We’re Taking The Petition to 10 Downing Street – How You Can Support Us
Hi Everyone,
On Monday 12th December at 15:00 I’ll be delivering the petition to 10 Downing Street! This is a huge moment for us, we’re officially calling for the government to cut the VAT on our energy bills. The mission is to get the government and Ofgem to work together to get the price cap below £3,000 by October 2023, which is easily achievable if they follow the suggestions we’re making. Following the hand-in of the petition, me and a few people that are joining me will be carolling in parliament square, although one or two of the carols will have new lyrics to raise awareness of the issues we’re facing in the current energy crisis.
Whilst we are raising attention with the media, I need your help to raise awareness too. There are two things I’m asking from you to support this petition:
1. Ask your local MP to attend 10 Downing Street with me
2. Tweet about the petition at the time we’re delivering it to number 10
1 Ask your local MP to attend 10 Downing Street with me
So the first thing I’ve got to ask you is to send another email. I know hundreds of you have already emailed your local MP once for the benefit of this petition, and I thank you all for that, but this time we’re going to ask our MPs to attend the handing-in of our petition and offer them the opportunity to discuss their thoughts on the petition.
So, as always, I’ve written out the email below for you to send to your local MPs. Also, please remember to include your full address at the end of the email to your local MP or they may not respond to you.
To find your local MP’s email address, go to: https://members.parliament.uk/members/Commons and type in your post code. Click the MP that pops up and their email address will be in a box labelled “Parliamentary Office”. You can just click that email address and it will open a new message for you with their email address filled in to the “Send” section.
Please add my email address as a CC: richard@over50smoney.com
Please set the subject to “Attend the Hand-in of our Energy Petition at 10 Downing Street on 12 December”
Then copy and paste the message below into the text of your email:
Good afternoon,
I’ve signed a petition for Ofgem to review and change the price cap formula and for the UK government to scrap VAT on retail domestic energy bills. The petition has now gathered almost 220,000 signatures and is still growing. You can view the petition here: https://www.change.org/OfgemPriceCap
I am emailing you to inform you that Richard Winstone, the person that started this petition, will be attending 10 Downing Street at 15:00 on Monday 12 December to hand in the petition. It is expected that his local MP Helen Grant will be attending, as will various media outlets.
It is Richard’s belief that, through combined efforts of the Government and Ofgem, we can get the Ofgem Price Cap to be below £3,000 by October 2023, removing the need for the Government’s Energy Price Guarantee 6 months early, saving billions of pounds of public money and reducing our energy bills before next Winter.
If you are supportive of his petition and his ideas (which I hope you are) then I’d like to request you join him in a show of support by attending 10 Downing Street on Monday 12 December at 15:00 when he hands in the petition. Richard has informed us that there will be opportunity for any MPs in attendance to talk to the media about their views on the petition and the energy price cap.
Additionally, to help raise further attention, Richard and a few others will be carolling at Parliament Square after they’ve handed in the petition, to which he has also invited any MPs that would like join him.
If you would be so kind as to respond to both me and Richard (CCed) informing us of whether you’re likely to attend, that would be appreciated.
I look forward to your response.
Kind regards
[enter your name]
[enter your full address including postcode]
Please send this email as soon as possible to give your local MP enough time to rearrange their schedule.
2. Tweet about the petition at the time we’re delivering it to number 10
Right, sending that email is step one. Step 2 is to tweet on Monday the 12th to raise some attention online about the petition, let people know what we’re doing. If you don’t have twitter, please post this on Facebook or any other social media platform you may have access to.
On Monday 12 December, at any time please can you tweet the following:
@RichardWinstone is handing in a 220,000 strong petition to 10 Downing St today to get @GOVUK to remove VAT from our energy bills in a bid to move the @ofgem price cap below £3,000 by Oct 23. Show your support by signing here: https://www.change.org/OfgemPriceCap #energycrisis #ofgempetition
Thank you to everyone that does one or both of these asks, with this push we should be able to start getting the government talking about removing or reducing VAT on our energy bills, reducing the price cap by as much as £200 per household!
Have a great week everyone, I’ll post an update on Monday about how the hand-in goes.
Thank you,
Richard Winstone