Land Registry: We’re winning

by Trish Murray Jul 7th, 2016

The government is backing down on plans to sell off the Land Registry!

Last week 38 Degrees members emailed our MPs in our thousands. We asked them to attend a debate on the Land Registry and speak out against government plans to privatise the profitable public service.

MPs from all sides lined up to criticise the plans. And they mentioned the 38 Degrees petition and our people powered investigation in the debate.The minister in charge said he’d heard the criticisms “loud and clear” and kicked the sell-off into the long grass.

It’s a breakthrough moment in a hard fought campaign. Here’s what 38 Degrees members did together:

• 38 Degrees member James uses the Land Registry for work every day. So when the government snuck out plans to privatise the profitable public service, he started a petition on 38 Degrees’ Campaigns by You website. A whopping 310,000 of us got behind him – and our huge petition hit the headlines.

• 20,000 of us took part in a government consultation on the plans. From worries about a hike in prices, to the fears about who’d have access to our data – we made sure our concerns were heard.

• Thousands of us chipped in to hire an investigator to dish the dirt on the companies in the running to buy the Land Registry. All four had links to offshore tax havens. Our explosive findings were splashed all over The Times – and MPs used our investigation to criticise the government’s plans.

• And last week, before our MPs headed to the debate in Westminster, we made sure they knew this was something their constituents cared about.

Here’s 38 Degrees members handing in our huge petition to the government

These are turbulent times in politics, and no one can say for certain when a new government will be in place, and who will be leading it. But in all the uncertainty, there’s one thing we know for sure: if a new government dusts off the short-sighted plans to privatise the Land Registry, there’s hundreds of thousands of us ready to stop them.