How to have impactful conversations with your MP

This guide will help you prepare for meeting your MP as part of the Climate Coalition's mass lobby on Wednesday 9 July in Westminster, or in local constituency meetings before or after that date. Whether you’re travelling to parliament or arranging a meeting closer to home, this is a vital moment to call for a bold, fair and ambitious climate plan.

01 May 2025

This summer is a crucial opportunity to influence the new UK government’s 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.

Whether you're part of the Westminster lobby on 9 July or meeting your MP locally, you can push your MP to take action and help ensure the government deliver a plan that is bold and fair.

Before your meeting

If you’ve met your MP before, maybe as part of the Climate Coalition mobilisation in October or delivering the fairness report to them in February, 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 why you’re here. Whether its in Westminster on 9 July for the mass lobby or a meeting locally.

When introducing your lobby meeting, you can mention that this is part of The Climate Coalition’s mass lobby and use the shared messages to explain the wider coalition effort. However, your focus today is to talk specifically about the growing national campaign calling for a fair and ambitious new climate plan.

We’re here as part of The Climate Coalition’s mass lobby — a broad coalition of organisations, faith groups and local communities coming together to call for urgent climate action. Our group is here today - united in asking MPs to ensure the UK has a strong and fair climate plan that delivers on our international promises, protects people and nature, and brings benefits like warm homes, clean air, and lower energy bills.

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 (templates coming soon).
Offer a supportive quote for a press release (template coming soon).
Write a piece in your local newspaper.

You might not be able to cover every demand in a short meeting, especially if your MP is meeting with multiple groups as part of the mass lobby. If that’s the case, focus on introducing the issue, being clear about your main ask, and then aim to agree a follow-up conversation where you can discuss specific actions in more detail.

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 (coming soon) 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 (coming soon) to help with this.
Share the template press release (coming soon). 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 (coming soon) to let Friends of the Earth know what happened so we can track MP support across the UK.