Public Issues
Working with the Westminster Parliament
Quakers, at all times, seek to balance active campaigning with constructive dialogue with government and MPs, in the United Kingdom.
This dialogue takes the form of responses to government consultations, submissions to government and Select Committees and meetings with MPs.
All submissions and responses are listed below, and also included are briefings for Quakers on matters of topical interest.
Opportunity for action: Welfare Reform Bill and Child Benefit
Bishops, Cross Bench, Labour, and Liberal Peers combined yesterday to introduce an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill that would exempt Child Benefit from calculating the £26,000 annual cap on welfare benefits. The amendment was passed by 252 to 237 votes. Contact your MP to urge them to support the amendment.
Opportunity for action: Income Inequality EDM
A group of Cross Party MPs has tabled an Early Day Motion – EDM 1775 supporting the work of the Equality Trust [offsite link].
Early Day Motions are a type of parliamentary petition submitted for debate in the House of Commons. Very few are debated, but they enable MPs to register their views publicly and to influence the political agenda.
The sponsoring MPs are Caroline Lucas (Green Party), Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour Party), Peter Bottomley (Conservative Party), Tom Brake (Liberal Democrats), Jeremy Corbyn (Labour Party) and Bob Russell (Liberal Democrats).
Early Day Motion 1775 currently has over 100 signatures and states:
"That this House notes the findings of The Equality Trust that societies with smaller income differences between rich and poor have fewer health and social problems, such as teenage births, violence, mental illness and drug abuse; further notes that such societies have higher levels of trust between citizens and more social mobility; and therefore encourages the Government to promote policies that reduce income inequality."
By logging onto the Parliamentary EDM database [offsite link] you can check whether your constituency MP has supported EDM 1775. If they have not you could encourage them to support the Motion. Writing to your MP about this EDM could also be an effective way of engaging with them on the wider concern regarding the concern of Meeting for Sufferings regarding equality and the cuts.
Submission to Department of Energy and Climate Change
Quakers in Britain have made a joint ecumenical submission, with the Methodists, Baptists and URC, to the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s consultation on the rates of Feed in Tariffs (FITs) to be paid for small scale low carbon electricity generation. Under the Climate Change Act 2008, the UK has a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. The level of subsidy paid for FITs is a litmus test of the Government’s commitment to reducing these emissions. Our joint response makes the case that the disproportionate scale of proposed reductions threatens to disrupt an industry which is at an early stage of development in the UK.
On December 21st 2011, a High Court Judge, Mr Justice Mitting, ruled that these proposed reductions were unlawful as they pre-empted the close date for this consultation.
Still Human, Still Here
Still Human, Still Here is a coalition of 30 organisations that are campaigning to end the destitution of refused asylum seekers in the UK. The coalition believes that the current system is inhumane, expensive and ineffective. It also negatively impacts on other areas of policy such as building community cohesion and challenging social exclusion. QPSW has recently joined the coalition as a partner in its work of seeking to build a more compassionate asylum system.
Briefings
Briefings for Quakers giving background on current political issues
Submissions
The latest submissions to parliamentary committees and commissions
Articles
Recently published articles from The Friend, giving more background on the issues.
Some useful governmental and inter-governmental website links
- Link to all central and local government web sites. [offsite link]
- Link to the UK Parliament web page with details of how to contact your MP. [offsite link]
- Link to all the European Institutions. [offsite link]
- UNESCO [offsite link]
