The idiot’s guide to parliamentary campaigning

It has to be said, despite my line of business, that you don’t need a professional to run your campaign. It depends rather on what you are trying to achieve and whether you have the resources at hand to achieve it, bearing in mind that a campaign doesn’t have to be an all-singing, all-dancing, media-blitzing, no-expenses-spared kind of affair.

It is always worth thinking about whether your campaign would be helped by engaging with MPs, however distasteful that might appear at first glance.  While MPs remain universally unpopular, with probably a lower popularity rating than lawyers, journalists, or kitten haters, they can be quite useful.

But before you even think about approaching them, do your homework.  You may have the impression they are a lazy, good-for-nothing, tax-dodging load of hypocrites (I couldn’t possibly comment), but actually most of them work quite hard, juggling their role as a constituency MP, legislator and for some of them, ministerial portfolio .

MPs, unless they don’t want to get re-elected, are most interested in issues affecting their own constituency, so make it local, preferably with a news angle and a photo op so they can get a nice picture of them doing something worthwhile in their patch.

If you want to contact MPs more generally, don’t do a random mail shot to all 650 of them, it will be a waste of your time and money as their researchers will spot a circular and will instantly ‘recycle’ anything of no interest before it even hits the MP’s desk.

Instead, find out which MPs are interested in your issue – do they have a shadow portfolio, are they on a select committee or all party group, did they work in that area before they became an MP?  You can find all this out simply by searching biographies on the parliament.uk website.

While letters and emails will get picked up if your issue resonates (or if you are a constituent), social media is an increasingly useful tool for getting in touch. Follow the MP on Twitter, look at their Facebook page, check out their website or their blog. If you don’t know what any of those are, you’d better drop me a line.

Work out what you actually want your MP to do to help your campaign. Do you want to raise the profile of an issue, get something done, raise money, change the law? It is important that whatever the ask, it is integral to your campaign and not something bolted on because it seemed like a good thing to do.

There are three golden rules when contacting MPs, although I have also invented a fourth (as you do):

• Be brief and direct: almost nothing is so important or complicated it takes an hour to say it or more than two sides of A4 to write it. If you can’t manage this, you’d better drop me a line.
• Be relevant: there is no excuse for not thinking about how your issue fits with their priorities.
• Bring solutions: don’t just present them with a problem but proposals for solving it. If your issue is with government policy, bring them a better option.
• Nurture the relationship: you will get more out of it if you do this, rather than waiting for a crisis and then calling them up.

Don’t forget, for the moment at least, there is also a House of Lords you can target. Peers may have more time and it is likely there is one at least who is interested or even an expert in your issue. They can question ministers, instigate debates and even propose legislation just as MPs can.

That, in a nutshell, is how you do it.  If it all sounds too much,  do get in touch.

Team Justice Gap on the London Legal Walk

So I did the walk. This gives you a bit of idea as to what it was like.

Team Justice Gap raised just over £2,000 including Gift Aid. Over 6,000 walkers raised nearly £550,000 in total for law centres in London and the South East. Just a little bit amazing.

Fundraising for the London Legal Support Trust

I am joining the Justice Gap team in the London Legal Walk on 21 May. 

We are walking with the Lord Chief Justice and thousands of lawyers to raise funds for the London Legal Support Trust which funds law centres and pro bono agencies in and around London.

These agencies do a fantastic job in preventing homelessness, resolving debt problems, gaining care for the elderly and disabled and fighting exploitation and discrimination.

We also know how short they are of the funds to continue that work.

Please donate as generously as you can.

Thanks!

 

In praise of the Public Law Project

Access to justice was not something I thought about much until I started working for Which? the consumer organisation. I had just assumed that when you needed to use the law to solve a problem you’d be able to.  But negotiating the legal system is not an easy task, even with the help, or sometimes hindrance, of a lawyer.

I spent a lot of time not being very nice about lawyers and berating them for not treating their customers fairly.  As far as I could see, access to justice was being undermined by their old-fashioned, expensive and opaque services.  I saw the Legal Services Act 2007 as a great achievement, which would open up the legal market and make it more accessible for thousands, if not millions, of people.

All well and good, but once I started to realise access to justice isn’t just about being able to get advice about your divorce on a Sunday or draft a will on the internet.  The justice system is much wider than just high street solicitors and big, multi-million city firms.  For many people, justice means getting advice about their housing or debt problem; or challenging an immigration decision or a benefit cut; or getting redress for an NHS mistake.

Fortunately this realisation coincided with my discovery of the Public Law Project.  Here was a charity that wasn’t just campaigning for change, as I’d been doing at Which? and subsequently, to a lesser extent, at a national law firm, but an organisation directly helping people secure access to justice in often profoundly important areas.

Since joining the board I have developed an even greater respect for the work PLP does with the bare minimum of resources but totally dedicated staff.  And this work is set to become more and more important in the light of budget cuts that threaten the services many individuals and communities rely on.

Public officials have unenviable decisions about what will be cut, but the difficulty of their task is not an excuse to ignore people’s rights and entitlements.  Coupled with the significant cuts being proposed in the scope of legal aid there is a real danger that some of the most vulnerable groups in society will suffer disproportionately.

Which is where PLP comes in.  We have a unique blend of research, training and casework enabling us to influence policy makers and decision makers across government.  It is designed to help improve access to public law remedies and establish important principles to protect the most disadvantaged from poor decisions by both local and national organisations.

The focus of our recent research has been the judicial review process and how claims are concluded.  We are now working with Essex University on a major project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, looking at the outcomes for claimants and whether judgements change legislation and practice.

We recently supported the charity Medical Justice to bring a case about the UK Border Agency’s ‘exceptions policy’, which involves giving some migrants less than the standard 72 hours notice of removal.  These often include vulnerable people at risk of suicide or self harm and unaccompanied children.  The government said those due to be removed had ‘effective access to the courts’, but the High Court quashed the policy, saying the practical difficulties in getting legal assistance meant those affected had no ‘adequate right to justice’.  The government is appealing the decision.

In another example, PLP, working with the Law Centres Federation, discovered local authorities were systematically passing young homeless people from one department to another, often refusing to help them at all.  This in contradiction of the law stating social services are responsible for homeless 16 and 17 year olds and authorities must provide a package of support, not just housing.  PLP helped support and train advisers working with homeless children to ensure they were properly accommodated.

These cases barely scratch the surface of PLP’s work, but they illustrate the impact this small organisation has year after year.  By ensuring access to justice isn’t just a slogan but a reality, PLP has more than demonstrated its worth.  It is a great achievement to have been doing this for 21 years and I am honoured to sit on the board of such an important and influential organisation.  As Sir Henry Brooke, PLP patron, put it “if the Public Law Project did not exist, someone would have to invent it – quickly”

To infinity and beyond: Google law prepares for blast off

Several years ago, when I was campaigning to bring about the Legal Services Act, some bright spark at Which? suggested to me that it wasn’t Tesco law that would bring about a revolution in legal services, but Google Law.  I wouldn’t say I dismissed his prediction out of hand, but at the time it was quite a big leap to see how you could buy legal services in Tesco, never mind from Google.  Well, last week this colleague’s prediction turned out to be right as the Google-backed Rocket Lawyer announced its intention to launch in the UK in 2012.  It’s a measure of how far we’ve come that the news caused merely a ripple, rather than the tsunami we would have surely had in the past.

It is a strange coincidence that this was the same week in which the Law Society launched its annual ‘solicitors are great’ campaign.  As you can imagine, I’m a bit of a sceptic when it comes to this sort of thing, but to be fair, the Society’s efforts have improved immeasurably since the toe-curling ‘my hero, my solicitor’ of a few year’s back.  This year’s effort, a slightly more modest call to ‘choose quality advice’, will be seen, the Society says, more than 450 million times, which is about eight times for every man, woman and child in the country (although as lots are too young to read that’s even more times for the rest of us).  I have no idea how they work this out, but it sounds pretty impressive.

I also have no idea if these annual forays into mainstream advertising are beneficial to high-street law firms.  The Society claims that last year’s campaign generated 85,000 click-throughs to their website and a 40% increase in searches on its ‘Find a Solicitor’ database.  On the face of it, this is quite a result, but I’ve had a look at Find a Solicitor and it’s little better than the Yellow Pages (if you’re old enough to know what that is..).  Without customer feedback or complaints information, getting a long list of solicitors is next to useless (for more on my views about this, see my blog about the Solicitors from Hell website here).

Which is where Rocket Lawyer comes in. I’ve had a look at their website and even registered on it (I pretended to live in Arizona so I could imagine I was sitting by the pool in the sun rather than snuggled up in my loft room as the rain beats down on the skylights).  Generally I don’t like making such an overt plug, but I love it.

It’s exactly what an online legal service should be – it’s clear and easy to navigate, it has bucket-loads of information and, on the whole, seems to be written in comprehensible English (which is quite a feat given, at the moment, it’s just an American site).  There’s even a nifty little section with tips on working with a lawyer (I would make this available as a checklist to take to the solicitor’s office – that would put the wind up them).

I am particularly excited (yes, genuinely) by the ‘legal health check’ as this taps into what, à la Richard Susskind, I have been banging on about for ages:  the latent demand for legal services.  As reported on Legal Futures last week, founder Charley Moore argued that services such as Rocket Lawyer expand the market for legal services, rather than compete with lawyers, by making them more accessible, citing as an example that, as in the UK, less than half Americans have a will.

This latent demand is something traditional lawyers, on the whole, have failed to address.  This is partly because individuals might not think they have a legal problem:   research published last year by the Legal Services Research Centre found such issues included faulty goods and services, noisy neighbours, benefits, children’s education and homelessness.   But it is also because your average high-street solicitor doesn’t take a ‘holistic’ approach to the law.

This is where Rocket Lawyer really comes into its own.  When you register, it asks about your lifestyle – work, home and family – and makes recommendations for legal services based on your answers.  Alternative business structures, and the multi-disciplinary partnerships they will enable, are all about this ‘lifestyle’ approach, enabling consumers to purchase packages of legal services at certain points in their life – getting married, buying a house, having children, retiring etc.  This not only makes more sense for the consumer but taps into that lucrative ‘latent demand’. This is surely how legal services should be delivered in future, whether online or by more traditional means

So back to that advertising campaign.  The problem is that it fails to acknowledge any of these developments.  It may well encourage someone already looking for a solicitor to go to the Society’s website and use Find a Solicitor.  But it is still harping back to the ‘good old days’, when solicitors were learned men in stripy suits and bowler hats sitting behind mounds of dusty books.  What we are approaching now is beyond Tesco law and buying legal services like a tin of beans.  Whether the Law Society and the firms it represents like it or not, we are approaching the age of Google Law and nothing will ever be the same again.

We’re not out of touch. Here’s a petition website to prove it.

What has happened to the silly season?  The usual August fare of wacky surveys, funnily-shaped vegetables and celebrity faces seen in the sky are nowhere to be seen, or if they are, they’re lurking sheepishly on page 10.  I am quite certain that there are still rude carrots in the vegetable aisle but they have overshadowed by the rather gloomy state of national affairs.  No-one is even talking much about the crap weather, so depressing is everything else.  It’s the sort of time when a country could really do with some stirring political leadership…

But the government has been noticeable in the last few days by its absence, despite riots in London and economic meltdown.  For those of us who have always rather suspected that being in power is just another little game for Dave and his Chipping Norton chums this comes as no surprise.  This government is so out of touch with the lives of the people in Tottenham, or even St Albans for that matter, that they couldn’t touch it with a barge pole.

Forgetting to tip a waitress in a Tuscan cafe could, of course, be an innocent oversight; or it could be a sign of total arrogance.  Either way, I’m pretty certain if Dave had ever had to work as a waiter or barman he’d never forget.  And making a photo op out of correcting the error is worse, especially when London is in flames…I’m not saying they shouldn’t go on holiday, but come on, surely Dave could put in an appearance between his mid-morning Milano espresso and his Tuscan olive-oil-drizzled, sun-dried tomato, Pecorino focaccia? 

However, fear not, our ruling clique have come up with a great idea for getting back in touch:  HMG’s e-petition site.  What a brilliant idea – let individuals start a petition.  Couldn’t we do this already?  And what an amazing prize, if you get 100,000 signatures for your ’cause’ then a cross-party group of backbench MPs get to decide if its worthy of debate. Couldn’t we do this already, by raising the issue directly with our own MP?

Ok, so let’s not be cynical for a minute, let’s have a look at the worthy causes that have found no other avenue for getting heard. The petition topping the charts is a call for cheaper petrol and diesel.  This is not something I’d necessarily disagree with, given it cost me £70 to fill up my car the other day, but bizarrely it’s been started by the Tory MP for Harlow – couldn’t he just table an adjournment debate or something and let the rest of us have a go?  Like, well, yes, calling to keep formula 1 free to air in the UK.  That’s certainly something parliament should spend its time debating as our streets burn and our economy nosedives.  Oh, and of course, there’s the death penalty. 

When I last looked, the petition to restore the death penalty had just over 10,000 signatures and the one to retain the ban just over 18,000.  That’s following a blaze of publicity, including coverage on the national news.  I know there’s a few months to run, but is either one really going to reach 100,000?  Probably doesn’t matter to the crusading chap who started the ‘restore’ petition and has seen his profile rise significantly with, no doubt, corresponding increases in visits to his website and advertising revenue (I’m not going to mention his name, he doesn’t need any more exposure, even if it’s only on my little blog). 

So excuse me if I’m a bit cynical about this attempt by the toffs in charge to get ‘in-touch’ with the people.  Quite a lot of people who might want to sign a petition, or even start one, don’t have the time to spend browsing a government website, that is if they have access to the internet.   And even those of use that do, and I admit I signed the ‘retain the ban’ one, are far more concerned about job losses, riots, increasing NHS waiting times,  pension shortfalls, benefit cuts, closing law centres, rising food prices and watching our economy go down the toilet. 

The epetition site, like the ‘tell us the crap laws we should get rid of’ website that came before it, are just fig leaves, pathetic attempts by a government that hasn’t got a popular mandate for half of its harebrained ideas to pretend they are listening.  By staying on their summer holidays they have also shown a quite dazzling ineptitude for presentation, which is the one thing Dave should be good at.  I’m not sure what’s the bigger crime, being out of touch or being seen to be out of touch.  Either way, they are starting to look pretty silly.

Don’t be fooled by the Big Society

This is a revised version of a blog published on the Convergence website in February.

What is the Big Society? We were told it was about ‘empowering communities’.  Cameron says its his ‘great passion’.  Steve Moore of the Big Society Network (no I don’t know what it does either) has said it is the sum of a million small things.  However, I am finally starting to get it and it seems the sceptics were right all along.  It is just a smoke-screen for cuts and now we are starting to see the proof.   

Before I go any further I should confess that I am one of those Big Society sceptics and I am also a bit of a lefty, so I am bound to grab any opportunity to score some cheap political points.  But all my attempts to get to the bottom of this ‘defining vision’ failed, even when I had the opportunity to question Mr Moore himself (he just got more and more annoyed as I got more and more confused). 

One of my big concerns is that there is a big difference between people getting together to run, say, a single mums’ support group once a week or campaigning for a 20mph zone, and making the commitment to take over a library, or even set up a school. We are not all Toby Young and most of us don’t have the time or the skills to take on these responsibilities (and there is also something a bit distasteful about saying enthusiastic volunteers can just pick up when the professionals, eg librarians, lose their jobs). I won’t even get into how I feel about letting parents set up schools all over the place. PS I am a parent.

Equally as absurd is expecting cash-strapped charities to step in where the public sector has had to step back. For years charities, certainly the small, community ones expected to build the Big Society, have been unable to capacity build effectively because grants are always ring-fenced for specific projects.  I used to set policy for lottery grants and witnessed the absurdity of perfectly good charities having to reinvent themselves, repackage what they do and fill in reams of paperwork to get their hands on even the smallest amounts of cash.  Then, when the project was over, they had to do it all again, possibly even for the same funder.  But now there is no more cash…

So maybe volunteers are the answer, maybe Cameron is right, maybe we should expect charities to rely less on money and more on ‘gifts in kind’.  I am a trustee of a small legal charity and much as we love lawyers helping us on a pro bono basis, what we really need is money to pay our excellent core staff, not city lawyers giving legal advice in an area they probably know nothing about.  It comes back to the professionalism point.  Some volunteering can do more harm than good.

I am also fearful that by relying on donations, financial or otherwise, we are unwittingly recreating the paternalistic Victorian philanthropists who chose between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor.  Of course, Daily Mail ‘journalists’ and their followers in government will tell you there are undeserving poor (largely, of course, benefit cheats of which I am sure there are millions). But I think the distinction is more subtle than that and worthy of proper attention, not just recourse to a Daily Mail headline.

And now, the campaigning website False Economy, tells us that at least 2,000 charities are facing budget cuts as local authorities reduce their funding.  They point out that ‘these cuts are not just to ‘nice to have’ groups, but organisations providing services for older people trying to maintain independent lives, vulnerable children and abused women.’ Cutting their funding doesn’t just cause misery and distress, it only puts pressure onto other statutory services like the NHS.  How is that the Big Society?

The Guardian writes today about a Home Start centre in Hull, the 11th most deprived region in the country, losing its £107,000 grant.  If it closes, after 25 years, then 167 families with 406 children will be without a service they rely on and that costs just £21 a week for each family.  Pretty difficult to see how that could be done any cheaper.  How is that the Big Society?

Yesterday, Citizens Advice, which provides advice and support to more than 2 million people, said that Bureaux across the country are facing closure because of budget cuts.  It said the situation in some areas was ‘desperate’.  Government proposals to remove social welfare and housing cases from legal aid will only exacerbate the situation.  So how will the poor and vulnerable get justice?  How is that the Big Society?

When I first wrote this blog, I was just a sceptic, but now I am angry.  Far from empowering communities, the Big Society and its evil twin Budget Cuts are in danger of ripping them apart.  I refuse to believe there isn’t a more responsible way to solve the economic crisis.  But then I suppose I am rather missing the point.  The Big Society may be a cover for the cuts, but the cuts are the cover for a deluded ideology that bears no reflection on real people’s lives and is happy to cut much of society adrift.  If that’s David Cameron’s ‘great passion’ then we are all in big trouble.

Can a leopard change its spots (and, more importantly, will we believe it if it does)?

Yesterday, as I sat in a planning meeting for the Sound off for Justice campaign, I became quite depressed that, for all its boldness and ingenuity in fighting legal aid cuts, the Law Society was probably going to fail.  More depressing still, while a major reason is undoubtedly an intransigent government hell bent on cutting at all costs, part of this failure will be because it is being led by the Law Society.

I haven’t gone native, but I’ll put my hands up and say I’ve been very impressed with Sound off for Justice, and the Law Society now feels a million miles from the organisation I’ve spent years berating for its protectionism and failure to embrace change. The problem is that the general public probably don’t believe that the Society is doing it ‘because it is the right thing to do’ and see Sound off for Justice as driven by self interest.    

This bothers me.  Why don’t people see that access to justice is as important as access to healthcare or education?  Although the Legal Aid and Legal Advice Act of 1949 didn’t set up a national legal service, it did recognise that equality of access and the right to representation before the law was fundamental to a just society.  I guess many think legal aid is something for ‘benefit scroungers’ and other ne’er do wells. that if they don’t break the law and keep their heads down they’ll be ok. 

But it doesn’t take much to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly find you need legal assistance.  The government has said it has no intention of removing the right to police station advice, but has, worryingly, left the provision in the justice bill.

And it doesn’t take much to become a victim of clinical negligence – it happens to one in ten people who undergo treatment in hospital.  You won’t get legal aid, so without a stash of cash you won’t get justice. 

It also doesn’t take much, if you are one of the thousands who’ve lost their job, to find yourself at the wrong end of a repossession order.  You will get legal aid if you are about to be made homeless, but then it’s probably too late.

Then there’s the ‘legal aid fat cats’, those criminal legal aid barristers raking it in.  One of them is David Cameron’s brother, who was paid over £1.13m in legal aid fees over the last decade.  Another is the brother of Justice minister Crispin Blunt, who took an almost unbelievable £5.86m over the same period.  This diverts the public’s attention from those at the sharp end of civil legal aid who probably earn less than me (and, arguably, I’m not doing anything particularly useful).

Sound off for Justice rightly targeted decision-makers rather than the mass general public.  But with ministers failing to respond, maybe now it’s time to garner more public support.  The 26,000 signed up to the campaign is a start, but far more are needed if Tory MPs (and, let’s face it, it is Tory MPs) are going to start worrying that cutting legal aid is a vote loser. 

Despite being a campaign genius (my own words) I don’t know how they’ll do  this.  Never mind ‘giving’ fatigue, I fear we are entering a period of ‘campaign’ fatigue, or frankly just general fatigue at trying to keep all the plates spinning, as jobs are lost, services slashed and prices rise.  If people are targeting their efforts, they are probably not going to choose a campaign run by lawyers for the benefit of other lawyers, even if it’s not primarily lawyers who will suffer.  I understand this.  But it will be the most vulnerable in society who lose out, and don’t forget, that could be you. 

 

Aha

Right, so now I have a real live blog all of my own.

As soon as I have thought of something to write about, you will be the first to know.