Tonight in Camborne, 38 Degrees members will challenge the Conservative candidate, George Eustice to back a ban of secret lobbying of politicians.

I’m on the train on the way down to see meet everyone that has been campaigning hard over the last few months to ban secret lobbying. The campaign has been a huge success, thanks to local pressure now the Labour, Lib Dem, Mebyon Kernow, Green and UKIP candidates have all pledged to back a ban on secret lobbying – only George has refused. Instead he tried to use spin to attack the campaign of being a “lib dem slur”. A ridiculous accusation since it’s a grass roots campaign that has successfully persuaded 5 candidates from different parties to back a ban on secret lobbying.

In response to Eustice’s spin 38 Degrees members have started a “back the ban” petition at http://www.38degrees.org.uk/george-sign-the-pledge urging George, who used to be Cameron’s spin-doctor and recently left his job at a top London lobbying firm, to join his local rivals and support the ban on secret lobbying.

It’s such an important campaign because today big businesses can pay lobbyists millions of pounds to get their views represented and to secure influence of politicians. Today we have no right to know who is meeting who. If we’re to regain trust

in politics we need to stamp out back room secret meetings and bring transparency to Westminster.

Tonight, I’ll be at the hustings where Eustice will come face to face with all his local rivals and hundreds of members of the public keen to find out why he won’t support a ban on secret lobbying.

I’ll be blogging, tweeting (twitter.come/38_degrees) and updating the Facebook page www.facebook.com/peoplepowerchange throughout the day.

Our campaign to get Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, to honour his election promise on Rape Crisis Centres is picking up pace. He promised to increase the number of Rape Crisis Centres in London from one to four but so far only one new centre has been confirmed.

Boris Keep Your Promise's campaign flyer for Conservative conference

38 Degrees is working with the Boris Keep Your Promise campaign to make sure Boris doesn’t get away with breaking his word. Recently, BKYP campaigners took their message to the Conservative party conference. Matty Mitford, who was part of the team in Manchester, said, “As it happens, we were extremely successful. We handed out our specially designed flyers, which included messages from 38 Degrees petition signers, all day for three straight days and received a surprisingly positive reaction from delegates.”

It wasn’t just David Cameron who received the attention of the Boris Keep Your Promise campaigners: Chris Grayling (shadow Home Secretary) has promised them a meeting soon (they’ve promised to keep us updated) and Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse (see him being targeted by the campaign here) received a copy of the flyer.

We’ve also been lucky to receive the support of several other organisations. London-based groups including Tender and the Greater London Domestic Violence Project have let people know about the campaign. Labour List featured an article on our progress so far and today, Mumsnet, Britain’s largest parenting site, let their users know about the campaign. Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet said, “All women who have been raped should be able to access the vital support provided by Rape Crisis Centres.  We’re calling on Boris to do the right thing, and honour his election commitment to fund four London centres.  Boris – keep your promise.”

We know that Boris is feeling the heat on this issue: the campaigners at the conference found many of the senior Tories already knew about Boris’ failure. But he still hasn’t delivered and, for survivors of sexual violence in London, the delay has already been far too long. Help us to keep up the pressure on Boris for taking action and spread the word to others.