16 Jan 2025
Before your meeting
If you’ve met your MP before, maybe as part of the Climate Coalition mobilisation in October, 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.
Remember, you’re meeting your MP because you’re concerned constituents not because you’re policy experts. Keep the conversations fairly "high level" and focus on the need for an ambitious, comprehensive and fair climate plan. If your MP tries to get into the detail of one issue, try to steer the conversation back to the need for a bold and fair plan. If they ask questions that you don’t know the answer to, tell them you’ll follow up later and contact us for help if needed.
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
Start the meeting by introducing yourselves and your group. You might explain that:
- You’re constituents. Residents, members of the local community from all walks of life, united in wanting to see fair action for people, climate and nature.
- You want your MP to call for the government’s new climate plan to ensure fairness is embedded in it.
2. Introduce them to the campaign or remind them about it
Hopefully your MP will have heard about the Big Climate Plan campaign. Explain that you are here to discuss a key opportunity for them to demonstrate their commitment to fair climate action today.
Set out the crucial opportunity of the new climate plan. Use your own words, but this might be along the following lines:
After a successful legal challenge by Friends of the Earth, the government has to write a new climate plan by May next year. This must set out how we will meet the UK’s international commitment to cut carbon emissions by over two-thirds by 2030. We’re currently dangerously off track and urgent action is needed. The plan must be ambitious, comprehensive and fair, with policies that add up and enough investment to deliver them. And it must make sure that everyone can have lower energy bills, warm homes, clean air, better public transport and well-paid green jobs. We want you to help us get the climate plan that the people of <constituency> and the planet need.
3. Talk about why a fair climate plan is so important
In March Friends of the Earth will publish new fairness focused research, highlighting the real-world impacts of climate policies. Use this MP meeting to share the fairness research and share your own thoughts on why fairness is vital for a successful climate plan.
We’ve included some guidance on how to talk about the benefits and importance of a fair climate plan below.
Wider benefits
Many of the people hit hardest by the impacts of climate change, in the UK and worldwide, are those who have done the least to cause the problem.
Fair climate action will bring significant benefits, including cheaper energy, warmer homes, more green jobs and reduced air pollution. We need to make sure that action helps everyone and not just those who can afford to buy a Tesla or fit a heat pump.
With the backlash against net-zero in some quarters (such as Reform and parts of the Conservative party), it’s vital that the government’s climate plan is fair, and seen to be fair. If it isn’t, then it risks being weaponised by climate sceptics and those seeking to delay climate action.
Local benefits
It’s a truism that MPs represent their constituencies. They’ll want to know how a climate plan will benefit their constituents. You can find lots of useful information about your constituency by using Friends of the Earth’s Near You tool. This will provide you with examples you can use in your meeting (and print to hand to your MP) to illustrate the need for action, such as:
- How many people are living in poorly insulated cold homes.
- How many people suffer from respiratory problems, aggravated by air pollution.
- How many people don’t have access to a car and so would benefit from better public transport and cycling and walking facilities.
- How many people have good access to green spaces.
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
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".
4. Hand in your petition
If your group has been collecting signatures for a petition calling for a fair and ambitious climate plan, this is a great opportunity to hand it in. Our petitions are addressed to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but since it’s been gathered locally, your MP can help by forwarding it directly to him. They can do this alongside a letter, supporting fair action on the Climate Plan and their thoughts on Friends of the Earth’s new fairness-focused research.
Your petition shows both local support and that this issue matters to constituents. For more detailed guidance on handing in petitions, see this guide on how to hand in your petition.
5. Ask your MP to take action
Regardless of if you have a petition you can use to engage your MP, you can still ask them to take action.
We're asking MPs to do this by writing to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling for a fair climate plan, and copying the letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves and Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband. If your MP has already written to Starmer, or wants to do more, they can show their support in other ways such as by posting on social media or sharing a photo of themselves with the fairness research and our Big Climate Plan posters.
Additionally, we’ve got a checklist setting out the 10 key things we want to see in a fair climate plan (link to follow in early February). This includes ensuring affordable, renewable energy for all, improving public transport, and creating well-paid green jobs. During your conversation, you can use the checklist as a reference point to explain the broad range of benefits a fair plan should provide. You can give this to your MP and they can use it if needed in drafting their letter. They can use our letter template.
Ask your MP to send you a copy of the letter and any replies they receive.
If your MP won’t agree in the meeting to write a letter, then try to find out what’s stopping them: maybe they need more information, if they’re a new Labour MP then maybe they’re unwilling to put their head above the parapet, or maybe they just don’t agree with the campaign.
6. Take a photo for further awareness
Before you leave, ask your MP for a photo of you together, holding a campaign sign. Use the photo on your website and social media.
Thank them for meeting you and get together afterwards to think through next steps. If you need advice, please get in touch.
After your meeting
Send your MP an email thanking them for their time and reiterating what they committed to. Attach the fairness research (available from 19 March) and fairness checklist, alongside any photos you took.
- Post your photo on social media tagging @friends_earth
- Send a press release. Include your photo and quote from the MP to your local media.
- Let us know how it went. We’d love to know what your MP said and any commitments they made.
If this is your first meeting with your MP, then think of it as not as a one-off but as the start of a relationship. Discuss as a group what your next steps are.
