Share your personal story about the local nature you love, why it matters to you, and what you would like your MP to do to help protect it.
Work out what issues you want to raise with your MP, with two to three key points. You can make these a mix of local and national nature issues, including planning reform and the need for more investment in nature-friendly farming.
Work out how to express your view on these clearly and briefly. If there is a group of you attending the surgery, think who is best placed to speak about each issue – if possible make sure this is balanced so that there’s a diversity of voices speaking.
If possible, relate the issue you’re discussing to your personal experience. How has it affected you? What changes have you seen for nature? What concerns do you have about the future? Make sure your MP is clear that you have been supported by RSPB, but that you are sharing your own views on behalf of yourself and your community.
Just be passionate about the issue you care about, but keep your tone constructive and avoid getting angry or confrontational. Speak to your MP as you would want to be spoken to yourself, and remember they are a human being too. Remember to stay neutral about political parties.
You can find your MP and check their voting record and issues they have spoken about via the Parliament website.
You can also research them on social media, read about them in the local press, and see if they have previous experience relevant to nature and the climate.
TheyWorkForYou is a great tool to find out information about your MP. You can search for your MP and see all their contributions to debates, as well as their written and oral questions.
Using the search tool above, you can narrow down your searches to specific keywords (such as ‘farming’ or ‘rivers’) to see if they have ever mentioned those words in Parliament. See if you can find any recurring themes or arguments.
If you’d like to know more about where their party stands on an issue, search for that party’s manifesto for the General Election last year. It may or may not mention the issues you want to raise – either way it helps to understand where nature sits in their priorities. You can also read the RSPB’s review of party manifestos from the General election:
Whether it is to support a specific issue, write to the Government or simply to meet again. Think what they can constructively do, and what influence they have over the issues you want to raise.
Remember to prepare for a constructive discussion where you try to convince your MP, rather than a confrontation. You want to establish a relationship that will mean you can keep discussing issues for years to come.
Make sure you’re not party political in what you have to say, or say one party is better or worse than another. It’s fine to talk about policies and actions, but as a charity we must stay politically neutral.
It can be hard to know what you can ask your MP to do, and some of it depends on which party they belong to or whether they hold a particular position within the government. But there are a few things you can ask of each MP.
Note if they agree or not and any other commitments they give you. Try to make sure that there’s a timescale for any actions the MP agrees to take, so that you can follow it up. Agree when you will communicate or meet again.
Ask if your MP would be willing to have a photo with the group for use on social media or in the local group newsletter.
Get in touch with the campaigns team for advice and support, and so we can keep track of how many surgeries take place as well as share a feedback form.
You can email the campaigns team on community.campaigns@rspb.org.uk.
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