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:
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.