Originally published at: We brought repair back into Parliament - The Restart Project
Yesterday we once again teamed up with Back Market to bring repair into the Houses of Parliament. Building on the success of our Parliamentary Repair Café last year, we wanted to remind MPs about the importance of repair, both in communities across the UK and in business to save waste, reduce emissions and save money. Whilst highlighting the additional value that repair cafés offer through building connection and sharing valuable skills.
Like last year, we collaborated with our partners in the Community Repair Network to make sure that communities across the UK were represented, and had support from SUEZ and Green Alliance too.
This time around, we were delighted to be joined by Circular Economies minister Mary Creagh, who set up the Circular Economy Taskforce that we’ve been following so closely. She showed her usual level of personal commitment, arriving in repaired clothes, and asking for advice on fixing her phone before talking about the importance of things being made to last and promising a roadmap for circular electricals by Spring next year.
We were also joined by Jeremy Vine, who told the all too frustratingly familiar story of an item that wasn’t repairable, in this case a less than 3 year old Segway which is likely to be thrown away. Whilst he was telling this story, one of the repair cafe representatives whispered what we imagine at least 20 others in the room were thinking, ”that can’t be true, we’ve got a fixer who can repair anything!” In the end one of the visitors from a refurbishment and recycling company offered to take it and give repairing it one last go.
And so our amazing volunteer fixers got to work helping MPs and their staffers fix their broken gadgets.
Most of the MPs we spoke to came because constituents had asked them to drop by. Thank you to the hundreds of you who emailed your local MP; over half of all MPs received at least one invitation from a local constituent!
Fixing repair policy
While it was wonderful to share the joy of repair with our elected representatives, we were also able to show MPs how they can address the structural barriers holding back repair and reuse.
Our Repair & Reuse Declaration offers concrete policy solutions that could make it much easier and cheaper to fix everyday products. It calls on the UK government to make repair more affordable, expand the UK’s Right to Repair, introduce a repair index, bring in targets for reuse and repair and support a new generation of repairers.
Around 400 community groups, businesses and allied organisations have already signed it, along with 57 MPs. We were delighted that at least an additional 7 MPs added their names during the event, bringing the total to 64.
Has your MP signed the declaration? Check here
This extra support from our elected officials comes just after the government’s Circular Economy Taskforce finally added e-waste to their list of priorities following pressure from our campaign and feedback from industry. The Taskforce has been billed as a once in a generation opportunity to shift how we consume, use and, eventually, dispose of our products. We have a real chance to significantly reduce waste, lower emissions and boost the local repair economy.
And so we hope that this momentum will encourage the Taskforce to keep ambitions high, developing concrete recommendations aimed at prioritising repair and reuse, so that we can keep our electricals in use for longer.
[Photos by Mark A Phillips]
Which MPs came to the Parliamentary Repair Café?
Harriet Baldwin | Conservatives | West Worcestershire CC
Danny Beales | Labour | Uxbridge and South Ruislip BC
Karen Bradley | Conservatives | Staffordshire Moorlands CC
Irene Campbell | Labour | North Ayrshire and Arran
Charlotte Cane | Liberal Democrats | Ely and East Cambridgeshire CC
Mary Creagh | Labour | Coventry East BC
Ann Davies | Plaid | Caerfyrddin
Caroline Dinenage | Conservatives | Gosport BC
Neil Duncan-Jordan | Labour | Poole BC
Luke Evans | Conservatives | Hinckley and Bosworth CC
Catherine Fookes | Labour | Monmouthshire
Allison Gardner | Labour | Stoke-on-Trent South CC
Becky Gittins | Labour | Clwyd East
Tom Gordon | Liberal Democrats | Harrogate and Knaresborough BC
Tom Hayes | Labour | Bournemouth East BC
Ruth Jones | Labour | Newport West and Islwyn
Warinder Juss | Labour | Wolverhampton West BC
Amanda Martin | Labour | Portsmouth North BC
Lola McEvoy | Labour | Darlington CC
Navendu Mishra | Labour | Stockport BC
Stephen Morgan | Labour | Portsmouth South BC
Kieran Mullan | Conservatives | Bexhill and Battle CC
Caroline Nokes | Conservatives | Romsey and Southampton North CC
Richard Quigley | Labour | Isle of Wight West CC
Andrew Ranger | Labour | Wrexham
Andrew Rosindell | Conservatives | Romford BC
Anna Sabine | Liberal Democrats | Frome and East Somerset CC
Jessica Toale | Labour | Bournemouth West BC
Liz Twist | Labour | Blaydon and Consett CC
Harpreet Uppal | Labour | Huddersfield BC
Caroline Voaden | Liberal Democrats | South Devon CC
David Williams | Labour | Stoke-on-Trent North BC
And another 4 MPs were represented by their constituency office staff:
Julia Buckley | Labour | Shrewsbury CC
Richard Foord | Liberal Democrats | Honiton and Sidmouth CC
Ian Sollom | Liberal Democrats | St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire CC
Keir Starmer | Labour | Holborn and St Pancras BC
any time I hear “It couldn’t be fixed” I always find myself thinking “so-and-so did one like that from the same manufacturer last month”.