Many of you are beginning to receive letters from your MPs about the expected debate on banning driven grouse shooting. Tomorrow’s blog post will give you some information for some ‘Firm briefing’ of your MP.
Also, tomorrow evening I will post the ‘Star letter of the week’ from an MP to a constituent. I hope to make this a regular weekly feature.
When I wrote to my MP, Mr Pursglove, I asked him if he would like a copy of Inglorious to read in order to get up to speed on the issue but he hasn’t said that he would.
He has written ‘I must say congratulations are in order for reaching more than 100,000 signatures‘ which was very polite and quite nice of him.
Although Mr Pursglove has not committed himself to attending the debate (we don’t know the date yet, after all) he does offer to write to ministers on my behalf.
And so I have asked him to write to Andrea Leadsom at Defra and ask for a full briefing on the state of play of the RSPB complaint to the European Commission on burning of blanket bogs and other moorland areas. When will the case be resolved? When will the papers referring to the complaint be made publicly available? What changes of Policy has Defra introduced to respond to what they have learned through this process? What does Defra think are the implications for flood risk mitigation of the frequent flooding of the Calder Valley constituents of his fellow Conservative MP Craig Whittaker and the links with intensive moorland management?
[registration_form]
Well done Mark, by the time all this issue of driven grouse shooting is sorted MPs and Defra ministers are certainly going to know all about Mark Avery. You are very much picking up on all the important points and the awkward points for Defra. They need to be pushed “like hell” for answers.
I don’t know what form the debate will take and whether there will be an opportunity for you and the RSPB to give evidence, but if so it will be important to rehearse any presentations especially if the shooting industry are also there giving all their wrong and misleading statements.
HoC Parliamentary Petitions Committee is made up of 6 Conservative MPs, four Labour 7 and 1 SNP. See http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/petitions-committee/membership/
Just in case we thought it were quiet, here they go again, suggests it’s ‘us’ misleading the public http://www.shootinguk.co.uk/news/debate-driven-grouse-shooting-78235
Apparently ours is perceived as an extremist campaign! What dictionary do they use?
What is not clear is if they are referring to their own actions when they quote Tim Russell about celebrity bullies? Is the celebrity bully theirs, are they referring to ‘Sir’ bowling his infamous own goals (made up BTO report statistics)?
For sure, I look forward to them presenting validated evidence which can stand analysis and cross questioning!
Sorry, I posted my letter to MP in wrong article. I am very much hoping for letter of the week star reply as Patrick McL. and I are long established corespondents. And I have noticed the more often I write to him, the higher he rises in government, so it is in his interests to reply.