Our supporters' stories are read out in the House of Lords

Rich Hines

04 March 2011

On Wednesday I was delighted to discover that I'm not the only person who thinks that talking about energy-efficiency ratings can sound confusing.

"I do not think that the wider public know what we are talking about when we talk about F and G rated property being brought up to E standard. It becomes a jargon."

Those were the words of Baroness Smith of Basildon, Labour spokesperson for Energy and Climate Change, during a debate about the Energy Bill in the House of Lords.

But it was what came next that created a bit of a buzz in the office.

We'd provided the Baroness and other peers with hundreds your moving stories about the reality of living in cold, damp homes (yes, those are the poorly-insulated F and G ones).

She started to read some of them out.

So Susan from Abergavenny, Kristie from Pinner, Jennifer from Nottingham and Jenny from Norwich - your experiences have been talked about in the House of Lords.

This shows that simple online actions can end up going to the very top and making decision makers sit up and take notice.

We're also sure that when the Energy Bill debate moves from the Lords to the House of Commons your stories will continue to have a big impact. Hopefully even bigger.

I'll leave you with another quote from the Baroness:

"None of us in your Lordships' House tonight lives in a private rented home that is rated band F or band G. Neither would we want to."

Rich Hines, Activism team

Subscribe to this blog by email using Google's subscription service.