Fuel Poverty

Andrew Bowie Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Roger, and to join so many colleagues here in Westminster Hall for an incredibly important debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing it.

It has been great to hear from colleagues. The hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) spoke about the removal of the winter fuel allowance and how the push to get more pensioners on to pension credit is incredibly important. However, when the figures suggest that the push for pension credit will actually offset the money being saved by the apparent removal of winter fuel allowance, I wonder whether the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions have thought their plans through. The comments by the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) about the knock-on impact of fuel poverty on the NHS and charities were well made and should have been listened to carefully by all in this room and beyond.

As ever, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is a friend, made powerful points about the unique situation facing residents in Northern Ireland, where so many more houses than in Great Britain are off grid and rely on LPG and oil for their heating. Households over there face unique challenges when combating fuel poverty. As he said, the removal of the winter fuel allowance is a crushing blow for pensioners facing a cold winter this year.

The hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) raised insulation. I completely get his point. We need to go further and move faster to insulate more homes. I am proud of the Conservative Government’s record on that. We inherited a situation in which only 12% of households had an insulation EPC rating of C or above. When we left office earlier this year, it was up to 41%—a near 30% increase. Could we have gone further? Absolutely. Could we have done more? We absolutely should have. But that was a near 30% increase on the situation in which we found ourselves when we came to office, and that is something about which I am very proud.

[Mr Carmichael]

Is EPC not something else that we could reform? The way in which EPC bandings are rated seems to be utterly random and occasionally quite counter-productive.

[Andrew Bowie]

I agree. I would love to see the Government commit to a review of EPC ratings and how homes are judged. Maybe the Minister will speak to that if there are any plans coming through the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, or indeed any other Departments that would be responsible for that as well.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald)—it is taking time to get used to that constituency name—raised some very interesting points and concerns that I share, as I represent a vast rural constituency myself. However, he is entirely wrong: God, of course, comes from Aberdeenshire, not the Isle of Skye, although Skye probably comes a close second.

I wonder what the constituents of the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, as well as companies reliant on the oil and gas sector, think of the Liberal Democrats’ support for the extension of the energy profits levy—something also raised by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade). As we will be voting on the Budget resolutions in a few hours’ time, they may go away and reconsider their support for those Government measures. The Conservatives will certainly be voting against any extension.

Keeping homes warm this winter will be at the forefront of people’s mind in many households across the United Kingdom. We can feel the temperature falling outside as we speak. As a consequence of various pressures such as Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing instability in the middle east, the cost of heating homes has risen and has hit many families hard.

Myriad factors contribute to fuel poverty, including energy efficiency, income, housing costs and energy prices. That is why the Conservative Government took steps to support families to keep their homes warm. Through the energy bills support scheme and the energy price guarantee, we supported households the length and breadth of the UK at the height of the energy crisis. The steps we took amounted to approximately £1,500 for a typical household, covering about half the energy bill of every home in Britain. The warm home discount scheme meant support for 3 million households at risk of fuel poverty: that was 3 million families who could afford to keep warm and keep more of their money in their pocket. We stepped up support for our pensioners, delivering up to £600 in winter fuel payments and pensioner cost of living payments to 11.8 million pensioners. Some 1.1 million cold weather payments, worth £29.6 million, were paid out last winter alone. Those were all steps to support some of the most vulnerable people in our society in the cold weather.

[Anna Dixon]

Despite all the measures that the shadow Minister says the previous Government took, The Lancet and the Institute of Health Equity have estimated that 102 excess winter deaths in the Shipley constituency alone were due to cold homes. It seems to me that those are shocking figures and that nothing the last Government did actually reduced fuel poverty or deaths from cold homes.

[Andrew Bowie]

One death from fuel poverty or from living in a cold home is one too many, let alone the number that the hon. Member gave for her constituency. We must all look at what more we can do to ensure that homes are better insulated and that pensioners and other vulnerable people in society can keep their homes warm through the winter, but I am proud that over the energy crisis last year the Government stepped up and paid half the energy bill of everybody in this country. That was important, as were the other measures we brought forward to support so many people in this country. Could we do more? One person living in fuel poverty is one too many, but it is important that we recognise that the previous Government took steps to ensure that fuel poverty was addressed and that people could keep warm last winter.

I have no doubt that Members on both sides of the House will have heard from elderly constituents and their families how worried they are that the winter fuel payment is being taken away. For pensioners in my constituency and in other vast rural northern constituencies represented in the Chamber today, it is particularly alarming. They understand what it is to live in parts of rural Britain during winter. As I have mentioned before on the Floor of the House, Braemar in my constituency of West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine holds the coldest UK temperature record of minus 27°C; I believe it shares that record with Altnaharra in the constituency of the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone).

It is in such rural communities, which face the coldest temperatures more frequently, that support is so needed. That is why it is so regrettable that the new Government made the political decision not only to take critical funding away from those vulnerable pensioners, but to do so at the same time that they found an extra £11 billion from somewhere to hand out inflation-busting pay rises to public sector workers. That is a political decision that Age UK has said

“will leave millions of struggling pensioners without money they rely on”.

Without the lifeline that they so badly need, many pensioners will be left in serious trouble.

In February this year, it was estimated that fuel poverty would fall over 2024. In choosing this path, the Labour Government risk reversing that, pushing more vulnerable households into choosing between heating and eating. I never thought that I would see a Labour Government take such a decision. Prior to the debate, I had a look over the Labour manifesto—something that Government Ministers must have failed to do, seeing as they keep breaking the promises in it. Interestingly, there is a quote in that manifesto from a pensioner called Gary, who talks about the challenges of keeping on top of his energy bills and how apparently only Labour has a plan to help him. I wonder how Gary feels now, knowing that this Labour Government have taken away the support that pensioners like him are reliant on. Gary also talks about GB Energy. We heard a lot from the Labour party about how GB Energy would reduce bills by £300; we do not hear much talk about that any more.

Politics aside, all of us in this debate and in this building—across all parties and all parts of this United Kingdom, which are represented quite well in this room—want to see fuel poverty eradicated. I have visited the wind farm on Shetland that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland mentioned. I, too, represent a rural constituency that also hosts a number of wind farms and associated energy infrastructure and that has too much fuel poverty, both because it is incredibly rural and because many people rely on oil and LPG to heat their homes, so they are far more exposed to wildly fluctuating prices. I do understand the challenges and I do understand why we must get a grip on this.

Six million people living in fuel poverty is far too many. One person living in fuel poverty is too many. Politics aside, despite what I have said in leading up to this, I assure the Minister, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and all hon. Members that His Majesty’s Opposition will work as constructively as we can to find solutions and find a way forward to tackle fuel poverty in this country and ensure that nobody has to choose between heating and eating.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Shanks]

The hon. Gentleman, as always, makes a very good point, although I noticed that he called the shadow Minister his friend but not me. But, over time, I think we will build on that and—

[Andrew Bowie]

Aspire to that.

[Michael Shanks]

I aspire to that—quite. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made a number of important points, and I have to confess that I was not aware of the statistic that he cited. That puts the difference into stark contrast, so I absolutely take the point.

The hon. Gentleman spoke earlier about engaging with the Northern Irish Executive. I have met both Ministers with responsibility for different parts of the energy policy—most recently, in fact, in the inter-ministerial working group across all the devolved nations. One of the key topics that we discussed was decarbonisation, particularly of such households, so we absolutely are taking that issue forward.

I am conscious of time, Sir Roger, so I will just pick up on a couple of other points that hon. Members raised. The hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) tempted me to be drawn into Beveridge’s “five giants”. Actually, I think that is an important statement about where this Government have come in, because it feels to me like want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness are yet again the five giants that we have to tackle as a country, and we are tackling them all as quickly as we can. I take his point, but it brings into stark contrast the fact that we have come in with some really tough decisions to make. There are pressing needs in the NHS, the education system, housing and energy, and we are doing what we can to improve all those. The Budget last week was about fixing the foundations and investing in our public services again. We can undoubtedly do more, but we are moving forward as quickly as we can.

I want to touch on consumer protection, which a number of Members have raised, and the point of the regulator. The ministerial team in the Department have had a number of meetings with Ofgem over a variety of issues, but there is no doubt—Ofgem shares this view—that suppliers could do much more to protect customers and provide them with a better quality of service. We are therefore looking at how we strengthen the regulator—a consultation is under way—so that it can hold companies to account for wrongdoing, require higher performance standards and ensure that there are much better levels of compensation when providers fail.

Last year, Ofgem introduced much more stringent rules around the involuntary installation of prepayment meters, an issue that I raised in one of my first questions after I was elected to Parliament. That was a shocking situation, but much more stringent requirements are now in place. We continue to monitor the situation to see whether much more is required.

I thank all hon. Members who have participated in the debate. There is agreement across all parties that this issue is extremely important. Progress has stalled in recent years, and we now need to make significant advances. The Government are committed to slashing fuel poverty. We will do that through the fuel poverty strategy for England, and also, we will look across the whole of the UK at what we can do with our energy system to reduce bills and provide more secure energy for everyone, and to improve home standards. We will do that by protecting low-income and vulnerable consumers and by trying to raise households out of poverty across the board. Our strategy on child poverty, the raising of the minimum wage and other factors combine to support households struggling in fuel poverty.

We will no doubt return to this topic again. We do not pretend to have all the answers, so we are open to any ideas from hon. Members right across the House. Together, we can tackle this issue, but it needs concerted effort and investment, and this Government have started that.