Writing

With the latest round of ministerial musical chairs in full swing, many people involved in policy and public affairs will be thinking about how to make initial contact with ministers as they take up their new portfolios.

First impressions count, and this is equally true when it comes to making contact with an incoming ministerial team. Your initial contact is likely to set the tone for the relationship that you will build with them (and their officials) in the following weeks and months. Get it right and you’ll have a powerful tool in your policy influencing armoury. Get it wrong, and you could find yourself out in the cold.

In this post, I provide some tips on how best to make that initial contact with newly appointed ministers.

Tip #1: You might not yet know who to write to, but start with the Secretary of State

When there is a big change of government, such as after an election or following the appointment of a new prime minister, it takes a bit of time for the ministerial dust to settle. Cabinet positions are the first to be filled, meaning that you should have a pretty good idea pretty quickly of the Secretary of State that will be most closely aligned to your area of interest or your cause. When it comes to more junior ministerial roles, it often takes a bit of time to fill those, and even when they are filled, it may take even longer for portfolios to be allocated within the new team. It’s normally a good idea to write initially to the incoming Secretary of State, and to follow up with initial contact with more junior ministers as and when things become clearer.

Tip #2: Keep it positive

When a new minister is appointed, they can expect a deluge of introductory letters from a variety of stakeholders and interest groups. Lots of those contacts will be quite forthright, highlighting a particular problem that the author wants the new minister to prioritise. In my opinion, it’s really important to keep the tone of that first introductory letter positive. While you will certainly want to highlight the importance of your issues or interests, you also want to leave them with the impression that you are helpful and constructive, and a credible stakeholder for them to engage with.

Tip #3: Make it relevant

In your introductory letter, it’s always a good idea to make sure that you frame the issue within the context of what it is that the government has said that it wants to achieve. For example, if the government has published a strategy relevant to your issue or cause, talk about how you can help them to deliver on that, or how solving the issue that you are highlighting with them will help unblock progress against the strategy.

Tip #4: Less is more

While it is hugely tempting to provide lots of detail and background, an introductory letter should be relatively short and to the point. I normally aim for no more than a side and a half of A4 as a general rule.

Tip #5: You are introducing yourself as well as the issue

An incoming minister is unlikely to know very much about either the issue that you are most interested in, or who you are as an organisation. Don’t forget to give them some insight into who your organisation is, its role and its purpose. And importantly why your organisation is an important stakeholder that the new minister can work with.

Tip #6: A letter or an email?

As a general rule of thumb, introductory contact with an incoming minister is better in the form of a letter. The formality and respect that a letter brings will go a long way to setting the right tone. For efficiency, you may choose, of course, to send the letter electronically rather than as a hard copy, if you have an email address to use.

Tip #7: Have a clear ask

Be clear in the letter what it is that you want the new minister to do. For example, are you asking for a meeting? Or asking them to consider a specific policy change? As it is an introductory letter, it’s quite likely that it will be reasonably top-level rather than focused on a specific policy ask at this stage.

Tip #8: You might get a reply from someone else

While ministerial portfolios are allocated and agreed, your initial letter to an incoming Secretary of State is quite likely to be passed on to the relevant junior minister for a reply (once they are known). So when you are putting your letter together, it’s worth bearing in mind that it might effectively double-up as your introductory letter to the relevant junior minister too.

Tip #9: Getting on the radar is key

If you’re fortunate enough to already have an existing positive relationship with the relevant officials, that is going to help you enormously. It is the officials who help an incoming minister to prioritise who to reply to, and the tone of that reply. Writing an introductory letter to an incoming minister is as much about getting on the radar with the relevant officials and it is about getting on the radar of the minister themselves.

Tip #10: Decide whether your letter is public or private

Some organisations will choose to make their introductory letter to an incoming minister public – publishing it or issuing it to the media. There is a view that such ‘open’ letters can themselves be an effective influencing tool, by raising wider public (and political) awareness of the issue involved. Personally, I’m not a fan of making such letters public (unless there is a specific campaign need). Open letters have a place, but in my opinion using that tactic in an introductory approach is unlikely to be well received.

What is your experience of reaching out to an incoming ministerial team? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

If you or your organisation are looking to do more policy influencing work, and would like some pro bono advice, I’d be happy to have a chat. Just drop me a line via the ‘Contact’ link above, or email me at hello@thepolicycoach.co.uk

In my previous post, I discussed the value of Westminster Hall debates as a place where more considered and thoughtful debate can take place compared to the floor of the House of Commons. But whether it’s a debate in Westminster Hall, in the main Commons chamber or in the House of Lords, you’re going to need to be able to brief parliamentarians effectively.

A good written briefing is vital if you want your voice and your messages to come across in any debate. In this post, I offer some top tips on how to prepare a parliamentary briefing.

There are two main reasons why you might choose to brief parliamentarians ahead of a debate. Firstly, you may want them to understand a particularly complex issue which they may not have come across before. Secondly, you may want to try to encourage them to take your messages in to the debate. In reality, these are, of course, not mutually exclusive, and in most instances, there will be an element of both education and promotion to any briefing that you produce.

While this post is written with a Westminster audience in mind, the same principles apply to briefing MS’s in Wales, MSP’s in Scotland or MLA’s in Northern Ireland.

Tip 1: Decide who you want to brief

One of the first decisions that you will need to make is who you want to brief. Are you planning to brief all MPs (or Peers for a debate in the House of Lords), or just a sub-set? You might, for example, only want to brief those MPs or Peers who are particularly close to your cause, such as through their engagement with an All-Party Parliamentary Group. The advantage of this approach is that they are likely to need less education than a wider group of parliamentarians, as they are likely to be closer to the issues than most. If you choose to brief a wider pool of parliamentarians, you’re likely to need to include a bit more by way of background and detail. Deciding who you want to brief will therefore shape the document that you put together.

Tip 2: Use good evidence

As described in a previous post, evidence is king. Whether that is hard data or people’s stories, adding good evidence to your briefing will go a long way. It will help to make your briefing useful to parliamentarians – giving them insight, evidence, and data that they might otherwise struggle to find.

Tip 3: Make it useful

The purpose of putting a briefing together for a debate is to be helpful to parliamentarians. You want them to find the content of your briefing useful. All of us are more likely to feel more positive towards something that is helpful than to something that is lecturing in tone, for example.

Tip 4: Less is more

While there might be a huge temptation to provide a lot of unnecessary detail, it’s really important to keep your briefing as concise as possible. It’s not an easy balance to strike, but a briefing that is too long simply won’t get read or absorbed. As a general rule of thumb, I normally aim for no more than 4 sides of A4, and ideally less if you possibly can.

Tip 5: Think about speaking points

It’s important to remember that a parliamentarian is going to use the information that you share to inform what they will say on the floor of the House. As you put your briefing together, think about the specific speaking points that an MP or Peer might be looking for, and present the information in such a way that it makes it easy for them to extract that. I have always found that putting a clear statement down on paper followed by a two or three sentence explanation works quite well. You might even want to put the statements in bold to make it clear that these are your critical points.

Tip 6: Be specific

It’s important to be as specific and precise as possible, especially if your briefing is to inform debate on legislation (which won’t always be the case). Where possible, refer to specific clauses of the Bill being debated. This is particularly important when a Bill enters its committee stage (even more so if it is being handled by a committee of the whole house), as debate is often scheduled around specific clauses.

Tip 7: Make it personal and local

If you have the resource and capacity, it’s even better if you can personalise briefings for specific MPs. Do you have constituency data or evidence? If so, use it! It’ll make it much more likely that they will use your briefing as it will help them to raise a constituency perspective.

Tip 8: Don’t forget the politics

As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s important to remember that politics is inherently a partisan business. While most organisations will want to maintain a neutral position, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be sensitive to different political viewpoints. If your resource and capacity allows, it can be really effective to think about tailoring your briefings for MPs from different political parties. That doesn’t mean that you should change the essence of what you might want to say, but it does mean that you might want to think about contextualising your messages in a slightly different way. In reality, you won’t always have the luxury of time or resource to be able to do this. If that’s the case, try to avoid falling into the trap of presenting your arguments in such a way that might completely turn off MPs from one or more party.

Tip 9: Present solutions

As I have mentioned in previous posts, it’s really important that your briefing is positive and solution focused. While you need to set out your case for change, you also need to offer up some solutions and recommendations. Any MP or Peer speaking in a debate is going to want to make positive suggestions for change. Your briefing can be a vehicle for making those suggestions.

Tip 10: Don’t forget a point of contact

It seems such an obvious thing to say, but don’t forget to include a point of contact in your briefing. One of the long-term benefits of producing briefings for MPs and Peers is building relationships with them and their parliamentary staff. As you build that relationship, they will be more likely to come to you proactively for advice and guidance on key issues. Without a named contact, building that relationship is so much harder.

What would you add to this list of tips? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Category: Writing

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