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Dr Stuart Thomson is head of public affairs at BDB Pitmans. Following our recent event, where Stuart was a panelist, he has written his thoughts on the new political landscape.

The Conservative Party’s significant win in the General Election has changed the political landscape. With this change should come a reassessment of Public Affairs activity. What should those in Public Affairs now be thinking about?

With a majority now in place, the normal business of Government can resume. Instead of being utterly fixated on Brexit, new policies can be developed that consider the challenges facing the country. Public Affairs can help engage with Government in the development of these new policies.

Getting organisations and people involved is important but critically across Public Affairs we have to keep a watch on what the Government wants to achieve. The current priorities for this Government are ‘levelling-up’, addressing climate change (through COP 26) and preparing for life outside the EU.

But we also need to keep an eye on the delivery aspects for voters. Why?  Because timescales become critically important. The Government really needs to show what it has achieved by the time of the next election. Of course, all governments have that requirement, but Boris really believes in infrastructure and that can take a long time to deliver. So how do they show what they have achieved if the infrastructure hasn’t yet been built? How do they ensure that the ‘red wall’ of former Labour seats in the North remains nothing more than a memory?

If Boris is to keep those seats in former Labour voting areas, then the Government also needs to continue to speak about those issues that have traditionally been seen as Labour strengths – such as the NHS and education. But also maintain their strength in their own core areas – Brexit and the economy. The paper by the British Psychological Society on making better policy provided some useful insight into these issues.

I can also hear echoes of Tony Blair here as well. He went onto areas of Conservative strength and owned them for Labour. ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ was a direct play for the traditionally Conservative area of law and order.

Labour’s great failure this time, apart from its leadership, was to take their own ‘core’ issues for granted.

So it is all very good tracking, as Labour and Corbyn did in the Pulsar survey, really well on social media but it did not turn into votes. Again, the same survey showed an association between each party and particular issues. The Conservatives made sure they controlled the agenda on the top issues – Brexit, the NHS (increased spending to neutralise Labour) and the economy.

Therefore, our Public Affairs work has to reflect the reality of a majority Government and, as I blogged about recently, that means everything from taking the House of Lords seriously to looking at developing long-term relationships and champions, thinking about public campaigns and, of course, the new No 10/No 11 super department. That also means being aware of how best to engage with our audiences and not relying just on any exciting social media channels. As the Vuelio report, The Politics of Social Media, confirmed, there remains a key role for face-to-face meetings with MPs.

It’s an exciting time to be in Public Affairs!

You can read Dr Stuart Thomson’s blog here. He tweets @redpolitics. More information about his new book on reputation management can be seen here.

Yesterday was a historic day for the climate campaigners.

The Court of Appeal has taken the climate emergency into account and made it a key part of its decision to stop the expansion of Heathrow.

The Government now has a choice: they can continue with business as usual, appealing the Court of Appeal decision and continuing to push for infrastructure that will ultimately stop them reaching their climate targets; or they could use this as a wake-up call and start legislating for climate action now.

Achieving net-zero involves cutting emissions across all sectors to almost zero and offsetting the remaining emissions by planting forests and investing in carbon capture technology.

This is a daunting task and the sooner we start the better chance we have of avoiding widespread environmental chaos that will define the lives of future generations.

We are living through a climate emergency.

Yesterday’s decision, against the expansion of Heathrow Airport, is a victory.

Now is the time to be cutting our emissions, not adding infrastructure that will cause them to skyrocket.

It is a victory for the thousands of local campaigners who have spent years protesting the expansion. It shows communities, across the country, that people power can make the difference. The Liberal Democrats has been backing these campaigns from the very beginning, supporting grassroots action to make today’s decision possible.

For far too long the Government has been committed to Heathrow expansion, with no consideration of the impact on our carbon footprint and the local environment.

This Government’s own target – to reach a net zero by 2050 – is not compatible with airport expansion. Whether that be expansion of Heathrow Airport or Bristol.

Flying long haul, in 2020, requires fossil fuels. As a result, flying always comes with a carbon cost. Research into cleaner fuels is important and yet green alternatives will not be replacing oil-based aviation fuel anytime soon.

Flying is a positive part of life in a globalised world, but we have an obligation to not to expand an industry that is contributing to the climate crisis.

And it is because of this that my party opposes airport expansion.

If Boris Johnson makes the wrong choice now, he may well have to lie down in front of the bulldozers and the wider impact on our climate will be catastrophic.

I will be urging the Government to respect the Court of Appeal decision and to use this moment as a turning point, investing in substantive climate action now.

We can help – The Liberal Democrats are the only party to have a detailed plan to reach net zero, including a sector by sector roadmap.

This decision was a landmark victory for climate campaigners. For the sake of future generations, let’s make tomorrow an even better one.

Wera Hobhouse is the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for the Climate Emergency, Energy and the Environment & MP for Bath.

This blog post is part of a cross-party series on Vuelio’s political blog Point of Order, which publishes insight and opinion to help public affairs, policy and comms professionals stay ahead of political change and connect with those who campaign on the issues they care about. To find out more or contribute, get in touch with Vuelio Politics.

We are – finally – recognising that there is no such thing as throwing something ‘away’ on our poor choked planet. Every bit of waste has to go somewhere.

Globally, most of the eight billion tonnes of plastic produced since the 1950s is still in existence – in our drinking water, our soils, our animals and our air. Even in our beer.

Last year in the UK, a group of supermarkets and other stores announced with much fanfare that within the next seven years they are planning to cut out non-recyclable plastic packaging.

That is seven more years of producing something that won’t ever disappear, but this was far more positive than the Government proclaiming that it will ban unnecessary single-use plastic by 2042.

There’s a crucial point to make about both the voluntary ban and the Government announcement: ‘recyclable’ doesn’t mean an object is going to be recycled and who defines what is and isn’t ‘necessary’?

Our plastics recycling facilities are already groaning with over-supply of recyclables from the impact of the Chinese decision to stop importing most plastic waste for recycling there.

At the consumer end, households are struggling with a hugely variety of different schemes with different rules: if you move house there’s a good chance you’ll have to learn a new system. Live in a flat in Wandsworth and you are expected to put your recycling into a large single-use plastic bag. Really?

How much better if an unnecessary item isn’t produced at all. That more than 40 per cent of the plastic produced goes into single-use packaging is shocking, even before you consider the fact that the world total is more than 300 million tonnes each year.

After massive public pressure, the Government is supposed to be introducing a bottle deposit scheme, for plastic and other bottles, although we’re still waiting for actual action, and there’s always going to be significant numbers that escape the net.

Pub and café chains are rushing to promise to get rid of plastic straws, and there’s now some decent discounts on coffee in some places if you bring your own cup. Some are also calling for a ban on single-use sachets – sauce, vinegar, sugar etc.

I will happily applaud all of this, but huge amounts of parliamentary time could be taken up passing limited, fiddly legislation that has to define and restrict specific categories of table condiments, or focus on plastic straws or stirrers, a tiny fraction of our plastics pollution.

The logical way to approach this is to start at the other end. Let’s begin with a ban on all single-use plastic – that would cover everything you could think of and then some – single-use cups, sandwich wrappers and those really annoying almost unopenable hard plastic frames around toothbrushes.

Then you could make exceptions for items that are actually necessary – wrappings to keep medical equipment sterile, maybe some packaging for meat products, wherever a genuine case of need could be made.

This could be a model for further action. The plastics pollution crisis is just one of the ways in which we are butting up against the limits of this fragile planet.

Ensuring that resources are used only sparingly, and well, is a model that we need in all aspects of our economy.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Natalie Bennett) was leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2012 to 2016.

This blog post is part of a cross-party series on Vuelio’s political blog Point of Order, which publishes insight and opinion to help public affairs, policy and comms professionals stay ahead of political change and connect with those who campaign on the issues they care about. To find out more or contribute, get in touch with Vuelio Politics.

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Rennard writes that the Government still seems uncertain about whether or not to bring before Parliament plans to cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600. He adds that doing so may cause infighting amongst Conservative MPs, as well as objections about the fairness of the methodology for boundary reviews introduced in the coalition period.

The answer to my written question in the House of Lords about Government plans for the re-organisation of parliamentary constituency boundaries suggests that it is still thinking about what to do. In September 2018, the four Boundary Commissions submitted their final reports. The relevant legislation (the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011) requires the Government to lay the reports before Parliament for approval ‘as soon as may be’. Nearly 18 months later, there is still no sign of them.

Prior to the December general election, the Government was clearly worried about obtaining a majority for an Order to bring in the new boundaries. But with a comfortable majority of 80 in the Commons, the question now is if it is thinking again about the principle of reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600. Many of the 365 Conservative MPs elected in December may not relish having to scramble for the reduced number of seats that would be available.

If the current proposals are approved, it will benefit the Conservatives overall. But in some parts of the country, three Conservative MPs may find themselves in competition for selection for perhaps two of the newly proposed constituencies, and in other places two Conservative MPs may be competing for the same seat. For example, the new Secretary of State for Wales, Simon Hart (Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire), could find himself competing with the former Secretary of State for Wales, Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire), for the proposed new seat of Mid and South Pembrokeshire.

Few Conservative MPs seemed to realise that supporting the coalition’s 2011 proposals for changing the way that boundaries are drawn up would mean subjecting themselves to a fundamental re-organisation every five years. The extremely tight restriction on the quota (5%) by which constituency electorates can diverge from the average means that a small change in one constituency’s boundaries could trigger major changes to all the others in the region. Under the new scheme, the new boundaries would only become known in the fourth year of a five-year parliament, thereby handicapping both MPs and candidates who seriously ‘nursed’ their constituencies.

One of the purported justifications for cutting the number of MPs to 600 was the claim that previous Boundary Commissions had led to an ever-increasing number of MPs. But this is not the case. The number of MPs in 1945 was 640, rose to 659 in 1997 and went back down to 650 in 2010. More significantly, the increase in the number of MPs since 1945 (1.6%) has not kept pace with the growth of the electorate since then (43.2%).

An MP elected in 1945 represented just under 52,000 electors. An MP elected last December will have on average over 73,000 electors calling on their services. Over the last 75 years, expectations of what they should do for their constituents have also risen greatly. There are also many people expecting MPs to represent them who are not on the electoral registers. Levels of electoral registration were thought to be very high (around 90%) when plans for changing the methodology for reviewing the boundaries was announced in 2011. But the Cabinet Office’s subsequent research showed that it was nearer 80%. There may, therefore, be six million people entitled to be on the electoral registers, but who are not included on them. This makes the current intake of MPs responsible, on average, for around 83,000 adults who are UK citizens, as well as anyone else who may seek their assistance.

Seven years ago, I caused a storm by acting with others to block the boundary re-organisation proposals of 2013. I argued that electoral registration was far less thorough than we had been led to believe, and that reducing the number of MPs needed to be matched by reducing the number of Ministers and beginning elections to a reformed House of Lords. Otherwise the powers of the executive relative to that of the legislature would be increased disproportionately. It is also fair to say that stopping the boundary review benefitted my party by about three or four seats in each of the last three general elections (a significant proportion now that our numbers in the Commons have been greatly reduced).

It is generally agreed that MPs should generally represent roughly the same number of electors. But we should now be looking again at the best way of achieving this and considering carefully the recommendations in the report of the Commons Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform from 2015. Its proposals would mean more sensible, and more stable, constituency boundaries in future. Keeping with 650 MPs would also minimise disruption, which before 2011 was always an aim in boundary reviews.

Lord Rennard is a Liberal Democrat Peer and former Chief Executive of his party.

This blog post is part of a cross-party series on Vuelio’s political blog Point of Order which publishes insight and opinion to help public affairs, policy and comms professionals stay ahead of political change and connect with those who campaign on the issues they care about. To find out more or contribute, get in touch with Vuelio Politics.