Warm Home Discount (England and Wales) Regulations 2026

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Lord Jones

Monday 23rd March 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations, which I broadly support. I declare my interest as the honorary president of National Energy Action, from which I am delighted to have had a written briefing.

I have a question for clarification at the outset. A piece on the Government’s website titled “Help with the cost of living in 2026” talks of

“an average of £150 off the costs of energy bills”.

It goes on to say:

“This support is on top of the Warm Home Discount Scheme—a one-off £150 discount off your electricity bill—a total package of £300”.


Do people have to apply separately for the £150 off the cost of living and for the £150 from the warm home discount scheme? The figure cited in the regulations, by the Minister and on the GOV.UK webpage is £150. From memory, I thought the figure for the warm home discount scheme was £350. If that is the case, £350 to help those most in need because they are suffering the most from fuel poverty will obviously go a lot further than £150. I do not know whether that is an erroneous memory on my part, but that is what I remember.

The NEA is concerned—this is my wording, not the NEA’s—about one potential consequence of the regulations. The idea is to lift 1 million homes out of fuel poverty, setting new standards for landlords to meet to help do so. However, as we saw with a recent Bill, whose name I forget, under which landlords were meant to improve housing, in fact they sold it because they simply did not have the means to upgrade it. Does the Minister share my concern that instead of rented properties being upgraded at the cost of the landlord or, potentially, with the help of the Government, the landlords may not have the means to do so and therefore the rented properties will go off the market? That is a very real concern.

Is any attention being focused on rural areas? My experience, having been in the European Parliament and represented two separate constituencies in the House of Commons, is that homes in rural areas tend to be less well insulated and more isolated. It is more expensive to heat a house than a flat. Is any particular attention being given to rural areas in that regard? That could make a real difference to reducing fuel poverty.

National Energy Action has a good record on giving advice and doing what it calls hand-holding to guide people through the system; I commend it for doing this. I like to think that I am moderately intelligent but, if I have difficulty in understanding the system, I can understand how tenants and others who wish to apply for the scheme may need help. Have the Government considered offering such help to those who are hopeful of benefiting from the warm home discount—and, indeed, from the cost of living reduction?

Are the Government planning to address the vexed issue of standing charges on energy bills? I know that this is a great theme of the energy champion, Martin Lewis. I never manage to watch his programme because we always seem to be voting here when it is on, but in my experience this is the only utility where the customer is paying up front for the infrastructure to be put in place. Normally, with telecoms and broadband, the customer pays for the infrastructure after it is in place.

The point that I would like the Government to consider is this: all of us can, as consumers, control our unit costs by using less power—that is, less electricity and less gas—and reducing our consumption in that way, but we have absolutely no control over the standing charge. When I go on to Uswitch, I see that it is creeping up: it was 40p per day last year but, this year, it is 50p or 60p per day. We have seen that energy bills are projected to come down from April for three months, but, given the backdrop of the Middle East, there is now an expectation that, if not from July then certainly from the next increase in September or October, people will face the very real issue of finding that they cannot control their household bills.

Finally, National Energy Action refers to the debt mountain. A growing number of households are averaging debt balances exceeding £1,200 a year. This is posing real problems for them. They are paying for last year’s electricity use before they have even saved up for next year’s electricity use. In the words of the NEA, many are trapped in a cycle of paying for last winter’s energy alongside current usage, often with no formal repayment arrangement in place. Are the Government looking at the possibility of trying to address this issue?

In conclusion, as I say when I have already used up all my “finally”s, can the Minister use his good offices to ensure that the warm homes plan is embedded not just in his department’s work but in the 10-year health plan, to make sure that this issue is reflected in health—older people can become unwell if they are not able to heat their houses properly—as well as in the new child poverty strategy, to make sure that there is completely joined-up government at this level? Otherwise, I like the regulations.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always instructive to follow the noble Baroness. I thank the Minister for his shrewd analytical introduction and his insight. Tangentially, for me, it conjured up memories of chilblains, hot-water bottles and ice on the inside of the windowpanes—the considerable discomforts of a post-war Britain barely out of the VE Day and VJ Day celebrations. It was an era of greyness, rationing and lengthy bus queues—not to mention the frequent and unannounced power station electricity cuts in our ever-cold homes.

These regulations aim to help some 6 million households, with the best part of £1 billion of state money going to fellow citizens. The Minister might be pleased and these regulations are surely to be welcomed in these most uncertain times. Can he say how many Welsh households are in receipt of such moneys? It is the case that Wales is a place of low wages and unusual weather patterns.

Fair Dealing Obligations (Pigs) Regulations 2025

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Lord Jones

Monday 12th May 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the regulations before us this afternoon and thank the Minister for giving us the outline. It is an interesting backdrop, in the sense that pig prices seem to have been at their highest for a while now. I have come straight from a meeting with some Danish businesses—none of them farmers. While I am half-Danish, I wish to help only the British farmer, I should explain.

I am a big supporter of auction marts. How will this provision impact on sales through such marts? Will they be left pretty much as is allowed at the moment? Presumably, the regulations will come into their own at a different time, when the prices are particularly low and when the farmers, or pig producers, are not covering the full costs of their production.

Having been an MEP in an area with intensive pig farming and then having gone on to be an MP in another area with equally intensive pig farming, it was very sad to see the impact of foot and mouth disease on pig production. Many farmers will simply not go back into pig production again. Anything that we can do, like the content of these regulations, is very helpful indeed.

The Minister referred to the role of the Groceries Code Adjudicator, and I pay tribute to it. I still believe that we should go further and allow the adjudicator to look at the market and at particular supplies off its own initiative. If there is an imbalanced relationship that it is there to resolve—and overwhelmingly it has worked well—there is no way that someone is going to jeopardise it. That perhaps relates more to different sectors than to pigs, such as the dairy sector and fruit production. If you are in a contract and you are being unfairly discriminated against, it is difficult for you to jeopardise that contract by being identified as a complainant with the adjudicator. I take this opportunity to ask the Minister whether the Government will continue, please, to keep that under review.

Mindful of the fact of movement—which I do not think is covered by the regulations, but perhaps the Minister could write to me about this—we have a number of agricultural shows coming up at this time of year, right through to the autumn, and they are immensely important to the agricultural sector. Again, this probably covers sheep and lambs—I have not seen too many pigs at the Great Yorkshire Show, I have to say. Will the department give advice on movement of animals? I know it is on the case as regards avian flu, but some imports have already been banned because of foot and mouth existing in parts of the European Union. Will she make sure that the department gives advice at the earliest possible opportunity, well in advance of the shows taking place? That would be very welcome indeed.

I cannot let this opportunity go without singing the praises of the Malton pig factory. Again, while not directly within this remit, we have a bed and breakfast for pigs in North Yorkshire, and they are just as well looked after as we are at the famous bed and breakfasts that many of us stay in. One of the outlets for the bed and breakfast pig industry is the Malton Bacon Factory. It exported a huge amount to China, which takes pig’s trotters and other parts of the anatomy that I will not go into, which we do not enjoy in this country. That was a multi-million pound contract, and that might have gone by the wayside. The regulations focus probably more on those that do not necessarily have an initial contract.

One thing that struck me in the regulations—I am very grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s 21st report—is that it seems very odd in this day and age that many contracts are still not made in writing. Will the Government insist on that through the course of the regulation? The committee highlights in paragraph 44 that the requirements will

“include that all contracts are made in writing, contain clear pricing terms and set out how the price is determined”.

That relates to my initial question about how this will impact—presumably, the auction marts will be left alone and this will relate just to those contracts that are done individually. I would be very interested to know what proportion of the market is intended to be covered by the regulations. I welcome the regulations this afternoon and the opportunity to raise those issues.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always instructive to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I thank the Minister for her persuasive, well-informed introduction. I do not quite know how George Orwell—Mr Blair—would view these regulations, because he had it in for Napoleon. But the Explanatory Memorandum is very helpful, and clearly Mr Andrew Powley has played a blinder in the department.

In another place, for some 31 years, I visited perhaps six farms a year, and one was hospitably received—bacon sandwiches were often on the farm menu. Indeed, I was once an Agriculture Minister in the lovely land of Wales. I cannot be the only one of your Lordships who regularly tunes in at 5.45 am to Radio 4’s informative farming programme. Pigs feature therein, and I am sure our Minister listens quite regularly to that programme—after prayers, of course.