My MP's commitment to recycling

I recently wrote to my MP, who also happens to be the Prime Minister.

29th March 2011

Dear Mr Cameron,

I understand that you have recently sought the independent advice of the Committee on Climate Change and I congratulate you for doing so. I am now writing to urge you to accept the advice they give you and set serious targets for reducing the UK’s carbon emissions.

I have seen the report on the Committee on Climate Change website and having read it, I am asking you to accept their recommendations in full. What they say is simply common sense, based on the latest climate science. For example, the recommendation to reduce emissions by 46% over the next twenty years is the minimum required to keep us on track for our 2050 goal. As the report says, anything less will endanger the feasibility of our path to 2050.

Many people were persuaded to vote Conservative in the last election because of your impressive manifesto commitment to environmental measures. This is one of the most important things you can do to prove that you meant those promises. Please, I urge you, accept the advice of the Committee on Climate Change and set effective carbon targets for the UK.

Yours sincerely, Kate Griffin

I received a reply about a fortnight later:

Dear Kate,

Thank you for contacting me about the Committee on Climate Change’s report on the fourth carbon budget.

I have said that this will be the greenest Government ever and that is why Ministers have rejected the status quo to ensure that the UK sufficiently reduces its carbon level.

In December last year, we introduced proposals to radically reform the electricity market which could largely decarbonise electricity by the 2030s with £110 billion of investment in low carbon electricity infrastructure over the next decade.

The Green Deal will radically overhaul the energy efficiency of homes and small businesses and will bring the UK’s homes, which are the oldest and least efficient in Europe, into the 21st century. The Energy Bill, currently being considered by Parliament, will provide for the Green Deal.

The Green Investment Bank, which aims to catalyse investment in green infrastructure, will be initially provided with £3 billion of funding. We are looking to establish a bank with a wide remit that is able to respond to long-term green infrastructure challenges. Further announcements on this flagship policy are expected this summer ahead of an expected September 2012 launch.

The Government will formally respond to the Committee on Climate Change’s report this spring and produce its report on delivering the Fourth Carbon Budget by October 2011. In the meantime, I am confident that we will continue our ambitious agenda to tackle climate change and secure a low carbon future.

I hope that this reassures you and thank you again for taking the time to contact me about this vital issue.

David Cameron

Lots of information about impressive-sounding measures there. But on re-reading, I realised that he hadn’t actually promised to do what I was asking. So when 38 Degrees launched a letter-writing campaign on this issue, I decided to write again through their web interface.

Date: Mon, May 9, 2011

Subject: The Fourth Carbon Budget

Dear Mr Cameron,

I have written to you "properly" about this already, but I'm using 38 Degrees to send this because they alerted me to the fact that you may still be considering rejecting the advice of the Committee on Climate Change.

On re-reading your reply to my last letter, I note that you do not actually promise to take their recommendations on board. For heaven's sake, what is the point of paying independent scientific advisers if you don't then take their advice?

I am sure you will be hearing from a lot of people about this in the next day or so. I would urge you to take their advice. People voted for you because you promised the "greenest government ever". Please live up to that promise.

Yours faithfully,

Kate Griffin

A couple of days later I received a reply.

Dear Kate,

Thank you for contacting me about the Committee on Climate Change’s report on the fourth carbon budget.

I have said that this will be the greenest Government ever and that is why Ministers have rejected the status quo to ensure that the UK sufficiently reduces its carbon level.

In December last year, we introduced proposals to radically reform the electricity market which could largely decarbonise electricity by the 2030s with £110 billion of investment in low carbon electricity infrastructure over the next decade...

Perhaps you can guess how the rest of it went.

I’m well aware that MPs are busy people who get a lot of letters, and I realise the Prime Minister is the busiest of the lot. I don’t expect Mr Cameron to read every letter he receives and draft a handwritten reply.

What I do expect is for the Prime Minister’s office to handle written communication effectively. Mail-merged replies are absolutely fine if each one stands alone as a valid reply to the original message. But if a message says “This is the second time I’ve written to you”, that should flag up the fact that the sender has already received the template reply. If the message says “I’ve already written to you, and your reply didn’t answer my question”, that’s a second big red flag warning you not to send out the template reply again.

When I, as the constituent, get a template reply twice, that sets off my own red flags. The first failure to respond to my specific request might be down to hasty reading, or hasty writing, or a desire to dodge an awkward question while still being seen to respond. But the second failure, when couched in identical words to the first, tells me: “Nobody has actually read either of your two letters. Office staff just scanned it for a keyword they recognised (in this case presumably “Committee on Climate Change”) and sent out the standard reply for that keyword.”

You know who else is really good at sending out standard replies based on keywords? Spammers. Certain phrases bring them out of the woodwork, with varying degrees of appropriateness. Tweet about your eating disorder and you might attract diet spam; blog about your new iPad and you might get spam comments inviting you to buy one. But we’re not surprised or upset when spam commenters ignore what we’re saying, because they’re easy to spot and we know they’re not human.

However, I expect more from our elected representatives. They’re not shadowy spambots; they’re intelligent human beings who employ other intelligent human beings to help them communicate with the public. We have a democratic right to have our views heard by the person elected to represent us. If you can’t write to your MP and get a response that’s to the point, you have no idea whether or not that person is listening (though the chances are that they’re not).

There’s already a great collaborative project for scrutinising election leaflets. ElectionLeaflets.org (formerly The Straight Choice) lets you scan the election bumph you get and upload it for others to see. Perhaps we need something similar for the letters we get from our MPs. It could compare textual similarities and maybe have a rating system too: “On a scale of 1 to 5, how well did your MP seem to grasp the point of your original message?” I’m imagining a mixture of ElectionLeaflets.org, Churnalism.com and any of the many sites on the web where people who like rating things go to rate things.

If I had any programming skills, I would start building it myself. But since I don’t, I guess I’m just starting a discussion. Good idea? Terrible idea? Comments welcome, unless you’re a bot selling replica Rolexes.