EDM Action
What is an Early Day Motion?
This is a private member's motion which may be tabled by an individual UK MP to express an opinion or call upon the Government to take action. Such a motion is tabled in the Members' lobby of the House of Commons. It is allocated a number and a date of tabling. It remains active for that particular session of Parliament, which usually lasts about a year and ends in October/November.
During the period it is active, the author(s) or other interested parties outside Parliament may encourage other MP's to display their support for the motion by signing the EDM.
The progress of an EDM (number of signatures/who/party affiliation) may be followed by clicking the link below each EDM statement in any of the following letters of appeal from the chairman.
Only MP's without party or government positions are eligible to sign EDM's. For a number of years, before he gave up his seat, Winston S. Churchill (MP) annually tabled an EDM in support of ending pension freezing. He succeeded in getting a little more than half the eligible MP's (275-300 - very respectable figures) to sign his EDM's on our behalf.
EDM's are important in that they provide a forum for individual backbench MP's to make a statement to the Government on any given subject. However, they have no force in parliamentary procedure. i.e. They will not force the Government to debate or change policies. They do, however, provide an additional political pressure point opportunity for MP's and campaigners to use.
If you have friends or relatives in the UK that you feel would also be prepared to support our cause by writing to their MP, then you are encouraged to forward them a copy of these EDM notices.
What should Alliance Members do to help?
We will be asking you to support a number of EDM's as they are tabled in the House of Commons. The most recent will appear first in this listing. If an EDM is OPEN for support, you are asked to write to your MP on that topic and encourage him or her to sign that EDM. Please select the EDM from the one of the blue links below:
Chairman’s
Letter to Members – EDM 1263 Dear CABP Member : The EDM season is upon us again and
I am asking for your support lobbying UK MPs to sign EDM 1263. John Markham, our Director of UK
Parliamentary Affairs, has worked very closely with a number of MPs on this and
EDM 1263 was tabled as a result. The actual wording is
provided in Section 1 below. EDMs
are a powerful vehicle for scoring impact in both the public and political
consciousness – media interest in them is well known to MPs and this heightened
awareness keeps up pressure on the government to take action. We now need your help to jolt the MPs into signing this EDM in order to
achieve maximum effect before John Markham speaks at the Labour
and Tory Party Conferences in September. Regardless of the response you may have received from your
MP about previous EDMs – negative, positive, or “I
can’t sign because of my status” – please do contact him/her about EDM 1263, if
you have not already done so. By doing
so, you are keeping our issue boiling on the front burner where it
belongs. You can find and get in touch
with your MP quite easily by following the instructions in Section 3 below or
by visiting www.BritishPensions.com
. MPs
advise us that it is better to mail a letter to them rather than make your
request for support by email. The action of physically opening an envelope
and then extracting and reading the contents means that you don’t have to hope
that you get by those human and electronic filters encountered by email
communications. Most importantly, be polite.
Remember, we are asking these MPs to take up the fight on our
behalf. Many of them are still only
vaguely familiar with our situation but they are listening and most of them
want to help. We are always pleased to see copies of the replies that you
get. It helps us to keep track of the
supporters and often gives John Markham an opportunity to follow-up on your
exchange of correspondence. My sincere thanks for your
participation in this project and for your continued support. Tony Bockman Chairman, CABP ----------------------------------------------------- 00
---------------------------------------------------------- The 1, 2, 3 procedure for following Tony’s request: 1.
Read the EDM statement that will be put before the MP’s. 2.
Write a letter to the MP of your old constituency. The section below the EDM statement provides
some sample words to choose from, depending upon your circumstances. Take care to include the points that Tony
makes. 3. Follow the
instructions in the third section to determine your MP’s name and address, complete your letter and mail as soon as possible.
“That this House is dismayed that the Government has not
ceased the practice of maintaining a discriminatory differential in UK state
pensions, dependent on the country in which the recipient resides; acknowledges
that the Government has stated that there is no legal reason to do so; and
calls upon the Government to cease the practice of freezing some overseas
pensions and to provide the 525,000 affected recipients resident abroad with
pension parity.” Follow this link to see who has signed already. http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=35497&SESSION=891
" Dear...... 1. I
am a pensioner living in .......... where I receive a UK State Retirement
Pension of £xx per week which has been frozen at this amount since (year) … or
for xx years The first words above
can be suitably modified to reflect your circumstances, such as: ‘I am a widow’ .. or .. ‘My wife and I’ .. or .. ‘Some other alternative
introduction’ OR
.. If you are not yet a pensioner but know that you have
enough years of NI contributions to qualify for a partial or full pension, you
could say, ‘I
am a future overseas pensioner living in ………. whose pension will be frozen when
I eventually reach pensionable age.’ 2. Prior
to leaving the (or
.. ‘my family are living in your constituency’ .. or .. ’and I have members of my family still living in your constituency’ .. or ..members of my
family have lived in your constituency for x years .. etc). OR – If it is less
than 15 years since you emigrated from the 3. I
have made my mandatory contributions to the State Pension scheme during my
lifetime. I therefore find it extremely
unjust that the British Government has seen fit to freeze my pension because I
live in ....., whilst some 50% of pensioners living outside the 4. I
would ask you to assist in bringing an end to this injustice by signing EDM 1263.
If you have already signed the EDM then please accept my sincere thanks
for supporting the call for pension parity for all pensioners, wherever they
might live in the world. Yours faithfully Your Signature/s
For those with a
computer and access to the internet 1. Using
your internet browser, go to: http://www.politics.guardian.co.uk/ (Guardian Umlimited) 2. Down
the left hand side, type into the box under “Find an MP” a. The
name of your old constituency in the OR – if you’re not
sure b. Enter
the name of the town or county you lived in (e.g. Leatherhead). Or the postcode of, even the first four
characters (e.g. KT22) OR – if that does not
provide what you’re looking for c. Use
the inter-active map at the blue link under the dialog box. When you have identified your MP write to him or her at the
following address, which is the recommended way to write to MPs Joe or Jane Doe, MP House of Commons If the MP has a title other than Mr, Mrs or Ms, like “Rt Hon” or “Sir” or “Dr”, then include it, as it may make
the difference to whether the MP gets to read it or not. Sending your letter to the House of Commons
means you do not have to research the constituency office address, it does not
encounter the constituency office road blocks and it gets there quicker. It is strongly recommended that you send
your letter by snail-mail for the reasons noted in the Chairman’s letter
above. For those without a
computer and access to the internet – snail-mailers Talk to your children or grand-children and provide them the
information above. If you do not have instant
access to them, then take this sheet with the above instructions to your public
library or some other public information body and they will be able to
help. As a last resort, call the CABP
National Office and the volunteers will try to help you. BUT
PLEASE GET THE INFORMATION AND WRITE! WE NEED YOU TO HELP US GET TO 200 MP SIGNATURES! ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Important Message from the
Chairman – Support EDM 2104 Hello again dear member: This request for you to support EDM
2104 requires a very short reaction time on your behalf. I ask you to email your UK MP as
quickly as possible so that we do not miss this vital window of
opportunity. Royal Mail is on
strike in the UK and consequently there is no opportunity to mount a snail mail
campaign in parallel with your email efforts. I’m depending upon all of you “internet savvy” members to
pull out all of the stops on this one! Our good friend, Labour MP Michael
Connarty, has just tabled this very important follow-up EDM aimed at attracting
the attention of MPs as parliament approaches the end of its current session
and subsequently moves towards the Queen’s Speech which will open the next
session of Parliament. The plan is
to gather as much support as possible in a very short period of time and thus
enable the EDM’s sponsor to have this topic debated in the Commons immediately
after the throne speech. We have
less than 2 weeks to get the necessary signatures on this EDM. CABP and the International
Consortium of British Pensioners have worked with Mr Connarty to develop a very
strongly worded EDM which focuses on the discriminatory differential between
frozen and non-frozen expat pensioners.
This is perhaps the most focused and strongly worded EDM we have seen
to-date and it is quoted in the form letter below: Your email letter to your MP should
say: Dear (,If the MP has a title other
than Mr, Mrs or Ms (e.g. Rt Hon, Sir or Dr), please use it, rather than the
generic “Dear Sir / Dear Madam), As an expatriate pensioner and a former member
of your constituency I beg you, as a matter of extreme urgency, to sign
EDM 2104 today. It states, “That
this house is astonished that the Government has not ceased the immoral and
unjust practice of maintaining a discriminatory differential in UK State
pensions paid to British pensioners living abroad, dependent on where they
reside; acknowledges that the Government has stated categorically that there
exists no legal reason to do so; calls upon the Government to cease the
practice of freezing overseas pensions and to provide the 520,000 British
pensioners resident abroad, who currently struggle to survive on their frozen
pensions, with pension parity.”
As you can see, all expatriate
pensioners need your strongest support to cease this immoral and discriminatory
practice. Sincerely, etc No more and no less - MPs do not
read long emails! If you are new to this activity and
need to identify your UK MP, please scroll down to the instructions at the bottom of the next EDM. My thanks in advance for all of your
help with this activity. Sincerely Tony Bockman, Chairman, Canadian Alliance of
British Pensioners
EDM 1263
Section
1. EDM:
1263 Pension Parity
Section 2. Sample
Letter to Support EDM 1263
Section 3. How
to Find the Name of Your MP
EDM 2104