Gagging law: Public meeting with Andrew George MP

Last Friday I spent a great evening in Penzance talking at one of the 38 Degrees public meetings on the gagging law. I was speaking alongside the local MP Andrew George and the meeting was chaired by Ed Matthew from Energy Bill Revolution.

When I first arrived I thought the team had been a little ambitious with the number of chairs they had set out, but by the time we started the meeting, people were standing at the back and we have well over a hundred in the room.

Andrew George remarked at the beginning that it was rare to see that many people turn out to talk about a bill going through parliament. And all of the questions from the floor showed just how well informed his constituents were!

On the panel we were all in agreement that the bill is a bad thing. So what that meant was that we could really dig into the issue and talk about the parts of the bill that we particularly didn’t like. Members asked questions about where this bill came from and what its purpose was. They were also keen to know what they could do next. Andrew George would have left the meeting in no doubt that his constituents wanted him to talk to Lords about amending the bill.

All in all, it was a fantastic night. It was great to see so many people turn up, the only bad thing about the meeting was that there were so many questions, we didn’t have time to get around all of them!

Did you go to the public meeting? What did you think? Would you go along to this sort of thing again?