in January from the 10th-31st. If you or friends are interested in signing up please let Marijn our team support know on contact@mpwatch.org. We’d love to have you.

 New groups, fresh faces

 We may be ‘freshers’ but we are already active in Totnes and South Devon!

Twitter Anthony Mangnall Watch has been running since Feb 2022 alongside the South Devon Primary. The Primary enhances local tactical voting and chooses the candidate best equipped to face Conservative Mangnall, ensuring he is not elected on 30% of the vote when LibDem, Labour and Green are polling above 50% combined. 

 Upping the profile of MP Watch locally and using it to platform local issues is also our agenda. #HonestyInPolitics is a useful line to run alongside the Primary, and provides an ideal lens through which to view Mangnall’s voting record and policy stances. MP Watch are non-partisan, holding MPs from all political parties to equal account.

It’s only a week since we reached out and already the National MP Watch Team has delivered training and given us great tips. Great response! If enough people climb aboard, MP Watch can make a big difference to UK broken politics. 

 Peter, Anthony Mangnall Watch.

 Norfolk Launch

 A first for MP Watch, our first regional hub launch. 

Norfolk MP Watch  was launched on Saturday 18th November at Friends' Meeting House in Norwich. More than fifty people attended, the event was brilliantly chaired by Revd Dr Fiona Haworth

Jessica and Tom spoke powerfully about the aims of MP Watch in holding our MPs to account. The story of how they went from one group to now 60 groups hatched or incubating is impressive. 

 The charismatic conservation scientist Dr Charley Gardner outlined his Walking in Water tour round the Norfolk coast, where he tracked the areas which might be submerged with sea levels rising and those which are protected. It was beautifully passionately presented talk so germane to the work of the Norfolk hub.  Candidates from every party were asked to attend and all but the Conservative invitee attended. 

 And finally, on a slightly different subject, Councillor Jan Davis from the MP Watch group challenged a Conservative candidate who made offensive & climate denying remarks at a school panel event, with the end result that the candidate stepped down! This heartening story shows that if we stand up for ourselves and for climate honesty we will eventually win through. 

 Victor’s Corner

PARLIAMENT IN DECEMBER

The parliamentary year is now fully underway. Both the State Opening and the King’s Speech took place but not without incident. We were impressed that Conservative MP Chris Skidmore did not vote for the KIngs speech because he objected to the inclusion of the bill for new oil and gas licences. 

 A reshuffle of ministers took place followed by the Autumn Statement. Now there’s a brief period of getting some of the bills, announced in the King’s Speech, launched and started on their passage through the legislative process. I say ‘brief’ because of course it soon all closes down again for Christmas.

 Christmas is itself a highly political period, because first there are numerous wine receptions, which provide occasions for corporate lobbying, plus a bit of lobbying from the best-funded NGOs. Not all are pro-oil some like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds are on our side of the environmental argument.

 So what bills can we look forward to?

 There’s a Trade Bill to implement aspects of the Pacific Trade Deal (the CPTPP) to which the UK has signed up. One part of this deal is the Energy Charter Treaty, whereby energy firms can claim compensation for changes in government policy costing them money. The Bill was introduced in the House of Lords by David Cameron in his new role as Foreign Secretary. This bill is likely to have many proposed amendments and to be much debated so look out for it.  

The bill of most interest to us in MP Watch is the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill. This is the bill which Chris Skidmore so objected to. There is no date set yet for the opening debate on the Bill in the Commons but again this one will be controversial. 

We hope that this newsletter is of benefit to you, in this need to hold politicians to account. 

In strength and in solidarity, 

the MP Watch Team.