Lobbying your local MP

The easiest way to identify your MP is to go to www.locata.co.uk/commons or contact the RCN Parliamentary Office on 020 7647 3628. The Parliamentary Office and Public Affairs offices throughout the UK will also be able to give you a biography of your MP.

To identify your Member of the Scottish Parliament, log on to www.scottish.parliament.uk or contact the RCN public affairs office in Edinburgh on 0131 662 1010.

To identify your Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, go to www.ni-assembly.gov.uk or contact the RCN public affairs office in Belfast on 02890 668 236.

To contact your Member of the Welsh Assembly, go to www.wales.gov.uk contact the RCN Public Affairs office in Cardiff on 029 2075 1373.

In general, MPs do respond to their post bag. They can assess the depth of feeling about any issue from the number of letters they receive. You should organise a letter writing campaign directed towards MPs, but the impact is much more powerful if members of the public write their own letters rather than sign up to a drafted text.

You can ask MPs to table both written and oral questions to ministers about the issue. Written questions can be submitted at any point during a Parliamentary session but there are set days for oral questions to be answered by particular ministers. MPs have to apply to put oral questions so you need to know the dates for such questions, identify a supportive MP, draft a question with her or him and get it submitted

You can ask an MP to table an Early Day Motion, which is a device for MP's expressing views on any issue in the form of a resolution which is printed in Hansard, the official record of parliamentary proceedings, and which can be signed up to by other MPs. So you could draft a motion on the issue, interest an individual MP in it, help her or him obtain three or four other signatories to get it started, have it tabled, printed in Hansard and then lobby other MPs to sign up to it. Such a device enables campaigners to show that a particular cause has 20 or 200 supporters in the House of Commons.

You could approach the chair of the relevant Select Committee. These committees could decide to hold hearings, call for written evidence and invite people to give oral evidence to them. Also, most importantly, they can require senior officials or ministers to attend and answer their questions. The Select Committee will then publish its report and recommendations. Of course, you have to risk the possibility that they might not agree with your case.

You could ask a sympathetic MP to table a Ten Minute Rule Bill or apply to take part in the periodic adjournment debates. In the first case, an MP can apply to introduce a bill on any subject and gets the opportunity to speak to it for ten minutes near the beginning of a day's business. Nothing further happens about such a bill once the ten minute speech has been made. But it is another opportunity for promotion and publicity. An adjournment debate occurs at the end of each parliamentary session. Generally, an MP can speak for 30 minutes and a minister will be deputed to respond.

Finally, you could try the route of the Private Member's Bill. At the start of each annual parliament, usually November, there is a ballot for a limited number of opportunities for individual MPs to introduce their own bills which do have the potential of going on to become legislation if enough support can be won. Potential bills have to be prepared carefully and you will have to enthuse an MP with your cause.

Find out more about other campaigning issues and examples in the In more depth section.