The first obvious step in lobbying your MP is to find out who they are and how to contact them. Thanks to the wonderful folk at mysociety this can be done simply by visiting write to them and typing in your postcode.

Write To Them publishes the voting record of each MP along with various statistics about their activity in the House of Commons. For effective lobbying, though, this isn’t particularly useful. What you really want to know is their position on your issue, how they relate to their party on the subject, and why they have been voting a particular way.

Two ports of call you should make are to Ask Aristotle, which lists biographical and constituency information for every MP, and They Work For You (another mysociety site), which records the questions MPs have asked and the speeches they have given in the House of Commons. Bear in mind that your MP may have been approached already by a group with views that oppose your own and this may have informed their thinking or behaviour. Think also about their level of knowledge about your topic. Your lobbying efforts will start from a different place if they’re experts than if they’re laypeople. Last, find out your MP’s “hot buttons” – the topics they talk about frequently and keep coming back to. If you can draw parallels between your aims and these issues your MP is likely to sit up and listen!

Once you’ve armed yourself with as much information as you can gather it’s time to start lobbying your MP. Letters and emails are a good start however it’s much more effective to meet them in person. There are several reasons for this: they’re more likely to remember you, and your message, if they’ve met you; they’ll give your points greater weight and your issue greater consideration since you’ve put more effort into representing your concerns to them; you can gauge their level of understanding more effectively by looking them in the eye than you can by reading their written response; you’ll receive immediate information and feedback; and you can cover a lot more ground during a 15 minute surgery appointment than you can by exchanging written correspondance.

Some tips on how to prepare for the meeting:

• You should always be speaking about something that you have a genuine concern about, and if possible, you should relate it to your personal experience (even if that’s of just a very small part of the issue at hand.)
• Avoid getting too emotional or angry. A positive and constructive approach will work better than crazy ranting!
• Prepare what you are going to say in advance. You can even send your notes to your MP two or three days before you meet them, which allows them to read what you’re going to say and prepare their response, but won’t give them much time to go and look up their party line on the topic. You want to establish their individual position not their party’s.
• Have a clear objective. It could be as simple as establishing their position and putting it on the record, or you might want to get them to ask a question in parliament, speak to a minister, sign an Early Day Motion or take other action to move the debate in your desired direction.

Lobbying is most effective at the earliest legislative stages. In fact putting your points to your MP before they’ve ever opened their mouth on a subject is the best way of influencing both what they say and how they think about an issue. Once they’ve said something you don’t like, you’re facing an uphill struggle to get them to change direction, as their political opponents are likely to denounce any variance in their stated position as “flip flopping” or “U-turning”. Having said that it’s never too late to start building a relationship with your MP.

If objectionable legislation is already at an advanced stage, or if your MP isn’t responding as you’d wish, you may need to bring to bear other pressures besides lobbying. MPs pay attention to what’s going on in their constituency so indirect efforts can be effective. Is this an issue that throws up a hook for a letter to the local press? Letters pages are very well read! You can also engage with affected social and business groups in the area. Invite these to join you at a subsequent meeting with your MP or to join your campaign in other ways. Petitions and demonstrations can martial the numbers required to effect change even during the latter stages of a bill’s passage through Parliament. Contacting the local council and other political parties in the area can widen the scope of your efforts considerably if they take an interest. Lastly, since Lords are not elected, you can lobby any of them directly. Cross-bench peers are independent of party influences, and if enough can be persuaded to your side of a particular argument, this can be an effective approach. Don’t forget to do your homework, though, in the same way as you did before contacting your MP.

There’s a balance to be struck between impressing your point on your MP, and being so verbose that they start ignoring you. Three or four meetings a year is a good rate to start with, and interspersing these with a couple of letters or emails will help keep you and your issues in your MP’s mind. There are some tips on how to write to your MP on the Open Rights Group wiki.

Lastly, if your MP does what you’ve asked of them, do write and thank them. It keeps the conversation going and tells them you appreciate their efforts too.

Frankly, I’m appalled. Any illusions I had about Britain being a representative democracy have been shattered. What’s the point of voting when the people we elect just ignore their constituents and do whatever their party whips tell them to? I find it especially hard to understand how an MP can vote on something without even bothering to take part in the relevant debates. Surely that’s a dereliction of duty? If they won’t scrutinise legislation on our behalf then what are we paying them for?

If any of these so-called “representatives” would like to explain themselves to the people of Sheffield we would love to hear their excuses in the comments.

Oh, and would the last person to leave Digital Britain please switch off the Internet?

I couldn’t have done much more to attract his attention.

In response I have received a single form-letter from a Government department, which restated the policy to which I was objecting without addressing any of my points, accompanied by a covering letter from Mr. Caborn’s office addressed “Dear constituent.” My follow-up letters have thus far failed to elicit an acknowledgement let alone a reply.

When the day came for my issue to be debated in the House of Commons fewer than 5% of MPs bothered to turn up. Richard Caborn was not among them.

Politicians who want to understand why voter apathy is so high should begin by considering how they treat their constituents.

Change is coming to Sheffield Central as Richard Caborn is retiring at the General Election – but will it be change for the better? I have two questions for the Prospective Parlimaentary Candidates competing to replace him:

If you are elected, will you promise to:

1. Act in the interests of your constituents first and your party second?
2. Engage with your constituents whether or not you agree with them?

Please answer in the comments or by email (all responses will be published here). If you choose not to respond then I guess that answers my second question regardless…

I am writing to you in your capacity as Leader of the House of Commons. My MP Richard Caborn may have made representations to you already on my behalf however I wanted to emphasise how important this matter is to me.

Please ensure the Digital Economy Bill benefits from the full scrutiny of all our elected representatives in the House of Commons. It should receive a second reading, a committee stage, a third reading and a report stage. If necessary, the passage of clauses 11-18 in particular should be delayed until after the general election, when there will be sufficient time to address line-by-line their many shortcomings.

You will be tempted to ignore this letter because you suspect it’s part of a throw-away campaign orchestrated by partial interests. Not only would such suspicion be unfounded, to succumb to it would be to ignore real anger and frustration at the way this issue is being handled, felt by the very people charged with building the UK Digital Economy: our technical experts. A search on Twitter for the hashtag #debill will confirm the outrage being expressed by net-savvy people all over the UK.

You will be told the measures in the Bill are uncontroversial and have cross-party support however more than 12,000 people have written to their MPs to protest them in the last week alone. I’m sure you will have received some of these letters personally.

You will be told the Bill is essential to protect our creative industries – by deep-pocketed lobbyists working for those industries, who have themselves drafted some of the most contentious clauses of this Bill. Lord Whitty said during the Third Reading debate in the house of Lords, “I regret to say that during the course of our consideration of the Bill, we have seen one of the worst examples in my memory of the political parties being captured by a producer interest. That applies not only to the Government and the bringing forward of the Bill, but to the opposition Front Benches as well.”

Given the current furore over lobbyist influence this Bill could prove to be political dynamite!

Lastly, and most frustratingly of all, you will be told this Bill will reduce copyright infringement on the Internet. Nothing could be further from the truth. Encryption services such as IPredator and HideMyAss, and products like the Pogoplug, rendered this legislation ineffective before it was even drafted. If you don’t believe me, consult an independent technical expert, or ask for the advice of the security services.

I support the right of creative people to make a living from their art. I do not condone copyright infringement. This is not about getting something for nothing – it’s about defending democracy, justice and human rights.

If you feel for political reasons that a Digital Economy Bill *must* pass into law during this Parliament, please remove clauses 11-18 of the present draft, and offer to bring them back for proper scrutiny in a new Bill after the election.

Thank you

Write your own letter to Harriet here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/HarrietHarman
Come to a protest against the Bill in London or Sheffield on the evening of 24 March.

The Digital Economy Bill will affect you:

• If your home Internet-connection contract is in your name.
• If your business offers Internet access to the public (wifi hotspots or terminals.)
• If you depend on copyright for your income (software writers, publishers, authors, bloggers, photographers, musicians, film-makers, artists, DJs, newspapers, radio stations etc.)

Come to the unconference and find out more about the legislation and how it will impact your home life, your business and your community. Stick around for the workshops and learn how you can make sure your opinions on these issues heard in Westminster.

Tickets are available separately for any of the following parts of the event. You can come to one of the workshops even if you can’t make it to the unconference.

13:30 – 17:30:	Digital Economy Bill Unconference
17:30 – 19:00:	Talk to your MP: Workshop 1 *
19:00 – 20:30:	Talk to your MP: Workshop 2 *

* Workshop places are limited, so booking is essential.

There will be breaks between sessions and time to socialise before, during and after the event.

Reserve your free tickets now. See you there!

For those who can’t get to Sheffield, workshops are also taking place in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, though these events will not be preceded by unconferences.