General Election Toolkit

The Cut Tourism VAT campaign has prepared this toolkit to help Cut Tourism VAT supporters engage with local politicians ahead of the General Election on 8th June.

Building support among MPs is the best way to persuade the government to Cut Tourism VAT and the snap General Election is a great opportunity to engage with and challenge your local politicians to support the campaign.

We are working at a national level on your behalf but it is important that at a local level you can engage your local candidates and encourage them to join the campaign to Cut Tourism VAT.

Chris from the campaign (chris@cuttourismvat.co.uk) is happy to help you with anything related to the Campaign in the run up to the election.

1. How to find the Parliamentary Candidates for your area

To find out who your local candidates are, enter your postcode at this link. If you live and work in different constituencies, you could write to both sets of candidates. If you have trouble finding your local Parliamentary Candidates we are happy to help.

2. Writing to Parliamentary Candidates

As this election was called at very short notice, we would recommend contacting your candidates as soon as possible by email.

The campaign has prepared this template for you to send to your parliamentary candidates, setting out the key arguments for the campaign at this election. We recommend that you add in a personal message in the space provided to highlight how important this message is to you. Click on the image to download the document. When sending please cc in chris@cuttourismvat.co.uk

3. Securing a meeting with your Parliamentary Candidates

You can usually expect a response within two working weeks and to meet at the local offices of their political party, or even better you could host them at your establishment.

4. Agenda for the meeting with your Parliamentary Candidates

Please do let us know if you secure a meeting with your candidates. Apart from discussing issues that are important to you and your family you could:

• Explain how many local jobs and how much local investment are dependent upon hospitality and tourism in your area by using British Hospitality Association’s Local Economic Contribution Map and searching with your postcode.
• Ask the candidate to become a public supporter of the Campaign to Cut Tourism VAT
• Explain the needs of coastal and rural communities (if appropriate) and ask for a sustained investment strategy from government which includes private sector businesses to allow these communities to reach their full economic and social potential.

Please print out and use the placard above to take a picture of the candidate with it which the candidate can use on their social media, such as these politicians! Click here to download.

5. Resources

You can also Tweet your Parliamentary candidate using the suggested Tweets below:

At the #GE2017 encourage your candidates to support @CutTourismVAT. UK pays double compared with other European countries!

[insert @candidates’ Twitter accounts] as a local business owner I want to know if you will support @CutTourismVAT if elected MP for [insert constituency name] #GE2017

I met with [@candidate] today who agreed to support @CutTourismVAT if elected as MP for [insert constituency name] creating 121k new jobs #GE2017 [attach picture of candidate with placard]

Suggested letter to the Editor of your local newspaper

The Campaign to Cut Tourism VAT has drafted a letter for you to send to the Editor of your local paper. The email address of the editor can usually be found on the ‘contact’ page of the paper’s website. Click here or on the image below to download the letter.