Meet your MP: Your experience is your power
Your experience is your power. Sharing your story is one of the most powerful ways you can connect with your MP.
MPs want to hear from their constituents. Hearing personal stories can help MPs understand what people would go through if the cuts to disability benefits go ahead. And push them to speak up in parliament to stop the cuts and protect disability benefits.
Sharing your story with your MP is powerful. Let your MP know you'd like to meet to talk about disability benefit cuts.
Use our pre-prepared email to request a meeting with your MP
Meeting with your MP
Through sharing your experience, you can help MPs understand how the cuts will affect you or a loved one.
Meeting with your MP gives you the opportunity to share your message directly.
As MPs are very busy, you’ll probably only have a short time with them, so make it count!
Before the meeting
You can arrange to meet your MP in person. This might be somewhere like their office, community centre or a café. Or virtually using services like Zoom or Teams. Your MP's team will be able to let you know what appointments are available.
Your MP won’t expect you to be an expert. But they’ll want to know why you think this is an important issue for you and other local people.
Think about how you will share your experience.
Make the most of the meeting
- Use your own words. Don't be afraid about speaking your truth and being honest.
- Be clear and easy to follow. Think about the key points you want to share and make some notes to bring with you.
- Talk about the problems with the government’s plans. Or how you’re worried they will affect you or loved ones now or in the future
At the meeting
Keep the conversation focused on 3 key points:
- Your experience of disability benefits. Tell your MP how benefits help to support you.
- How disability benefit cuts would affect you and your loved ones. Explain that the cuts would affect your ability to live well with MS.
- Be clear what you want your MP to do. Ask them to speak out about the impact of the cuts in Parliament.
Tell them that you want them to vote against the Bill when it comes to Parliament. And write to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions about their concerns.
It might be useful to make notes during or straight after the meeting when everything is fresh in your mind. It’s especially useful to record any commitments your MP made to protect disability benefits.
Your MP might disagree with you and we know that might be frustrating. But they're still your MP and it’s their job to listen to you and represent you in Parliament. Listen to your MP but be clear in sharing your experience and why this matters so much to you. And be confident to respectfully disagree – it’s still part of keeping the pressure on all MPs.
Ask permission to take a photo with your MP. If you have permission, you can then use it in press or social media posts to keep the pressure up.
After the meeting
It’s a good idea to send an email thanking your MP for their time. Use this as an opportunity to remind them of any actions you or they agreed to take.
Get in touch with us to let us know how the meeting went so we can keep track of what MPs are saying and keep the pressure up.
Get in touch with our campaigns team
Join together with others
We want to show the strength of feeling about these changes and how they'll impact people with other neurological conditions too. So we're working with other neurological charities to strengthen our voice. We've joined forces with:
- Parkinsons UK
- The Neurological Alliance
- Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association
- Multiple System Atrophy Trust
If you'd like to invite local campaigners from any of these organisations to your meeting we can help to coordinate that for you. Involving campaigners from the other charities in meetings with MPs is a great way to show how many people will be affected in their area.
If you've already been in touch to talk about this, we'll help to set it up for you. Or if you have an MP meeting arranged and would like to invite others to join, you can email us.
Get in touch with our campaigns team
Share your progress with us
Please let us know about any responses or meetings you have with MPs. This will help us shape our campaign and the conversations we have with MPs in parliament.
Need support?
If you need help or advice with any of your campaigning activities, you can get in touch with the campaigns team by emailing [email protected].
It's important to remember that nothing is changing right now. If you want emotional support or have practical questions about benefits at the moment, our MS Helpline are here for you. You can call us on 0808 800 8000 or email [email protected].
