If you are a man reading this – read it and then give it to your mother, wife, partner or daughter to read. If you are a woman or girl – read it yourself. My message is simple: ethnic minority women are less likely to go for breast cancer screening than other women (and not enough other women do anyway!) – so please don’t risk your own life by not going for screening yourself.

I was lobbied at Parliament by the charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer, who are trying to raise the awareness of women in those groups whose take up of screening is too low. There are two groups that in particular do not take advantage of the screening programs now available throughout the country – one as I say is women from ethnic minorities and the other is women over 70 of all ethnic groups. So I promised Breakthrough Breast Cancer that as an MP, I would take some action to try and alert women to the need for self-examination and screening.

Whatever the reason for the low take up – I hope that by writing this article I will be able to persuade more women to get screened. Whether it is modesty or shyness, lack of information or barriers in accessing health services that causes low take up rates, people should remember – the screening process saves lives.

Early detection is estimated to save 1,400 lives per year. One in nine women will develop breast cancer at some time in their lives and nearly 13,000 women die each year from this disease. Not only does early detection save lives but it can also prevent mastectomies – having to have a whole breast removed. Cancers in screened women tend to be smaller and therefore less likely to be treated by removal of the whole breast.

Breast Cancer Care carried out some research in 2004 – ‘an investigation into breast cancer related knowledge, beliefs and attitudes among women from minority ethnic groups living in London and Sheffield’. Asian and Arab women identified a number of barriers to accessing information about breast cancer. Many of the women appear to put themselves last – i.e. their priorities are their role in looking after children, the house and the cooking way ahead of their own health care. They identified, particularly amongst older women, a lack of literacy amongst the most disadvantaged – and this, combined with views that the materials were hard to read or understand, meant the information was just not getting through. Another barrier was that these women found it difficult to access primary care and almost none of them accessed information about breast cancer from newspapers or magazines.

So – that is why I began this column by asking whoever reads it to make sure that they or women they know understand how important it is to get themselves screened. There were some very good suggestions in the document about how more information could be disseminated. The Asian and Arab women in the study suggested that education outreach should be organised in places where they met – at places of worship or in their own community centres. They felt that the UK based Asian and Arab TV and radio stations could also play their part in getting the information out there. Of course, their local GPs need to play their part too.

And of course – word of mouth. Women talk – and they need to be talking about screening.

So – please don’t let lack of information, cultural modesty or putting everyone else ahead of yourself stop you getting screened. If you are the fulcrum of your family’s life and if it is on you that everyone depends to keep home and hearth – then there is an even greater imperative that you take the best possible care of yourself.

Here are a couple of quiz questions for any would-be lobbyist:

Question A: when are Parliamentary candidates most busy and least likely to deal with something that isn’t directly about winning votes? Answer – the few weeks before polling day.

And Question B: when do lobbyists put in the most effort sending information to Parliamentary candidates?

You guessed it – not too smart in my book!

Although many of the organisations and causes that lobbied me when I was a Parliamentary candidates in the run up to May (and since) are very worthy and ones I’d be willing to support, my heart frequently sinks at the quality of the lobbying done to me.

Becoming an MP was a bit of poacher turned gamekeeper for me. As part of my campaign to get elected, I lobbied all sorts of people to tackle issues in my constituency. Now I’m an MP of course I’m still nagging away day after day – but now many more organisations nag me too. Lots of people have always been in touch asking me to do one thing or help with the other, but post-polling day it’s the number of organisations suddenly interested in me that’s really notable in my inbox and postbag.

So much of it seems to have very little understanding of what it is like to be on the receiving end of the lobbying campaigns. Even worse, large amounts of money (often charitable or taxpayers’) gets spent on producing and posting glossy colour brochures which do very little other than let someone tick the job done box on a list somewhere.

What’s wrong with all this lobbying then?

First – bad timing. Candidates are at their busiest just before an election. New MPs struggle the most just after an election (it takes Parliament an age to allocate offices, new staff to be appointed etc.). These then are the two worst times to be approaching people – but perversely there are the very two times when the most effort seems to be put in!

Second – what’s the point of most of the mailings? They are mainly glossy colour brochures, chock full of information. Well, there’s no shortage of colour brochures in my life – what is needed to stop them being just a waste of time and money is for them to give me a compelling reason to read them. Being stuffed full of information the organisation thinks is interesting isn’t quite the same thing, alas. To me, a good mailing would be well thought out – how does it have a chance to survive in the deluge of mail and to get attention of the would-be reader?

Of course, for some organisations lobbying involves getting members of the public to get in touch with their MP or candidate. Sounds good so far – having your potential voters get in touch is always a good way of getting our attention! But again so many organisations blow it.

What not to do when lobbying an MP

So here’s my four-step guide to wrecking such a campaign:

1. Get your supporters to email candidates three days before polling day demanding that candidates reply within 24 hours. (That’s right – pick one of the busiest days for most candidates in the 4 or 5 year Parliamentary cycle for no good reason but demand immediate attention).

2. Get your supporters to contact Lib Dem MPs on an issue both the Lib Dems and Labour are publicly committed to – but only mention in the message Labour’s commitment. (Nice way of getting in my good books, hey?)

3. Get your supporters to email in on an issue on which many people have very eloquent and forceful views- but have all their messages word-for-word identical, yet also long. (How many times do you need to read the same long message?).

4. Realise that it’s a good idea to make the lobbying emails more effective by letting people personalise them – but stick the personalisation at the bottom of a long standard message where it is very easy to miss.

I regret to report – all these steps are based on real experiences in the last 12 months. Oh dear!

And what would really impress me? What would make lobbying an MP really effective? Here’s one thought: quoting my own words back at me. With my website, blog and thousands of leaflets, there are plenty of public words of mine to pick up on. And if you don’t have any leaflets, there are several libraries that keep good leaflet collections…

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2006. This article first appeared in Public Affairs News.