King's College London

Make politics what you do, not have done to you, former Green Party leader Natalie Bennett told Geography staff and students when she visited King’s this week.

Now a member of the House of Lords, Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle was visiting the Department to provide some guidance to researchers on how to feed evidence into the policymaking process.

“Policy, Parliament, Government are not keeping up with the level of knowledge, the level of understanding that’s being generated. It’s growing at enormous pace and it’s really crucial that the people who are building that knowledge also share that knowledge with parliament, with policymakers, with politicians,” she said.

Her advice to “find an advocate” was backed by plenty of examples – from feeding into written questions to contributing to Private Members Bills – where researchers have successfully shaped the political agenda, or in some cases, helped draft proposed laws, by teaming up with like-minded politicians.

Urging researchers to seek out such champions from within the ranks of the Lords or Commons was a change from the usual advice given to researchers on writing briefs for policymakers.

This was backed up by other contributors to the session, particularly Professor Katherine Brickell, who gave a summary of her experiences working with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Households in Temporary Accommodation, and the launch in Parliament of the report ‘The Debt Trap’.

Baroness Bennett also bemoaned a lack of politicians with scientific backgrounds, which she said, severely hampered the quality of debate in both Houses of Parliament, citing a range of issues such as gene editing, antimicrobial resistance, and badger culling, where, she said, there wasn’t enough technical understanding amongst Members.

The two-hour event, Strengthening the Science-Policy Interface, came about after Geography PhD student Toryn Whitehead started interning for the politician, and suggested Baroness Bennett come and speak to King’s geographers.

Toryn had been inspired to do his internship after participating in King’s Policy Idol competition.

The visit comes just weeks after the Department jumped into the top 15 geography departments worldwide.