Select Committee Visit - Tips

(from Bernie Douglas, VoxOpp) -

This is how we prepared and our experience.

Some thoughts and lessons:

Prepare for the visit in some detail. Think of the questions they might ask.
Walk the route you want the MPs to follow and also identify what you want them to see and not see
Plan who is going to say what and be clear about the key messages that are going to be put across. We had the people who will be presenting our Petition to the Select Committee in attendance for continuity
Find out who is coming and research them. Make sure you plan
Think carefully about AG presence and posters etc. as it may be counter-productive. Our visit was pitched as local people impacted by HS2, parish and District Councillors
Plan your timing. Time the distance to the viewing points so you can manage the visit
Keep any hand-outs succinct. Our was 5-6 slides in a cardboard folder setting out our concerns in bullet point format with a few supporting slides – inludingc HS2 maps and a photomontage
Use HS2 maps and materials to show the impact where possible
Demonstrate the impacts visually. We hung a sack from a tree showing the height of the train and also did a photomontage of a HS2 train from the viewing point
Don’t rage against HS2 or how you have been treated. They have heard it all before - but it’s still worth reminding them as they are getting the message
Engage with the Senior HS2 people if possible. Relationships are important. We got the distinct feeling that the messages from the Community Forums have not percolated up to the decision makers.

The MPs were very appreciative of our efforts & planning and genuinely wanted to hear our viewpoints. They liked the visual representations and commented favourably on the brevity and clarity of our hand-outs
They want to be able to see things for themselves – give them plenty of time and space to take things in
They rolled their eyes when we mentioned peak noise. It’s unclear what this indicates…..
Ian Mearns asked what the engagement with HS2 had been like. He was told politely that it had been garbage to date and that this was the first time our village had discussed the impacts in situ with HS2. He was very surprised at the latter but it was clear that they have concerns about engagement to date
It was made very clear to the HS2 people that the MPs wanted to speak to us and it was not the time for them to comment.
We felt we built some rapport with both the MPs and (surprisingly) HS2