Independent Age is off to Party Conferences
As party conference season rolls back around, Dan Steer, Public Affairs Manager at Independent Age, explains how we plan to engage MPs and the UK Government to promote much needed change for the the two million older people facing poverty in the UK today.
From this week Independent Age is hitting the road to travel the country for political party conferences. These conferences are where MPs, party members, businesses, and charities like us gather together to discuss important issues, and what policy changes need to be made.
This coming weekend we’ll be heading down to Brighton for the Liberal Democrat Conference, followed by Liverpool for Labour Conference, and finishing off with Conservative Conference in Birmingham at the end of September.
So, what do we do when we get to the conferences? At Liberal Democrat and Labour Conferences we’ll be sponsoring events with senior MPs to discuss what more the UK Government can do to support people in poverty. Separately from these events, we’ll be meeting MPs who were elected for the first time in July. Now that they’ve settled into their new jobs, we’re using party conferences to introduce them to what older people tell us are their concerns and wishes for the future. We also spend our time meeting with other organisations who support people facing poverty and plan what more we can all do to work better together.
Crucially, this year across all our meetings and events, we’ll be expressing our deep concerns with the UK Government’s changes to the Winter Fuel Payment. Even though the change has been voted on and passed, there are still many things we think can be done to ensure that more older people don’t have to make dangerous cutbacks this winter.
We’ll be making the case to political parties to support our proposals around improving take-up of social security support, introducing a national social tariff for energy and water bills, and also creating a new Commissioner for Older People and Ageing. With winter approaching its now more important than ever that positive steps like these are introduced to support older people.
We’ll also be sharing the results from our surveys and telling people in power what older people are telling us about how they’re finding things at the moment. Sharing people’s own stories are often the most powerful way to convince someone that change is needed. This will be a key part of what we are doing at party conferences.
We may or may not achieve breakthroughs on the political changes we want to see. However, I know that come October we will have made progress on making the case for the vital change we need to see.
If you are heading to one of these party conferences yourself, it would be great to meet to discuss how we can work together. You can reach the team at: public.affairs@independentage.org
