Being grilled as a witness in front of a Parliamentary Select Committee is a big deal. To be invited to give oral evidence means that what you’re saying is being taken seriously by the people who matter.
It is an even bigger deal to Macmillan when the issue the Committee is thinking about is so important to the lives of so many cancer patients and their families and carers.
So it was with some trepidation that Ciaran Devane, Chief Executive, and Mike Hobday, Head of Campaigns, gave oral evidence to the Energy and Climate Change Committee yesterday.
The Committee of backbench MPs from across the political spectrum is looking at whether the Government’s current fuel poverty strategy is working – and what to change if it’s not.
It won’t surprise you to read that we think the Government needs to do a lot more to help particularly vulnerable groups of cancer patients who find themselves in fuel poverty as a consequence of getting a life threatening disease. Cancer patients in treatment are twice as likely as the general population to be in fuel poverty.
For me, the most powerful thing about the evidence we gave was the stories of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down by cancer and who are now struggling to pay their fuel bills.
The Energy and Climate Change Committee will be publishing its inquiry report by the end of this month – hopefully in time to influence manifestos.
If you’re inspired to help us campaign on behalf of cancer patients in fuel poverty, please go to www.macmillan.org.uk/fuelpoverty and take a campaigning action – it will only take you five minutes and will help us change people’s lives for the better.
