Template: Letter to local MP

The following model letter/e-mail is an example of key points to make to your MP. You can add your own personal experiences and stories to the letters, or change the text to reflect your own personal concerns, or you can send the letters after filling in your details.

To find your MP’s contact details, visit They Work For You

If you receive replies to your letters please send them to hello@schoolsabc.net

Dear [MP’s name]

I am writing to you as a constituent to express my serious concerns about the government’s collection of information on the immigration status of school children between the ages of 5 and 19.

While there is no mention of the data being used for immigration enforcement in the school census guidance, its use is part of a strategic goal to create a hostile environment for migrants and data about individual children is being sent to the Home Office, with 2,462 records sent between July 2015 and September 2016 in what Lord Storey has described as “another way.. to make people who live in the UK but were born abroad feel unwelcome”.

This comes in the context of a rise in racist and xenophobic attacks following the vote to leave the EU, and increasingly hostile attitudes in the media towards the use of public services by migrants. More urgently, this policy effectively deputises school staff as immigration enforcers, bring the borders into the classroom, and the fear of attracting the attention of UK Visa and Immigration enforcement may lead people to keep their children away from school. I believe that all of these factors put the well-being of schoolchildren at risk.

I am calling on you to look further into this issue and to do everything in your power to stop this policy. I would like you to write to the the Department for Education about the potential dangers of the new policy and to raise the issue (in Parliament and more broadly) to ensure that parents are aware of their lawful right not to comply with these requests for nationality status information.

More information about policy and its dangers, links to press reports, and other resources, can be found at schoolsabc.net .

Yours,

[Your name]
[Your address]

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