Cost of Living

Debate between Anne McGuire and Caroline Flint

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint]

The hon. Gentleman has been a Member of this House for some time and he knows that the last Government, under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), were absolutely committed to pursuing the green deal. That is why the pilots started under our Government. That is why the measure was in our manifesto. I think the record speaks for itself. The fact that, on one occasion, we did not support an amendment tabled by the Conservatives is proof, and the result was that the green deal was going ahead. The pilots were under way, it was in our manifesto, and had we won the last election—sadly, we did not—it would be in a better state today. The green deal was meant to be up and running by this October, and the secondary legislation should have been laid in March. With just over a week until the House rises, we will not see anything until the middle of June at this rate.

There are question marks over whether the energy companies even have the technology in place to bill people correctly. No green deal assessors have been trained, because the courses have not even started yet. Most importantly of all the public, the people who are meant to be taking up the green deal, have absolutely no idea what the interest rate will be or how much it will cost them.

So desperate are Ministers to prop up the policy that they are now considering whether to force it on people who find that their boiler breaks down. Imagine—a family whose boiler breaks down on Christmas eve could have to wait for the council to come round to do a full audit of the property’s energy efficiency, and then have to agree to take out other measures, before they get their heating and hot water turned back on. That is the type of policy that the Government are proposing, and it just shows how out of touch they are.

The truth is, even when times are tough and money is in short supply there are still things that a Government can do to help families and businesses. I know that the Government are short of ideas. At one of my speeches earlier this year, no fewer than 18 civil servants were on the attendance list, including five from the Department of Energy and Climate Change alone. If the Secretary of State is in the market for good ideas for his energy Bill, here are two that I offer him.

First, let us put all those who are over 75 on the cheapest tariff. We know that the elderly are the most vulnerable to the cold weather, the least able to access the best online deals and the most likely to pay over the odds for their energy. In the Secretary of State’s own constituency, if we put all those over 75 on the cheapest deal it would help nearly 8,000 pensioners. It would help more than 8,000 in my constituency. Across the country, it could save as many as 4 million pensioners as much as £200 a year on their energy bills, not through spending more money but by getting our energy firms to show greater responsibility to their most vulnerable customers. However, I am afraid this do-nothing Government stand idly by, content to leave Britain’s pensioners paying more than they need to.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend also accept that given the number of people who self-disconnect because of the higher charges on key cards, it would be valuable for energy companies to consider how there could be a lower tariff for families who are under pressure? Those families have to take the decision themselves not to continue to heat their homes.

[Caroline Flint]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. There are a number of areas in which more could be done to make energy companies more responsible, but we hear nothing from the Government about issues such as people on prepayment meters or key cards.

We are talking not about a social tariff but about people over 75 missing out on a deal that they could get if they looked online. For all sorts of reasons, they do not necessarily use online systems as much as others do. Putting them all on the cheapest tariff would be a simple way of making the energy companies step up to their responsibility, and it would get those people the deal that they deserve. They should be able to do that, but every time I have mentioned it in the House I have been knocked back by the Government, who think it would be a measure just for rich over-75s. It would not. It is about justice and tackling the way in which energy companies run their customer services, which are not working in the interests of customers. I would have thought the Secretary of State, as a former Consumer Minister, would understand that a little better.

The second idea among many that we have is that we should consider the position of small businesses. We believe that some straightforward, practical steps can be taken to help relieve the pressure on them and give our economy a shot in the arm. First, we should put an end to unfair contracts and the practice of rolling small businesses on to more expensive tariffs without their consent. Secondly, we should stop small businesses being subject to six years of crippling back-billing for mistakes made not by them but by their energy supplier. We do not allow that to happen to households, and we should not allow it to happen to small businesses either. Thirdly, we should ensure that the energy companies act responsibly towards small firms that have fallen into difficulty with their bills. Just as they have to take all factors into account when a family find themselves in trouble, so should we ask them to come up with sensible and realistic repayment plans for small businesses.

There we go—two ideas: helping the over-75s to get the tariff they deserve, which through no fault of their own they cannot get because it requires online technology, and helping small businesses with some of the ways in which energy companies are exploiting them. We are accused of not having ideas, but there are a few for which I hope we can get Government support. We are trying to think practically about ways to rein in the energy companies and make them more accountable to their customer base, whether it is households or businesses.

What is the biggest drag on people’s living standards? The scandal of millions of people being unemployed, and a Government who have no vision and strategy for putting them back to work. I was at the Yorkshire Post environment awards last week and met businesses at the cutting edge of innovation. I saw that Britain is not short of the skills or technology to lead the world to a new low-carbon economy. However, the Government are short of the political vision to do so, and today we learn that even the Foreign Secretary, a fellow Yorkshire MP, told businesses just last weekend to work harder. He does not believe the Government are doing enough to support Britain’s green businesses.

As I have argued many times, the transition to a low-carbon economy has the potential to be a major source of wealth and employment for this country, both for young people looking to get their first job and for older workers looking to put their skills to use in new industries. However, Britain is falling behind. When Labour left office, the UK was ranked third in the world for investment in green business; today we are seventh. Investment levels are still billions short of where they were in 2009, and jobs and industries that should be coming to this country are now going overseas.

Let us look at solar energy. The Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle—he has his fingerprints all over these projects—took a knife to the solar industry and had the audacity to claim that more people would get solar power and more people would be employed in the solar industry as a result. Today we see that because of his cuts and his strategy, solar installations have fallen by 90% and 6,000 people have lost their jobs, with yet more cuts on the way. In the end, whether it is solar or any other type of clean energy, businesses will not invest, build factories and create jobs until the Government end the dithering, stop shifting the goalposts and get behind the industries of the future.

We have an electricity market reform Bill that does not reform the electricity market, a Queen’s Speech that does nothing to help families with the cost of living and a Government who, I am afraid, are too much on the side of the big energy companies and not enough on the side of hard-pressed households. I am aware that a number of the Secretary of State’s colleagues, led by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), have put forward an alternative Queen’s Speech on energy. The Prime Minister has to decide whether he is going to run with the Vulcans or stick with the huskies.

To advocate cutting support for clean energy, and instead dash for gas when wholesale gas prices are the single biggest factor in driving up people’s bills, is madness. There is an alternative—Labour’s fair deal on energy. It would put the public first, protect the most vulnerable and deliver a competitive energy market with fair prices for all. I commend the amendment to the House.