Here’s a breakdown of how MP’s voted on the Emissions Performance Standard amendment yesterday evening. If four more Labour MPs had rebelled, we’d have won - so if your MP voted the wrong way, please do get in touch and ask them why.

If your MP is not listed, that means they didn’t turn up to vote at all

With thanks for the data to Public Whip

Happy that your MP voted the right way? Or need to challenge them on why they didn’t? Click here to send them a quick message.

Our amendment to the Energy Bill, to include Emissions Performance Standards for new power stations, was defeated by 252 votes to 244. So if we’d got just 4 more Labour MPs to rebel, we’d have won it. That’s agonisingly close, and really annoying – but it does also show what a difference thousands of us working together can make. Next time, we’ll just have to make sure there are even more of us. We’ll put up a link to how individual MPs voted as soon as this is published.

In the meantime, a few silver linings:

• -About 5,000 of us emailed our MPs this week about the Energy Bill. “Emissions Performance Standards” aren’t an obviously sexy topic, and MPs getting this volume of pressure sends a powerful signal.
• -There’s still a possibility of the Energy Bill being amended in the Lords
• -The Lib Dems and Conservatives supported the amendment and so are now on record as supporting an EPS – this is something we can hold them to in the future

Late last night we received a leaked document from the Energy Minister Joan Ruddock telling Labour MPs not to support limits on power stations emissions.

You can download and read the letter from the Minister here and then read our response here (both PDFs)

Take action by telling your MP to stand up to the Government and support a cleaner energy bill here.

We’ve just sent this email out:
Over the past 48 hours, thousands of us have emailed our MPs to call for limits on power station emissions. We’ve caused a real stir in Parliament. Opponents of these new rules are trying to fight back – we’ve just got hold of a copy of a letter from Energy Minister Joan Ruddock, sent yesterday, telling every Labour MP not to support our amendment.

Working with Friends of the Earth, we’ve prepared a point by point response to the minister’s letter, setting out for MPs why it’s not convincing and why they must stick to their support. Please could you email your MP again today to send them a copy of our response?
The debate starts in parliament today – please email your MP now here:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/energy-bill-urgent-action

The vote will take place later today. The government clearly thinks we’re having an impact – that’s why they’ve felt pushed to respond. But the government’s document isn’t very convincing [1]. Together we can make sure MPs know that we’ve seen their briefing from the minister, we’re not convinced by it, and we still want them to vote in favour of Emissions Performance Standards for new power stations.

Our colleague Martyn Williams from Friends of the Earth has been in parliament for the past couple of days talking to MPs about the bill, and stayed up last night to prepare our response to the minister. Here’s what he has to say:

“Thanks for all the emails so far – they’ve made this a big issue in parliament, MPs are all feeling the pressure. We know that the government whips are also building up the pressure, and many Labour MPs really want to be reassured by these letters from the Minister.”

“But if they know their constituents aren’t convinced, it makes it much harder for them to simply accept these assurances and vote with their party. The debate starts just after lunch today, the vote will be sometime this afternoon – this is our last chance to make a difference. Please help.”

Send your MP another quick email to make sure they don’t accept the minister’s letter at face value:
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/energy-bill-urgent-action

Thanks for being involved,

David, Hannah, Johnny, Nina and the 38 Degrees Team

NOTES

[1]Some points are completely irrelevant – like the claim the amendment would achieve nothing as the Government could introduce an EPS anyway. The problem is Ministers aren’t going to – and the amendment would force them to. Surely that’s achieving quite a lot. Another claims that the EU Emissions Trading Scheme will deal with the problems. Unfortunately the key Government advisors – the Committee on Climate Chnage – have told the Government they simply do not accept that and other policies must be introduced.  Two other points quote half sentences from the Committee on Climate Change – Martyn has dug out the other half of the sentences – which stress the need for clear and rapid Government action.

You can see the text of the leaked letter, and our response, here:

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/-/documents/Response_Joan_Ruddock.pdf

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/-/documents/Joan_Ruddock_letter.pdf

Tomorrow Parliament will be voting on a new energy bill. Over the past few weeks thousands of us have been emailing our MPs to demand they vote for important changes to this bill. Now we’ve got 24 hours to increase the pressure even more.

We’re committed to helping fight climate change by reducing the UK’s carbon emissions. But if the new laws are passed in their current form, a new generation of ‘cleaner’ coal-fired power stations will be built without any limits being set on their emissions. Not only that, but we’ll be subsidising these power stations to the tune of millions of pounds.

That’s why we’ve been putting pressure on MPs to include an Emissions Performance Standard in the Bill.  This will make sure that when energy companies build these new power stations, they have to meet proper standards.   If we act together now, we can make a big difference in helping the UK meet its emissions targets.

Tell your MP to vote for a cleaner energy bill here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/cleaner-energy-bill

Just sent this email out to all the people who got involved in the campaign to stop Rod Liddle becoming editor of the Independent. A great example of people power working, really pleased about it.

—
Dear David,

We usually try to avoid sending two emails in the same day, but I wanted to let you know straight away that we seem to have won the campaign to stop Rod Liddle becoming editor of the Independent. The Guardian web site reports that thanks to the outcry, Lebedev has “had a change of heart about appointing the Sunday Times columnist to the paper.”

This is a great example of people power working. Thousands of us worked together through facebook, twitter, and the 38 Degrees web site to spread the word about Liddle. We sent almost 3,000 emails to Lebedev and to the Independent’s Managing Director Simon Kelner. Together we’ve stood up for keeping the Independent as a progressive, campaigning newspaper.

If you aren’t already following 38 Degrees on Facebook and Twitter you can find us on the links below – so often that’s where campaigns like this get kicked off.

Thanks for helping win this campaign,

David

In the run-up to the Iraq Inquiry, we took action together to call on Sir John Chilcot and his team to get tough on Tony Blair.

We came up with some great ways of letting all the Iraq Inquiry panelists know that we weren’t going to accept more spin from Blair. Here’s what we did:

The night before Blair was due to give evidence, we visited the home of Sir Roderic Lyne to present him with a cake reminding him to keep up the pressure on the ex-Prime Minister.

On the day of Blair’s hearing we made sure that billboards on the panel members’ route to work were plastered with our questions.

Finally, we took cheerleaders down to the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, to cheer for tough questions for Blair.

During this time, we collaborated with Don’t Panic to make a short film about the different ways we were working to get our message across. Watch the film, here:

Thanks to our actions, Tony Blair has been recalled to give more evidence to the Inquiry. With the panel’s report also yet to be published, there’s still time to call for them to get tough on Blair for a second time. Sign the petition, here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/blairtoughqs

Party leaders will debate before the election

With the 38 Degrees’ general election consultation in its final phase, one of the ideas that has emerged has already become a campaign. Several people suggested that the TV leadership debates in the run-up to the general election would be a good way for us to get involved: it’s a chance to make sure that ordinary voters get heard, rather than just the usual suspects.

So, we were concerned when we saw the news that politicians and their spin doctors are already squabbling about how to make the debates work. There’s a danger that it will become another opportunity for polished political performances, without putting our would-be leaders on the spot about the issues that we care about.

At first, these debates seemed like a step in the right direction. But there can’t be open debate if the people that count – the voters – are left out. The party leaders and their teams want to control everything about the debates, so that nothing will be able to spoil their image. That means no questions from the audience and no real debate.

Now, we’re taking action to call on the party leaders to let voters choose and ask the majority of questions during the TV debates. We want to quiz the party leaders directly on the issues that matter to us, like climate change, public services and bankers’ bonuses.

Click here to join the campaign for real debates between the party leaders at election time, so we can get the answers we need to decide who to vote for on polling day: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/open-up-election-debates