How to have impactful conversations with your MP

This guide will help you prepare for meeting your MP as part of Friends of the Earth's Big Climate Plan campaign, whether you're following up after the Climate Coalition's mass lobby or arranging a local meeting in the months leading up to the plan being published in October. This is still a vital moment to call for a bold, fair and ambitious climate plan.

17 Jul 2025

There is no time like now to influence the UK government’s new climate strategy. The government requested an extension on the publication of their climate plan and are now expected to publish the new plan in October. This means we still have time over the coming months to influence what’s included in it.

The mass lobby on 9 July brought thousands of people together to push for climate action, but the campaign is far from over. Whether or not you joined the lobby in Westminster, now is the time to build on that momentum by arranging local meetings with your MP.

The Climate Coalition will be organising a nationwide Lobby Week from 13 – 20 September 2025. This is a key opportunity to meet your MP again (or for the first time) in your constituency. These local meetings will help continue the conversation, show the strength of public support, and remind MPs that climate action matters deeply to their constituents. We strongly encourage groups to arrange an MP meeting during this week.

Before your meeting

If you’ve met your MP before, maybe as part of the Climate Coalition’s October mobilisation, the fairness report delivery in February, or the 9 July mass lobby, think about what you learned from that meeting. If you haven’t met your MP before, spend some time researching them to understand what makes them tick and how they might be persuaded to support the campaign. You’ll also want to make some practical preparations, like deciding what will be said and who can take notes and photos.

Research your MP

A useful tool to help you with this research is TheyWorkForYou. Look up your MP’s positions and any connections they may have to senior Labour figures who have an influential role in the government. These may include:

Keir Starmer, Prime Minister
Rachel Reeves, Chancellor
Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Heidi Alexander, Secretary of State for Transport
Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affair

It’s also helpful to find out if they’ve shown interest in climate, fairness or social issues so you can tailor your approach to them in the meeting.

During your meeting

Below is a suggested structure for your meeting. You can follow it to the letter or choose bits that feel right for you.

1. Introduce yourselves and explain why you’re here

Explain the context of your meeting. If this is a follow-up to the 9 July lobby, mention this. If it’s part of Lobby Week (13 – 20 September) or a general local MP meeting, explain that you’re part of the Big Climate Plan campaign, a Friends of the Earth campaign to secure a strong, fair UK climate plan before it's published in October.

We’re here as part of the Big Climate Plan campaign: a national effort led by Friends of the Earth and supported by a wide coalition of people, communities, and organisations across the UK. We’re calling for urgent and fair climate action that delivers warm homes, clean air, green jobs and lower bills.

If you’re following up from the 9 July mass lobby, you could say: “We spoke to you during the Westminster lobby and we’re following up to keep the conversation going and build on the points we raised.”

Your MP might not know a lot about the climate plan or what we’re calling for. You could say:

“We’re part of the Big Climate Plan campaign, and we’re asking for your support to ensure the government’s upcoming climate plan works for everyone, —not just the well-off. That means lower energy bills, warm homes, good public transport, clean air and decent green jobs.”

2. Talk about why a fair climate plan is so important

We've created MP briefings for you to use when meeting your MP to help you talk about how climate action will help people in your constituency.

Look up your address using our search tool (coming soon) to download a tailored briefing. These include key data on warm homes, clean air, better buses, trees and nature and flood protection locally. They are a powerful tool to help persuade your MP, and for them to use when emailing the Prime Minister in support of the campaign.

However, facts alone won’t persuade your MP. Use the data, alongside stories from people in your community to get across these key messages about the climate plan:

People on lower incomes face the harshest impacts of cold homes and air pollution.
Some communities lack access to affordable public transport or green jobs.
A fair climate plan builds trust and ensures widespread public support.

You can support this point with Friends of the Earth’s report The Fairness Test: A Mandate for Bold Climate Policy, which outlines how to embed fairness into key policy areas, including housing, transport, jobs, and public involvement. You can print or share the summary in your meeting.

3. Ask your MP to take action

At the start of your meeting, set out clearly what you want your MP to do. This gives you time to build your case and return to the ask at the end to agree next steps. The main request is for your MP to write to the Labour leadership team. If they’ve already done this, or are open to additional actions, you can suggest the additional asks we’ve listed below.

Write to Labour’s leadership team. Ask your MP to write to: Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Ed Miliband, Heidi Alexander, and Steve Reed. We’ve prepared a template letter they can use, when you follow up with your MP after the meeting you can share this with them.
Table a written parliamentary question. MPs can help raise the profile of the climate plan by asking questions in parliament. If they are open to this, they can email us for help drafting a question.
A powerful thing an MP can do is speak in a climate debate, or other parliamentary session, to show public support for the Big Climate Plan. This puts pressure on the government and encourages leadership from the top.
Publicly back the campaign. If your MP won’t contact the government directly, ask them to show public support in other ways:

Share a social media post.
Offer a supportive quote for a press release.
Write a piece in your local newspaper.

If your MP met you as part of the July lobby, this is a good opportunity to follow up on whether they’ve taken action since. If not, ask them to commit to doing so now.

It’s also important to recognise that your MP may not be ready to commit to your asks on the spot — that’s okay. The key is to ensure they’ve heard the concerns and understand the strength of feeling behind them. You can always follow up in writing or request a further meeting to secure their support.

Tell stories

Facts are important but stories are vital in empathetically illustrating information that can otherwise be rather dry. Personal stories illustrate why this issue is important to you and why it should matter to your MP as well. So don’t just bombard your MP with facts and figures, incorperate personal stories too. These might be about how the lack of good public transport is stopping you doing what you want, or how traffic levels are aggravating your child’s asthma or how the local foodbank is seeing more people because of the rising cost of heating a cold home.

Persuading MPs from different parties

The government’s overarching priority is to deliver economic growth. You could say that one of the best ways to do this is to invest in climate action: the green economy grew by 9% in 2023, compared to 0.1% for the economy as a whole.

Point out that it was the current Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband who, the last time Labour were in power, got the Climate Change Act into law, following the "Big Ask" campaign led by Friends of the Earth. Getting a bold and fair climate plan is building on this legacy.

You could say that if there's one thing they can do for the climate, it’s lobbying and working with Ed Miliband to get as strong a climate plan as possible.

It’s really worrying that the new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is a self-professed "net-zero sceptic". You could remind your MP that It was a Conservative government that set the UK’s net-zero target. This is one of the party’s key environmental achievements, and they can help ensure it is properly delivered by holding Labour to account.

The Liberal Democrats have the right instincts on climate, as was recognised in our scoring of their manifesto. We need them to focus on this and call the government out if they don’t deliver.

They know why this is vital. Again, we need them to call the government out if they don’t deliver.

If your constituency was one of the 40 or so where the Greens were in second place in the General Election, then you could tell your MP that supporting a bold and fair climate plan is a great way of showing your constituents that you’re a "green champion".

After your meeting

Thank your MP. Follow up with an email thanking them for their time and reminding them of any commitments they made. If they couldn’t agree commitments in the meeting, ask them to agree to a follow-on meeting in the next couple of weeks to get their commitment to action.
Ask your MP to: send you a copy of any letters they send, let you know about any replies they receive and keep you in the loop if they speak in parliament or show support in public.
Attach resources. Include the local MP briefing in your follow-up email. You can also attach a copy of the fairness report if you haven’t previously shared this.
Share your photo. Post your photos on social media and tag @friends_earth and your MP. Use our template posts to help with this.
Share the press release. Include a photo from your MP meeting. You can tailor these templates depending on if your MP was supportive of the campaign and include a quote from them. Or, if your MP hasn’t agreed to take action, the press release can be used to further pressure them to do so.
Tell us how it went. Fill in this short form to let Friends of the Earth know what happened so we can track MP support across the UK.