Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitehead]

Yes, there is certainly merit in that idea. It is true that some of the amendments take some of the specific actions that may be taken a little further than is suggested in amendment 7. However, whichever of the amendments one wishes to pin the first-place rosette on to, the key point is that vulnerable customers need to have proper protection as the tariff cap comes forward.

It is in the Government’s interests, I think, to clarify exactly what they intend the Bill to do regarding that protection. That can easily be done by the Minister clearly stating today, as I hope she will, that vulnerable customers will not lose the current safeguard tariff as the overall tariff cap comes in. Indeed, if the overall price cap consumes the safeguard tariff, vulnerable customers could see their prices could go up by more than £30 as a result of the difference between the safeguard and the absolute tariff. That would, as I am sure she will agree, be a perverse outcome that she would be anxious to disavow.

The Minister will have to clarify for us that the Bill means that Ofgem can bring forward the extended safeguard tariff at the same time as the standard variable tariff cap; that the extended safeguard tariff can continue after the absolute cap has ended; and that she will bring forward the necessary secondary legislation before the summer to enable the data sharing needed to extend the safeguard tariff. I am sure that she will be able to reassure us on these points. I look forward to what she has to say about all the amendments before us.

Amendment 8 seeks to introduce to the Bill the symmetry in architecture that appears to be missing from what Ofgem must consider in introducing the cap. As hon. Members can see, the Bill lists a number of matters to which Ofgem should have regard in setting the cap, which relate to

“protecting existing and future domestic customers who pay standard variable and default rates”.

However, when we cast our eyes forward in the Bill, we see that those conditions are wholly absent from the matters that Often is required to consider when it reports to Government on whether circumstances exist that allow the cap to be terminated, as it is required to do by clauses 7 and 8.

Indeed, there is no guidance in the Bill at all on what Ofgem will have to take into account, except, alarmingly, for one consideration: the extent to which progress has been made in installing smart meters, a provision that, if taken too literally, might mean that the cap will be with us until the end of 2023. Our amendment essentially seeks to place in the outbox—the point at which Ofgem reviews the expiry of the cap—the same considerations that it is required to pay attention to in its inbox when it sets the cap.

Finally, we seek in new clause 1 to start the process of introducing what needs to be in place to ensure that the market works well for customers and does not recreate the anomalies that have led us to where we are today. I have no doubt that there will be a number of such provisions, but in our view one of them should be that the arrangement of tariffs by energy companies should not continue as it is.

That is also the substance of amendment 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), whom I salute for his unflagging work in bringing the idea of a price cap to this point. He introduces in his amendment the suggestion that tariffs should have a piece of elastic on them for each company, to prevent companies from introducing customers to apparently low tariffs initially, only to place them on much higher tariffs when the first offer expires and relying on their loyalty to gain a lot of profit and cause an unfair outcome for customers. That is essentially the instrument that his amendment would introduce, but it is cast as a relative price cap. We do not think it is a satisfactory mechanism for a price cap, but he will no doubt argue his corner. The relative nature of a tariff range restriction means that it can be introduced at any price and is not therefore a cap as such. It is, however, a vital means of keeping prices and fair dealings with customers on a steady trajectory.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee heard an overwhelming amount of evidence opposed to a relative price cap. Can the hon. Gentleman explain why he rejects that evidence and has tabled this new clause?

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Lady is, I think, under the impression that the new clause seeks to introduce a relative price cap. It does not seek to do that at all, or indeed during the period when an absolute price cap is in place. When the absolute price cap has come to an end, which could happen on various dates, there should be a mechanism in place to ensure that tariff differentiation is within certain bounds—I mentioned having a piece of elastic on tariffs—so that companies cannot return to the practice that unfortunately exists today whereby they can take people on board on one particular tariff, and even introduce a discount tariff for a certain period to entice people on to it, and then place people on one of their highest tariffs when that one comes to an end. It is a long piece of elastic in that case. That disadvantages the customer and is not what they thought would happen when they first went on to that tariff, and it seems thoroughly laudable to prevent that.

We need to ensure that market mechanisms are in place to prevent us from returning to where we are at present and to the situation that got us into this position in the first place. We believe that the mechanism for a relative tariff differential has a different function entirely from the relative price cap being suggested in some quarters. I think we would all agree that a relative tariff differential is not a price cap in its own right, as the Select Committee concluded strongly, but a strong mechanism for ensuring that the market works better in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 9, which is in the name of the Chair and some of the members of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee; I know that the Chair of the Committee is also going to speak to the amendment. Its purpose is to ensure that there is adequate protection for vulnerable people while the cap is in force and beyond and to probe the Government and the Minister on the matter.

During the prelegislative scrutiny of this Bill in January, the Committee heard evidence from the chief executive of Ofgem. When I asked him about the need to protect vulnerable customers, he conceded that

“there is likely to always be a need to protect customers who would not be fully able to engage even in a…more competitive market.”

What is more, Mr Nolan admitted that Ofgem had

“not done as well as we could have”

when it came to its statutory duty to protect vulnerable customers. In fact, he apologised to the Committee for Ofgem’s failure to act appropriately to protect vulnerable customers.

The sheer number of people on standard variable tariffs was quite shocking to the Committee, and many of those people will be vulnerable customers. I note that the Minister agreed, saying that

“the regulator also needs to change. It also needs to use the powers it has more effectively.”

That evidence session did not fill me with confidence about Ofgem’s effectiveness at protecting vulnerable customers. I believe that the amendment will act as the necessary encouragement to the regulator to do just that. The amendment will also ensure that in the longer term, those who are least able to afford high bills get greater protection. That is because the amendment continues the requirement for due regard beyond the length of a cap.

I want to push the Minister on working with DWP colleagues and others to mitigate the impact of the general data protection regulation. Although the amendment targets the regulator, the Government are well equipped to handle this area. They need to ensure that the required data exchange can take place, so that vulnerable customers can be identified and offered the support that the Government want to make available to them. I am sure that the Government agree with the principle behind the amendment, and I hope that the Minister will address my concerns in full.

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) in this debate. I want to speak to amendment 9, which is in my name and those of hon. Members from across the House who are members of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. As the Minister knows, the Committee did a large amount of work on the prelegislative scrutiny of the Bill, and we are all pleased that it has reached Report and Third Reading in time to ensure that the energy price cap is in place for next winter.

During prelegislative scrutiny, the Select Committee proposed several changes, all of which were either accepted by means of amendments to the Bill or accepted in principle. We welcome the collaborative approach of the Minister and her team. Amendment 9 addresses an outstanding concern relating to vulnerable customers that I know the Minister shares. As she knows, 83% of people in social housing, 75% of people on low incomes and 74% of disabled customers are on standard variable tariffs. The aim of the Bill is to ensure not only that everybody has a price cap, but that it will help the most vulnerable, who are predominantly on the standard variable tariffs.

One million vulnerable customers are already on Ofgem’s safeguarding tariff. The Select Committee’s first recommendation, as part of its prelegislative scrutiny, was for the Government to provide details on plans to protect vulnerable customers from overcharging when Ofgem’s safeguarding tariff and the Government’s price cap are lifted. My concern, and the concern of other members of the Committee, is what happens when the whole-of-market price cap comes in for standard variable tariffs. Will Ofgem continue with the safeguarding tariff at the same time?

In response to that recommendation, the Government gave a long list of laudable policies that are today in place for vulnerable customers. We of course welcome that list of policies, but concerns linger. Ofgem has been clear, including in a decision letter on 7 December last year, that it plans to do away with the safeguarding tariff when the whole-of-market price cap on standard variable and default tariffs comes in. Ofgem has said that the warm home discount safeguarding tariff will end in December 2019 if it has not already been replaced by other price protection—that is, the price cap we are debating and voting on this evening.

Some might say that that is fine, because the new price cap will replace the safeguarding tariff for customers on the warm home discount. That will only be the case, however, if the new price cap is at the same level or lower than the safeguarding tariff already in existence today. If it is not, then energy bills will rise for the 1 million most vulnerable customers when the price cap comes in. That would mean that the very legislation to protect consumers may hurt those who most need protection, and I know that the Minister, along with Members across the House, does not want that to happen.

Sainsbury and Asda Merger

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. As always, I am keen to seek to accommodate the extent of colleagues’ interest in an urgent question, but I remind the House that there is a further urgent question to follow this and thereafter, a statement by the Secretary of State for International Development on the situation in Syria, which, judging by precedent, I anticipate to evoke much interest. Therefore, there is a premium on brevity from Back and Front Benchers alike.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Dairy farmers in my constituency supply milk to both Asda and Sainsbury’s. Will there be an easy way for those family-run businesses to be able to feed into potential efficiencies that may threaten the supply chain?

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend makes an important point—I have dairy farmers in my constituency—and this is one of the issues that I have raised with Christine Tacon, the Groceries Code Adjudicator. My hon. Friend will know that in the last few weeks, in conjunction with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Groceries Code Adjudicator and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, we have brought forward new proposals on dairy contracts to help exactly the kind of small suppliers that she talks about. In conversations with Sainsbury’s and Asda, both of them talk about the very real relationships that they have with their suppliers—with their dairy farmers. I hope that we can get some assurances to protect those relationships.

Oral Answers to Questions

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

As I answered before, the calculations for the fourth and fifth carbon budgets—which, I repeat, end in 10 and 15 years’ time and which we are 97% and 95% of the way to meeting—are based on an analysis of only 30% of the policies and proposals in the clean growth strategy. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says he thinks that that is quite good; I agree.

We are bringing forward further work on those policies and proposals and also spending an unprecedented amount on research and development in this space—more than £2.5 billion over this Parliament. I am extremely confident that we will meet our budgets, with our ambitious policy, the ingenuity of British businesses and the science base, the strong campaigning and the structure of the Climate Change Act 2008—the Act that we were the first country in the world to pass.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that improving home energy efficiency measures would help us to meet our carbon budgets?

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend led an excellent debate on this in Westminster Hall, where we had a very strong outbreak of cross-party consensus. I entirely agree, and that is why we have set our home efficiency targets at band C for 2035. We are keen to do that in a cost-effective way, and I will shortly be bringing forward the consultation on ECO—the energy company obligation—and how to target it at fuel-poor households. In addition, we need to create a route to market for some of our best British technology to solve that problem.

Energy Efficiency and the Clean Growth Strategy

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I thank colleagues for being here today. There are some terrible weather conditions across the country, which I think will suppress attendance at this debate. Some colleagues had to get back to their constituencies before they got cut off, or the rail links got cut off. I call Antoinette Sandbach to move the motion.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered energy efficiency and the clean growth strategy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I am grateful to the many of my colleagues from both sides of the House who helped me to secure this debate, not least to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe).

This is an important debate, and I hope that it will spur Members to action, not just today but in the future. This is the first debate of its kind in several years, and it is important to ensure that we keep energy efficiency at the top of the political agenda. This week the energy price cap Bill, the Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill, received its Second Reading. The Bill is a vital step to protect consumers while we reform the market in the short to medium term.

I want to propose a long-term solution for energy efficiency improvements and suggest how to make best use of the time we will have bought with the energy price cap Bill to address energy efficiency. In my remarks, I will outline how far we have come and discuss the challenges we face, before proposing a couple of solutions to return us to a better low-carbon path. I plan to talk generally about the state of energy efficiency, but where I am more specific I shall be addressing domestic energy efficiency. Other Members, I am sure, will focus on other areas, but I shall leave that contribution to them.

It is important to outline how far we have come in building a low-carbon economy and in improving energy efficiency over the long term. That is testament to the commitment of successive Governments, and I am proud to say that we are now a world leader in the green economy. Since 1990 we have cut emissions by 42%, faster than any other G7 nation. We have outperformed the first carbon budget, of 2008 to 2012, by 1%, and we are on course to outperform the second and third carbon budgets by 5% and 4%, respectively.

All that achievement has not come at the cost of economic growth. Emissions dropped by 42%, but the economy grew by 67%. In 2016, 47% of electricity came from low-carbon sources, which was twice the rate of 2010. Household energy consumption has fallen by 17% since 1990, despite a rise in the number of home appliances. More than 430,000 people work in low-carbon businesses and the supply chain. All that work has resulted in bills being roughly £490 lower than they would have been without the energy efficiency improvements made since 2004.

Clearly, significant progress has been made over the past three decades. I applaud Ministers and Members of all parties for their commitment to tackling climate. What is more, we have taken those steps without damaging our economy, the idea of which was originally dismissed by some as simply not possible.

Despite such progress, there is still more to do. Progress on energy efficiency has slowed. Between 2012 and 2015 the annual investment in energy efficiency fell by 53%; and in the same period there was an 80% reduction in improvement measures, with the Committee on Climate Change warning us that that will decline even further by 2020. Fuel poverty remains a stubborn problem that we must continue to address. It is all very well giving assistance with bills, but a long-term solution—insulating houses—is surely the way forward.

As of 2014, 2.3 million households in England were in fuel poverty and 41% of the households in the lowest income decile were fuel poor; 56% of fuel-poor households lived in properties built before 1944. To my mind, those issues make it an urgent requirement of the Government to do a housing survey in England: 60% of fuel-poor households lived in inefficient properties with an E, F or G energy performance certificate rating, and 14% of households in rural areas were in fuel poverty, which is higher than the national average. Those rural households cannot access the efficiencies of dual fuel billing, and that is important, because many are off grid. Many cannot access the warm home scheme measures, which often involve whole streets. The low-hanging fruit has been picked, but the more challenging households, in particular in rural communities, have not been addressed.

The clean growth strategy is a welcome addition to the debate. I support its proposals to combat fuel poverty and to promote energy efficiency, but I hope that the Minister can be more specific about the Government’s plans today than they were six months ago. The Committee on Climate Change assessment of the clean growth strategy found that three actions were expected to deliver, six actions had delivery risks, or were rated amber, and seven proposals were without firm plans, or rated red.

It has never been more important to tackle climate change and to decarbonise the economy. However, the potential rewards have never been so great. A building energy performance programme could save households £270 a year on bills. Over the long term that would save even more than the current proposed cap on energy bills, and it would also make a large contribution to hitting our climate change goals. Bringing every household up to an EPC band C by 2035 would save 25% of the energy used by the UK, which is the equivalent of six nuclear power stations the size of Hinkley Point C. The net economic benefit of such a programme would be between £7.5 billion and £8.7 billion, according to macro- economic analysis by the UK Energy Research Centre, and that figure does not include the wider secondary benefits in growth, jobs or health. With cold homes in England costing the NHS an estimated £1.36 billion, such a programme would have a considerable impact on health budgets, as well as on the wider economy.

The economic and social case for increased energy efficiency measures seems unarguable. We must focus on how to deliver them. Throughout recent history, we have seen that the fight against climate change is most effective when Government and private industry work together. The Government can lead the charge, but we need to harness the innovation and energy of the private sector to truly succeed. That is why I want to suggest one way in which the private sector can step up. It is one way for the Government to make a change that can expedite energy efficiency improvements. Mortgage providers should give people more incentives to purchase energy efficient homes.

In essence, if people make savings on their energy bills they will have more money to service a larger mortgage, and that should be taken into consideration when banks make their lending decisions. We know that in 2014, 51% of fuel-poor households were owner-occupiers, with only 33% in the private rented sector. Were the EPC rating of a house to be included in a lender’s affordability calculation, people could borrow up to £4,000 more in many cases. Under such a system, an EPC A rating would allow people to borrow £11,500 more than an EPC G-rated house. I recommend to hon. Members who are interested in this proposal a report by the Lenders group, which said that energy bills were a sizeable part of borrowers’ essential expenditure, and were therefore a component of the affordability calculation that warranted being made more sophisticated.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making such a good point about how we can challenge mortgage lenders to revisit affordability, based on how much it costs to live in a house. Crucially, it demonstrates to developers who have pushed back against higher energy efficiency building standards on the basis of affordability that lenders understand that reduced operation costs are a good thing, because borrowers can borrow more to pay more for a house that costs less to live in. It slays the developers’ argument against more stringent building regulations.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I completely agree, and those houses would be more easily resold, too. The energy efficiency measures that had been introduced in a property would have a market value, and that would be taken into account in the ability to resell—particularly the increased borrowing capability. Furthermore, it would give real value when looking at the EPC rating for the future. It is a simple step that could be taken with relatively little Government interference—a simple statutory instrument so that energy efficiency could be considered as part of the mortgage affordability criteria would be very persuasive, particularly for those companies specialising in green finance.

Despite that, I also agree with my hon. Friend that we have to look at the criteria that we impose on house builders. It is simply not acceptable that in this day and age we are building houses that are likely to need retrofitting in future. By increasing the build standard, people would learn how an energy efficient home can have an impact on their life. I sat and shivered in my own home in London during the freeze last week; I found myself sitting in my sitting room in my coat because the house was so cold and inefficient. I now realise that I have a relatively fuel efficient home where I live in Cheshire, which makes a difference mentally, to comfort levels and to bills. Merely including the energy efficiency measures in affordability calculations would be enough to drive people towards more energy-efficient homes even if buyers do not borrow extra money, because they would be attracted by the perception of value implied by the higher borrowing limits.

My second suggestion is one that the Minister may be able to assist with more directly. When Members talk about infrastructure spending, one is put in mind of boys with their toys: big trains, roads, railways and power stations. However, I suggest that the Minister designate energy efficiency measures as infrastructure spending, bringing it under the purview of the National Infrastructure Commission. The rationale for that is simple: energy efficiency spending is a one-off cost, so it is closer to capital than revenue expenditure. By reducing energy consumption, those investments free up energy sector capacity. That reduces, or at least delays, the need for new capacity to come online. That new capacity—in the form of generation plants, networks and energy storage—would be considered infrastructure spending by the Government, and potentially would involve a large amount of Government expenditure.

Why invest in the big plant if we can roll out energy efficiency measures across the country, as part of an infrastructure project? Energy efficiency measures provide a public service: they insulate consumers—literally—against the volatility of energy markets. Likewise, they provide health and wellbeing benefits, by enabling consumers to heat buildings more effectively, and they have the knock-on consequences of reducing our carbon emissions and contributing towards our overall aim of clean, green growth.

Research by Frontier Economics found that a building energy performance programme would meet the Treasury’s criteria for determining the top 40 infrastructure priorities. The National Infrastructure Commission has said that it will consider

“an ambitious programme of energy efficiency improvements”

and that it

“is examining ways to make the UK’s building stock fit for the future.”

I hope that Ministers will pave the way by committing £1.1 billion to a programme of energy efficiency improvements, under the auspices of the National Infrastructure Commission. It is estimated that that would leverage £3.9 billion of private investment by 2035. That additional capital spending, alongside the £0.6 billion already spent, would dramatically improve energy efficiency, bringing all the benefits I have outlined.

With the £1.3 billion of savings that have been highlighted in the health budget, these measures would effectively fund themselves out of savings to other parts of the Government’s expenditure. The starting step is to recognise that this is capital spending on infrastructure—not revenue spending. Members might like to look at the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group report, “Affordable Warmth, Clean Growth”, where they will see a detailed plan to take forward this suggestion.

I look forward to hearing suggestions from other hon. Members of how to renew our energy efficiency drive. The case for pushing forward seems indisputable: it would make significant inroads into fuel poverty and carbon emissions, as well as create jobs and secure clean, green growth for the future. Mine are just two suggestions of how to approach that, but I hope that the Minister and her Department will take them on board. I am also keen to hear the suggestions that the Minister has brought with her; there is a lot of potential in the clean growth strategy, and I know that she is as keen as I am to see that potential realised.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Heappey]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and she knows that she has my full, enthusiastic support on that point. The answer to what happened last week is not that we need more gas: actually, the system worked and demonstrated that there is flexibility. That more efficient, more flexible system brings with it energy security, and we should make that point robustly.

We should also be clear that a more efficient energy system brings with it reduced costs for consumers. Transmission and distribution costs are a not insignificant part of energy bills, so designing a more efficient system should be a priority. I will come back to that point shortly. It is not just price capping that can bring down bills for consumers: we could also find pretty significant savings in the costs of operating the energy system.

The other reason why we need a more efficient system is that, over the next 15 years or so, we will increase by an order of magnitude the demand we place on our electricity system. As we decarbonise heat and electricity, we will find ourselves significantly increasing the load, and the answer to that increased load cannot exclusively be more generation. We must seize the opportunity to create a more efficient energy system to meet that increased demand. For that, we must recognise that all of the clean tech coming along that allows for decentralised generation allows us to generate locally and use locally.

Rather than conceiving the national energy system as we see it at the National Grid control room in Wokingham, with its big map of the UK and its worrying about getting power from Hinkley Point to someone’s toaster, we should start to see it in terms of: what the net energy use is in someone’s home and whether they are putting energy back into the system or drawing down; and whether a community can service its energy needs and whether it is drawing from or exporting to the system.

The system would constantly balance upwards and, crucially, the distribution network operators would become distribution system operators, balancing the flows within their region. The national grid—if we need one in the future—would be left simply to balance the net flows of energy between the regions. If energy is generated and consumed locally, that must bring a significant reduction in distribution and transmission costs.

Of course, I recognise there will always be a requirement to socialise among all consumers the underpinning energy security that comes from a system that backs up when local systems fail. Such a system would bring huge reductions in bills and huge reductions in carbon—and frankly it would be an embracing of progress, given that all of this clean technology is coming down the tracks.

There is another area in which we could make the energy system more efficient: we should recognise that we waste a huge amount of energy in the form of heat. Remarkably few organisations that produce huge amounts of heat as a waste by-product yet understand their ability to monetise that heat. There are some brilliant pilot schemes that should inspire. London Underground has huge amounts of heat moving around its tunnel system underneath our capital city, and there are examples of it trying to get that heat out of the system and into heat networks on the surface. That is great, but such examples are relatively few and far between.

There are examples from heavy industry, where waste heat is being put into a heat network. Also, and this is a shameless plug: the shadow Minister and I—I will also demonstrate the non-partisan nature of the debate by referring to him as my hon. Friend—are both vice-presidents of the Association for Decentralised Energy, which told me the other week about a sugar factory in East Anglia, where waste heat and carbon is taken from the factory to greenhouses, where a prodigious amount of tomatoes are grown. That understanding of the value of the waste product and making energy usage more efficient should be an inspiration to companies all over the place.

There is also the electricity system itself. I understand from some of the distribution networks that the waste heat from the transformers when energy comes from the national grid into a distribution system is huge, and at the moment it goes out into the ether. Surely there is an opportunity to look at how that could be connected into heat systems.

At the Conservative party conference in Birmingham last year, a number of us were invited to go down to a combined heat and power plant beneath the library in Birmingham city centre. What is amazing in Birmingham is there is a network of CHPs—one underneath the library, one under New Street station and a couple of others in the city centre—that generate heat that is sold commercially to the hotels concentrated around the city centre at a cheaper rate than the hotels could get for themselves. The hotels therefore get a good deal and Birmingham business gets a good deal. However, Birmingham City Council, which put the network in place, also gets to sell cheap heat into the social housing immediately beyond the city centre. What I love is that the system is not just more efficient and therefore bringing down costs for business, but allowing for social justice by delivering far cheaper heating into the homes of those who can least afford to heat themselves.

That brings me to the domestic energy efficiency market, and first to those who are fuel-poor and unable to pay. Clearly, when it comes to our intervention, we must look at two types of energy efficiency to support those who are fuel-poor: barrier technology to avoid waste, putting stuff into windows, walls and roofs so that less electricity is required; and putting clean tech into homes, so that they have more efficient boilers and smart appliances, which also use less power. This is a completely non-partisan debate, but I adore the scheme in Scotland—and not just because it is called HEEPS, which was my school nickname. All power to the Scottish Government, who have one of the world’s leading domestic energy efficiency mechanisms—the home energy efficiency programmes for Scotland—in place. I hope we can be inspired by learning about what has been done north of the border.

There are opportunities to intervene. Yes, we can make the point that it is socially just to do so, but I hope the Treasury realises that it is financially sound, too. In the eight weeks of 2018 thus far, the Treasury has shelled out £56,282,500—roughly—in cold weather payments to those who live in fuel poverty. If we were to intervene aggressively to make those in fuel poverty live in better insulated, more energy-efficient homes, arguably that 56 million quid could have been reduced significantly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury said, there are huge savings to be passed across to the NHS system and adult social care by ensuring that those who are fuel-poor, those most vulnerable and those living on the lowest incomes are in homes that are comfortable.

There are productivity gains to be had, too. If people live somewhere they can heat and they do not have to choose between heating and eating, they will be much more able to go out and get work, be motivated to be productive and get promotion, which will stop them being in a position where they are fuel-poor.

I have three more suggestions. The first is about the winter fuel allowance. I am aware that it is probably a bad idea to talk in the House of Commons about a universal benefit to pensioners, especially when as a result of this suggestion there is a chance that some will not get a payment any more. However, we might start to look at whether to set aside those who we class as being fuel-poor—those who have qualified for cold weather payments in the past couple of weeks, for example—and make sure they still get a winter fuel payment.

For the remainder, however, instead of giving cash to be used against an energy bill, could we start to give vouchers for that value with which they can improve their homes with energy efficiency measures? They would get the same amount, and I would argue passionately that over time they would be delivered a saving from their energy bills far in excess of what they currently get with the extra cash of the winter fuel allowance. More importantly still, whereas that allowance is given, spent and gone, with vouchers we would upgrade the housing stock of all the houses currently lived in by pensioners that, at some point in the future, will be lived in by people who are not pensioners. We would make an intervention using the existing universal benefit in an ever-so-slightly different way, which would stimulate economic activity—all these people would move into the supply chain to deliver those energy efficiency measures—and upgrade our housing stock permanently. We should consider that.

We also need to look at how we do EPCs and the standards we set for new homes. In hindsight, I think we on the Government side made a mistake in reducing the carbon standards for new built homes. However, even if we leave the standards as they are for the moment, please let us ensure that developers are building houses at the EPC level they say they are. There is too much discussion in this place of charities worrying about energy efficiency—they say that developers can say, “Everything we build that is ‘The James’ is an EPC band C. Therefore, wherever we build it, it is an EPC band C, even if we cannot guarantee those properties were built to the exact same standards as the type tested.”

We need to ensure that all of the hundreds of thousands of homes that the Government are commendably committed to building are built to the very highest standards—at the very least, to the standard it says they are built to in the brochure the developer provides at the point of sale.

Instead of EPCs simply being a mechanism for judging how efficient a property is in terms of its barrier technologies, or how well insulated the walls, windows, doors and roofs are, I wonder whether the Government might also consider how we might start to value the clean tech that might also have been put into the home. Clearly, some clean tech is removable; smart appliances may well be moved with the owner when they move house. But we have asked the energy companies to commit to having offered every consumer in the UK a smart meter by the early part of next decade, and by 2025, I think, we want all properties to be at band C. I wonder whether a requirement for reaching band C by 2025 should be that a band C house has a smart meter within it. That would catalyse the uptake of smart meters quite quickly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury has already mentioned the importance of getting energy efficiency, and therefore operation costs, factored into the affordability studies done by mortgage companies. Nothing will bring the value of energy efficiency to the attention of homeowners more. I declare an interest here, insomuch as I am on the phone to my mortgage broker quite often at the moment and spend a lot of time scouring Rightmove, but nothing motivates homeowners more than when they are going through the affordability study and the mortgage company or broker is asking about the bills.

There is a hugely frustrating moment when the mortgage broker asks, “And what do you spend on your household utilities at the moment?” and the homeowner says, “Probably about £200 a month, but within the house I am building there are solar panels on the roof, or solar PV on the roof, or I want to put those things on to the roof or to put in a heat pump,” and the mortgage broker just moves on to the next question and shows no interest whatever in what they have just been told.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I have been converted, having installed an air source heat pump in a very old property in north Wales, with 75 mm of internal insulation. I can virtually heat the house on a candle—it is not quite that efficient, but it is close. What is more, I get money back in renewable heat incentive payments, which means that my total energy cost has gone from approximately £1,200 a year to about £600 a year. It is extraordinary. It is comfortable to live in; I know that if I walk through the door, it will be warm. It is incredibly efficient. There is a gas boiler that gives hot water on demand with no wastage and no heating up water unnecessarily. It makes a huge difference.

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I suspect that we need collectively to convince our colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government that we can value energy efficiency and clean tech within buildings in a much better way. We must shift them away from an analysis that says that the affordability of a property is exclusively about what that property costs to own or rent. It is not; it is what that property costs to own, rent and then live in during the month that follows. With energy efficiency measures, we can significantly bring down what it costs to live in a house, and therefore make it more affordable, by more than the smaller savings we might have got from cutting a few corners with energy efficiency when the place was constructed in the first place.

I have now unloaded all my bright ideas into Hansard. I believe that we must embrace this agenda and see that the renewal of our energy system is about not just building big zero-carbon generation, but making an energy system that is more efficient, that sees the value in waste heat and looks at how we use that more efficiently, and that is re-geared so that it is localised and decentralised and we are balancing upward rather than downward.

We must see domestic energy efficiency as an opportunity to save consumers money in a far more meaningful, lasting and organic way than the price cap intervention, which we necessarily had to make this week, but which must only be short term. If we do all those things, we create economic activity and save money for both the Exchequer and, crucially, bill payers too.

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[Steve McCabe]

I have heard about a scheme of that nature, but I have to confess that I do not know very much about it; I would be interested to learn a bit more. We definitely need to think about how we both improve energy efficiency and make it affordable for people who can afford it on paper, but who we know in practice can often find it difficult.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

One of the big problems is that many of those measures need to go in when back-to-the-brick restoration or work is done in the home, because putting in solid wall insulation internally requires re-wiring, re-plastering and many other things. There is therefore a need to incentivise homeowners who are making changes to their home to do so at the right time. I am not certain that I see that being incentivised by the Government at the moment.

[Steve McCabe]

I certainly agree. A lot of the low-hanging fruit has been picked and we are moving to a different level of problem, which I think gives us all the more reason to come up with practical, realistic incentives for that purpose.

As I say, it is good that ECO will continue until 2028. However, it is estimated that, to meet the 2030 fuel poverty target, the scheme requires funding of about £1.2 billion per year, as opposed to the current proposal to keep funding at about £640 million per year. I am curious to know how the Minister thinks she can meet that target with a projected funding shortfall of roughly 50%.

A further concern about ECO is that it is essentially a regressive funding mechanism. It pays for installing efficiency measures in fuel-poor homes by increasing energy bills across the board, which negatively impacts low-income customers who do not themselves benefit from the scheme. It seems analogous to the arguments about the cost of the smart meter programme, in that the cost of that is spread across all bills but without all people gaining the same benefits. That is something I have been looking at with some interest for a while now.

The hon. Member for Wells was looking for a way to vary the funding, and he talked about what might be done with the winter fuel allowance. I agree with the UK Energy Research Centre, whose recent report recommended that the environmental and social levies, including ECO, should be funded through general taxation rather than increased energy bills, which they claim would save the poorest 10% of households £102 per year while the vast majority of people would see no change to the amount they pay for environmental and social levies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Graham]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and will gladly take up his invitation.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Given the new Thornton campus in Cheshire, which is specialising in geothermal, may I suggest that on the way to Southampton from Scotland my hon. Friend call in to see some of the leading research that is being done at the University of Chester on the opportunities for geothermal and how we can roll that out much further across the country?

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Mr Graham is now going to make some progress.

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[Claire Perry]

It was an excellent suggestion, and I have already clocked it as one to take away. Indeed, I will be attempting to turbocharge the smart meters roll-out later this year, because we have done some excellent work that needs to be continued.

I reassure colleagues that the money we are spending on ECO, where we aim to improve more than 1 million homes, the money we are spending on the warm home discount and the money that we are already putting into the problem of fuel poverty will be spent in a way that tries to drive more effective solutions. One of the things I want to do with the ECO project is targeted at fuel poverty, which is a hugely important aspiration for all of us. I also want to try to have much more of it targeted at research and development and innovation. Technologies qualify in a very formulaic way, and I think we could do a lot more on that.

To reassure colleagues who have said the clean growth strategy is just warm words—I know they have far better things to do—on pages 132 and 133 of the document I have clearly set out the next series of things that we will do. People say that just bringing consultation forward is not action. I want to make decisions that stick over the long term because they have been widely thought through and bottomed out analytically. On pages 132 and 133 is a long list of things we have already done, are doing or are planning to do this year—so I am not getting away with a long target—to drive forward the ambitions on the band C rating.

We are also working hard with business and industry. While we have a real challenge in our homes, the biggest pool of emissions in the UK come from—it fluctuates a little bit between them—industry and transport. We have always found it difficult to decarbonise businesses. Part of that is process decarbonisation—as the hon. Member for Redcar knows, that is difficult to do without fundamentally changing the feedstock or heat source for a particular manufacturing sector—but a lot is just business premises. All the same issues we have in the homes sector absolutely apply to business premises.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

If energy efficiency measures have been rolled out in the home, surely common sense dictates that those people who have experienced them go into work and see how similar measures could affect their work environment. Does my right hon. Friend the Minister agree that tackling the home energy efficiency market would inevitably assist with the business market?

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend is absolutely on the money, but I would like to do both. I do not want it to be sequential. I cannot remember which of my hon. Friends talked about energy as a service. I thought it was my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire, but as I say that, I think it might have been HEEPS—my hon. Friend the Member for Wells. He is never going to live that down.

If someone running a small business is trying to do payroll and deal with potential changes in the regulatory structure for export, are they really going to sit down and think about energy efficiency? They might—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury that if someone has installed an energy efficiency measure in their home and has seen a material change, they might do that—but they might not. What incentives can we create and what market structures are already there that can help those businesses to focus on their energy efficiency? Many of the challenges in the rented sector that apply in the homes market also apply in an even greater way in the energy market. It is a real challenge that many firms occupy premises where energy is just part of the service bundle they receive, so it is not within their control to install such measures.

We are consulting later this year on a package of measures to help businesses improve how productively they use energy. We are focused on trying to do things that work, and that work locally.

Many Members referenced green mortgages and finding a way to finance such initiatives. There has been some excellent work, such as the “Levering economics for new drivers to energy reduction and sustainability” project. My hon. Friend the Member for Wells talked about being asked about utility bills. Actually, the way the market works now is that, whether someone is in a home rated A or G, they input the same number, which is crazy.

Work is already under way on mortgage lenders who might pick up on the fact that someone could save £700 on their energy bills by having a better energy performance certificate. The green finance taskforce that I set up with the Treasury last year will be reporting shortly. One of its strands of work is how we get green mortgages to be a proper retail offering. Some lenders have taken steps to support energy efficiency improvements. Last November, Barclays launched the first green bond from a UK bank, on the back of the work that the taskforce was doing. That is being used to fund domestic assets, which it plans to use to refinance mortgages for the most energy-efficient properties. That is a testament to the data available and the bank’s desire. It is common sense to reward that sort of behaviour.

I have talked a little about the savings and what we are doing. Now I will mention briefly the most vulnerable households, which have come up often, especially given the recent cold snap. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury said, it was really cold in many homes. Turning up the heating was an option for many of us, but we might not have realised that others who do so feel extremely worried about what their bills will look like.

I want to reassure colleagues that the warm home discount programme—£140 a household—continues to operate. Winter fuel payments are being paid, and the cold weather payment was triggered by the cold snap. It is absolutely right for the Government to continue to support the most vulnerable and to help them make improvements to their homes. Such people do not necessarily have financial choice. I was therefore pleased that we committed £3.6 billion to ECO. Going forward, that will upgrade more than 1 million homes. We will extend that out to 2028 with funding at least at current ECO levels.

I take the point about the landlord challenge. The problem, frankly, is that 95% of landlords have four properties or fewer—they are us. We asked them to sign up to something that at the time we had underpinned with a green finance offer, but now they are potentially required to raise capital to do it. We have to do things that are fair and proportionate if we want the country to come with us. The measure is still incredibly important. We do not want people living in the least fuel-efficient homes and we are determined to do something about that. In fact, compared with 2010, there are 835,000 fewer homes rated E, F or G in the UK, so we are making progress at the least efficient end of the market.

I hope that I am not trying your patience, Mr Walker, but I have two more quick points to make. The first is on smart meters. I think we are on the cusp of something really exciting with smart meters. We are absolutely in the world’s vanguard by offering every household a smart meter by 2020. I accept the concerns about technology. People say, “Why would I install one of these when I’m going to get a better one?” The point is that if someone installs one now, they get all the benefits immediately of understanding what their energy consumption looks like, and can work out ways to cut their bills. Furthermore, they will automatically be upgraded through the technology that we are putting in place to the next generation, so when they switch suppliers they will not lose any of that functionality. That is a vital step forward.

More needs to be done to work on the consumer proposition. I am desperate to put in a smart meter, but not to take a morning off work to do so. It is really difficult to find the time, which is a problem that many people face. We will be working with industry and the organisation rolling the meters out to see how we can make them more consumer flexible, and how we provide incentives, because plenty of money is being spent on advertising them. We are on the cusp of something very exciting.

I also wanted to mention fundamentally changing the way in which we build and think about homes in the construction process. It is astonishing that the way in which we build homes has not changed much since the 1890s: we build the foundations, and then get the trades in. We can build really high-quality modular homes—homes that are built off-site and installed—in a far more effective and resource-efficient way. We are working closely with the construction sector to see what we can do to turbocharge that.

We can also do retrofits in a modular way. Nottingham City Council and Melius Homes are taking a prefabricated approach to retrofit homes to 2050 standards, and improve their energy performance. A lot of innovation is happening in this area that I am extremely keen to support. That is how we create a new market for what needs to happen, while rightly focusing on building regulations. All colleagues will be aware of the challenge in the post-Grenfell world of ensuring that there are no unintended consequences to what we do with building regulations. We are working very closely with our colleagues in the relevant Department, and have reconstituted the inter-ministerial clean growth group, because so many of these challenges span across Government.

There is a huge amount more to do. We have heard lots of sensible ideas today, many of which are extremely attractive and that we want to take away. All of us want to get the costs and consumption of energy down, reduce carbon emissions, make our homes warmer, and make the transition to low-carbon energy less risky. This is not an either/or question; in order to meet our carbon targets, and to create a housing stock that is fit for the future, we absolutely need to do this. That is why the clean growth strategy is so important, and why the industrial strategy has clean growth as one of its four major pillars: things that we know that we can lead the world in, and that have to be done.

It has been a pleasure in today’s debate, as in so many others in this area, to work with colleagues across the House who are so committed to this agenda, and have so much knowledge and interest in it. It will really help us to accelerate the work going forward, so I thank hon. Members for the opportunity to respond this afternoon.

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[Antoinette Sandbach]

I thank colleagues from across the House for participating in the debate. We have now had three Front-Bench speeches that have referred to colleagues’ contributions, so I will not go over them again. I reiterate that there has been agreement across the Chamber: if the Government invest in this area now, that will lead to huge savings—£1.3 billion in the health sector alone, as well as productivity gains. In addition, it would generate a huge amount of jobs, and save consumers £290 on their bills every year.

I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to go to the National Infrastructure Commission, as she has promised. It is due to make its decision in April, which is why I asked for this afternoon’s debate to take place today. Given the cross-party consensus, I suspect that there may well be a cross-party letter winging its way elsewhere to Government, encouraging them to take up the infrastructure challenge and the opportunities that innovation in this area offers the UK economy. I thank again all hon. Members who have contributed today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered energy efficiency and the clean growth strategy.

Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

The emergency payments were certainly welcome—I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comment—but the fact remains that this price cap should have been in place this winter and it was not.

National Energy Action also found that each year an average of 9,700 people die due to living in a cold home. That equates to 80 people per day, the same number of people who die from breast or prostate cancer each year. It has been Labour party policy since 2013 to introduce a price cap on consumer energy bills, and although the principle of this Bill is positive, I remain concerned that, as drafted, it does not go far enough.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Given that electricity prices rose by 44% between 2003 and 2007, will the hon. Lady outline what action the Labour Government took in their 13 years in power to address this issue?

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. I think that both sides of the House have reached something of a consensus on our energy market. People on the right and left—wherever they place themselves on the political spectrum—agree that our energy market is fundamentally broken and needs to be reviewed. It is interesting that the Government put their own commission in place, under Dieter Helm, but we have had no response from them so far about the proposals it made.

I have several issues with the Bill as drafted, but I start with the fact that it does not provide any direction from the Secretary of State on his preferred level of cap, which effectively passes the buck to Ofgem. The Bill merely states:

“The Authority must exercise its functions…with a view to protecting existing and future domestic customers who pay standard variable and default rates”.

In doing so, Ofgem must consider a number of factors, including creating incentives for suppliers to improve efficiency, enabling suppliers to compete effectively, maintaining incentives to switch between suppliers, and the need to ensure that holders of supply licences who operate efficiently are able to finance activities authorised by that licence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for bringing forward the Bill and for his hard work on delivering what the Conservative party promised—dealing with unfairness in the energy market. His dedication, and that of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, to ensuring that the most vulnerable customers are not left behind to pay extortionate prices for their energy should be commended by Members on both sides of the House.

However, I cannot escape the fact that, as a Conservative, I question it when any Government seek to intervene in markets. I accept that on occasion markets need some interference. Many require regulation, and unfair practices need to be tackled robustly, but the question is whether the level of market interference is necessary and proportionate. As we consider this Bill, we must ask whether energy companies are in fact employing unfair tactics against their customers. If so, can those customers avoid paying over the odds for electricity and gas? Is introducing a price cap on certain tariffs the only and/or best way to deal with this issue?

I point to significant increases in the number of new energy suppliers—their market share has risen from 2% in 2012 to around 18% in 2017—and the increasing number of customers who are now switching suppliers regularly. I would argue that that shows an improving picture, thanks to the measures that this Secretary of State and his predecessors have implemented to ensure that the energy market is open to new and smaller companies and to encourage switching. As a result of that success, I would argue that the Bill is unnecessary— I would argue that, but I cannot. We committed to introducing the Bill in the Conservative manifesto, and introduce it we shall, but that does not mean that I would wave it past without considering whether its provisions are entirely proportionate or if there are opportunities for improvement. I have marked reservations about a key part of this Bill—or, more to the point, a lack thereof.

No part of the Bill allows energy providers to challenge the level at which Ofgem sets the price cap, other than by judicial review. I have asked a number of written questions on this point, and it appears that the Government are simply not prepared to admit that this is an inadequate means of appeal against the cap. As a non-lawyer, I am always very suspicious of matters that are settled in the court, so let me explain why it is so important to get this aspect of the Bill right, why judicial review is inadequate, and why the right for energy companies to appeal to the Competition and Markets Authority must be written into the Bill.

In January, prior to the Government publishing the Bill, I asked them to name the countries that they had looked at that currently regulate retail energy prices. In reply, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth stated that Canada, the United States, Spain and New Zealand had all been studied. However—this is hugely significant—as their markets were not previously liberalised, or had only recently been liberalised, all are in very different situations from that in this country.

The Government are clear. They accept that what the Bill seeks to do in this country—to impose a price cap in a long-standing liberalised energy market—has never been done before. We are sailing into completely unchartered waters. Should we not therefore proceed with some caution? The Bill does not; it sails off with abandon, trusting Ofgem to set the level of the cap. This major new power has the potential to alter the UK energy market with as yet unknown consequences, as the Government have effectively admitted through their decision not to release quantitative data in their impact assessment, but the Bill provides no check nor expert oversight of Ofgem’s decisions.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Judicial review provides a remedy when Ofgem is acting unreasonably. If it is acting reasonably, it would not be possible for the energy companies to review the matter, but what they would do, as evidence given to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee suggests, is to seek to delay the process through endless appeals to the Competition and Markets Authority.

[Mark Menzies]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. We would not want a situation in which energy companies, especially big energy companies, seek to delay the implementation of the measure for that reason through appeals to the Competition and Markets Authority. Perhaps the Government could consider having a time-limited window of appeal lasting for a matter of weeks in which any appeal could be looked at by the CMA. I am not sure whether recourse to judicial review, with a case tied up in court and argued by incredibly expensive lawyers, is the solution to the problem. I am not sure where the transparency is in that, and I am not sure that judges are the best people to make a determination. I shall say a little more on that as I proceed.

Appeals on price controls are always to the Competition and Markets Authority. This is consistent with every other comparable sector, including telecoms, water, and aviation, and there are very good reasons why. Energy suppliers, just like National Grid and distribution network operators, invest huge sums into our energy infrastructure. The Treasury has estimated that approximately £250 billion of projects are in the pipeline in the coming years. All companies require certainty to deliver these projects and they only get this if Ofgem sets a fair and accurate price.

In most cases, if Ofgem gets it wrong, National Grid, DNOs and their shareholders can make their case to the economic experts at the CMA. They know that they have effective recourse against Ofgem’s decision and they have certainty that the CMA will not allow any price cap that places these billions of pounds of investments into our vital energy network at risk. Under the Bill, however, retail suppliers are being sent out on to the high wire only to find that this effective and long-standing safety net has been removed from beneath them. Should Ofgem fail, the Government believe that judicial review will adequately cushion their landing. It will not.

As I have mentioned, the CMA is designed precisely to consider such appeals. As an expert appeals body, it has specialist panels with experience of deciding whether price controls have been set properly through consideration of the economic merits of each case. In contrast, a judicial review would consider only whether Ofgem reached its decision reasonably and in accordance with the relevant procedure. A judge with legal—not economic —training and with no specialist expertise would be asked to assess whether these deeply technical price control issues were fair and accurate.

If we follow through with this and allow such uncertainty to fester, even if only in the minds of our major energy suppliers, what assessment has been done of the impact of that on investment in our energy market? What assessment has been done of the impact that the initiative will have on the prices that consumers on non-default tariffs will be asked to pay? I have asked to be furnished with that information, but the Government do not have it. They answered that this calculation will depend on the methodology employed and the ultimate decision taken by Ofgem when setting the level of the cap.

I can be persuaded to agree that the Bill should pass without considering the future supply in this country—at least for this afternoon. I can be persuaded to agree that Ofgem sets the methodology. I can be persuaded to agree that Ofgem sets the level of the energy price cap. However, I cannot be persuaded, because it defies simple logic, that Ofgem has the sole preserve of wisdom in these matters. I cannot be persuaded that there should be no possible recourse to the Competition and Markets Authority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson). I agree with many of her comments.

It is quite clear that gas prices fell in the period between the early 1990s and 2001, and bills were down by about £102, but they rose in the period from 2001 to 2015 by about £408. Electricity prices rose 44% between 2003 and 2007. Although I agree that we need to take action, I argue that it this Government who are acting when the previous Government failed to do so. Why do we have to act? As my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) pointed out, it is because of predatory pricing by the big six companies.

[Caroline Flint]

I accept that we are talking about decades—I do not think that the market we ended up with was one that Margaret Thatcher thought that she was creating. The truth is that it was only after 2010 that we had any transparency and could access the data to tell us what was going on with these prices and why the mark-ups were so high. That is an important lesson from all this: transparency in this market is absolutely key.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I agree that transparency is key, but I do not think that the price rises would have been hidden in the period between 2003 and 2007. Ordinary consumers would have seen—as we all did—what was happening in their bills at that time. I also agree that evidence-based policy making is the best way forward. In instituting the CMA review, David Cameron was not kicking the matter into the long grass; he was getting the evidence that proved that consumers have had a detriment of £1.4 billion. This is the action that is coming out of that inquiry, which reported in 2016. It is right that we are taking action. Which? shows that energy prices topped the list of consumer worries— 64% of consumers were worried about their energy prices. I find it puzzling that switching rates are so low—only 18%—given the way that consumers worry about their bills.

On the Select Committee, it was very shocking to hear the high numbers of people on the standard variable tariffs. Some companies had more than 80% of their customers on standard variable tariffs, which is simply unacceptable. It is that predatory pricing by companies where they are using those so-called sticky customers on the higher rates to offer switching rates that new entrants to the market cannot compete with and are therefore squeezed out. The Bill will address that practice, and I welcome that.

There is another area where we need to act. I follow on from the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran in saying that switching is biased towards the A, B and C1 social groupings. Some 29% of those earning over £16,000 have never switched, but this figure rises to 39% among those who earn less than £16,000. As others have said, if people are not switching, they are not able to access the best deals. This cap is needed to protect those on the lowest incomes, but we must also encourage people in those groups to take advantage of the market. They can do so through Citizens Advice. Many libraries have computers that people can use to look up deals on the internet. It is important that, as well as the cap, the Government look at how they can reach out to the more disadvantaged social groups—groups D and E—that have never switched and at how they can take advantage of the market.

[Caroline Flint]

The hon. Lady is making an important point. Does she agree that it worth looking at how we could regulate independent brokers who could switch customers—on the customers’ behalf and under their authorisation—to the best deals? That might help these customers, and it could apply not only to energy, but to broadband, mobiles and insurance.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

We are already seeing those kinds of mechanisms with MoneySuperMarket.com and other organisations. However, some are incentivised, getting payments for switching. The Government have given Citizens Advice £100,000 to provide transparency regarding the rates offered and to help those who come to it with debt problems or other problems to switch.

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

I am cautious not to make too many interventions because Members are making great speeches, but I am worried that there will be so many questions that I will not have time to respond to them all at the end. I just want to reassure the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) and my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach). The midata trial is really important, as it enables people to allow their data to be ported to a third-party website that will then automatically come up with the best deals for them. Ofgem is working on that tool and it should open the way to much more innovative third-party switching services, which we all desperately need.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

We have seen that the cap works for the vulnerable customers who have had their energy prices capped. Although some have gone on to less advantageous tariffs, most have benefited, as shown in the evidence received by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. I agree with others that smart meters will revolutionise how we deal with not only energy, but perhaps other services. The cap is a temporary measure and is only needed as one. I add my voice to the others who called on the Government to ensure that loopholes on green tariffs are not used to game the legislation. The Bill has expanded the exemptions to include the safeguard tariff and those explicitly chosen by consumers, and the Government have strengthened the language relating to green tariffs.

I, too, call on Ofgem to act. I am afraid that I do not take the view that we needed this legislation. I would argue that Ofgem had the right to protect consumers without it, but I welcome the fact that the Government are acting to ensure that we address the clear problems in the market, particularly predatory pricing. This is about getting access to tariffs and the switching mechanism for those who need it. We should encourage those people and reach out to them, whether through Citizens Advice or how they sign on for their benefits. We clearly need to enable data sharing, so that energy companies can quickly identify vulnerable customers.

[Patricia Gibson]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I must sit down soon; I have taken many interventions.

We must make data far more available to allow more competition in the market. That is where the Government’s policy differs from that of the Labour party.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow my Select Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who made a number of important points, not least about reaching out to those who are not in the AB group. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) covered many of the aspects of the Bill in detail. My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) also picked up on many of the issues.

One of the great pleasures of such a debate is that there is great consensus around the Chamber, but when we speak late in the debate, we find ourselves saying, “There are some things I want to repeat.” I will try to avoid that, because while welcoming the proposals, I want to highlight how much more there is to do to protect people with regard to energy costs.

I speak as a member of the BEIS Committee, and it was very clear to us that there are significant failings in the consumer energy sector and that intervention is needed, as consumers continue to get a raw deal. The alternative proposals from the consumer energy players were quite simply too little, too late, and it has become necessary to take action. Ofgem and the energy companies should not continue to make the same mistake on issues affecting consumers.

One of those issues is particularly important to constituents in the highlands and islands—distribution charges. In the highlands and islands, consumers pay 4p per unit more on restricted meters, so the average consumer is about £400 worse off. The need for the price cap, as with distribution charges, highlights the failure of the big energy companies to take positive action to protect vulnerable customers in constituencies in the highlands and islands and in other rural constituencies. The costs for people there are already higher. Many are off the gas grid. Many have to use much more electricity. The weather is colder. Income is often lower. There is a continuing, deepening crisis of fuel poverty, putting a weight on the backs of those already suffering straightforward poverty, especially those having to claim universal credit. We have seen some of the most severe cold weather in the past week. Who suffers more when it is cold? The poor, the vulnerable and the disabled. Although the cap is welcome, it is not a panacea, and much, much more needs to be done.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

rose—

[Drew Hendry]

I am happy to give way.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am very grateful—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Can I just help a little bit? We have asked Members if they can do up to eight minutes, and some people are stretching that, but the hon. Lady has just spoken and is intervening again. I know it is part of the debate, but I want to make sure that those wanting to speak at the end have not been sitting here for no reason.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I will keep it brief, Mr Deputy Speaker. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that energy efficiency measures are key in this regard?

[Drew Hendry]

Yes, absolutely. There needs to be an acceptance that this is just one measure and there are many more measures—including on energy efficiency, which should have had much more attention from the Government.

There remains a need to remove legislative obstacles to data sharing for vulnerable customers to give them better consumer protection. There also remains—

Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill (Second sitting)

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Laura Pidcock]

I know that all this comes, as we mentioned last week, from a place of anxiety of wanting to make sure the Bill passes with ease. I have to politely disagree: I am not sure that this would be a massive shock to business. When I was a manager of a team, albeit within a charity, I still had to make sure that there was enough money in to pay the wages. We very much had to operate like a business.

I hope the new legislation never has to be used, but where it does the entitlement will still be two weeks’ bereavement leave. That is not a considerable time in people’s working lives. Using the time flexibly would have positives for the employer because members of staff, if they were unable to use the entitlement, would often have to call in sick because they were so down and were unable to come in to work.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I extend my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton for introducing the Bill. This is my first opportunity to speak on it. I know it has so much support from across the House.

My amendment 20 would extend the period in which parental bereavement leave must be taken from at least 56 days to 26 weeks. That is an important extension, for many of the reasons that the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran spoke about. There are particular days and events that happen, such as inquests, and it may be very important for a parent to be able to attend an inquest relating to their child.

As people will know, I speak from personal experience. The inquests relating to my own son were carried out very quickly—in fact, within 24 hours of his death—but I did not get the results for more than two months. That was the time at which I found out the cause of death. It took two months for me to get that information, which effectively flagged it up as a streptococcal infection, whereas it had been assumed that it had been sudden infant death syndrome. That pointed very strongly to the actions of the midwives, who had not picked it up. I then had to raise issues with the NHS hospital trust in relation to how it had reacted to various telephone calls and things that I had made prior to my son dying. That flexibility, and extending that period, is really important.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton has already praised Elliot’s footprint, Bliss, Together for Short Lives, the National Bereavement Alliance and the Rainbow Trust. They all make incredibly important points, as did the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran. It simply cannot be predicted how events will play out, and therefore that flexibility over when the leave may be taken is incredibly important. I am conscious that many parents qualify for bereavement leave through statutory parental leave, but for those who do not, this is a really important protection.

Grief comes in waves, and we do not know when it will hit us. I had a child who was also bereaved, because she had lost her brother. Support for a sibling is there in other legislation, where parents are entitled to ask for flexible working or to take time off. Again, the flexibility of knowing that leave can be more than a day and that people can devote their attention and time to coping with grief suffered by other family members, rather than their own grief, is really important. More than that, it helps fathers, who may find going back to work a comfort.

Sometimes, being able to go back to one’s job quite quickly gives people security and routine, which perhaps allows them to cope with grief in a different way at a slightly later stage. It also means that parents can stagger arrangements, so that mum can be at home at one point and dad at others. The amendment would introduce a degree of flexibility, which, to an extent, covers issues that the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for North West Durham, and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran both spoke about. This is an important amendment that would add to the legislation, and I urge my hon. Friends and the Minister to consider it because of the extension of time that it would bring to parents.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden]

I find myself in a difficult position. I am minded to press the amendment to a vote, but it would be the first time I have divided the Committee, which in the light of my earlier comments is not something that I want to do. A lot has been said about the fragility of the Bill and the difficulty of getting it through Parliament, but one thing that has not been acknowledged is that we are in a two-year Parliament, so it is not as if we have to get the Bill passed before Prorogation in March.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I hear the note of concern in the hon. Gentleman’s voice, but I think my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester raised a valid point: a parent may well be in a better position in which they already have an entitlement to a paid day without it being taken out of their leave. I ask the hon. Gentleman to consider whether that is a valid argument that should be addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Pidcock]

I just want to point out that the Library said in bold that these are “very crude” figures on the extension of age—otherwise it might not provide me with any research ever again. It has been pointed out before that not all those parents of children between nought and 40 would be in employment, so there would be some mitigation there. Perhaps an exercise can be done to work out on average how many people who die are of working age and have parents in the workforce, but that is not for now.

This strikes at the morality of the Bill. It has been mentioned that the Bill is about the tasks that need to be carried out after the death of a child or in that grieving period, but I agree with the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran—I do not want to sound like a broken record—that this is about the recognition of grief, not just tasks, although grief can be exacerbated and it can be more difficult to heal and recover if people are not able to do the tasks that are part of the journey to recovery. I also agree that a child never ceases to be a child in their parents’ eyes.

I want to make a political point in what has, so far, not been a very political Committee: it seems so hard to get such things through the Treasury. We are scrabbling around, arguing and making the case for a 60-year-old worker to have two weeks off if their child is 30, but it seems so easy for the Treasury to do other things at the stroke of a pen. That is not the fault of the Bill or necessarily of this Government, but it seems that the system values some things much more than others, including employment rights.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

This is a very important Bill. As the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton have pointed out, this is the first time that an extension in this area has been considered. There is an argument that goes, “If the parents, why not the siblings? And if the siblings, why not the aunts and uncles or other close family members?”

Much like my hon. Friend, I have reservations, but I do not want to jeopardise the Bill because the principle that it sets out is so important. There is no doubt that if one of my sisters died, I would be devastated. We have to strike a balance between rights and responsibilities, which is very difficult to do in relation to grief.

[Laura Pidcock]

The point has been well made that the Bill is about parental bereavement. Back-Bench Members may want to introduce Bills about other forms of grief, but we are concentrating on parental bereavement in all its forms. I would imagine that when a child dies, grief is pronounced, raw and painful irrespective of age. My intention is for those people to be included—not, of course, at the expense of the complete destruction of the Bill.

Amendment 12 recognises that some people have to care for dependent children for much longer than 18 years—I am sure my father would argue that I am still dependent, and I am 30. Full-time carers have to care for their children because they have a lifelong disability and a recognised dependency. I urge hon. Members to support amendment 12 if they cannot support amendment 6.

[Will Quince]

I will speak to amendments 14 and 15. One of the hardest elements of the Bill is the definition of a child. Amendments 14 and 15 would define a child as a person under the age of 18 or in full-time education, or both. These are probing amendments and I do not intend to press them to a vote, for all of the reasons that I have set out in our previous sessions.

In my ten-minute rule Bill, I defined a child as a person under the age of 18, in compulsory full-time education, or both. I think my amendments are fundamentally flawed, because they say, “in full-time education, or both” but of course somebody can go back to full-time education at a later stage—they could be a mature student. Somebody in their 30s, 40s or 50s could be caught under the scope of the amendments, and that is certainly not the intention.

What I want is to get us all talking about where we should set the legal definition. The hon. Member for Glasgow East referenced teenagers in his points about teenage cancer, but of course teenagers are pre-18 and post-18, because someone who is 19 is also a teenager. The age of 18 is the point at which we all accept that there is a legal responsibility for dependents, and it is also when we can leave full-time education. However, as we all know from our days at school, people can be old for their class—they could be 18 and still in secondary school doing their A-levels. We have to consider that.

I hope the Minister can take the amendments away and look at them. There is that element of “compulsory” —those who are still at school; that would not catch people who are at university. However, there is an argument for doing so, because many students are still wholly dependent on their parents. There is also the issue of apprenticeships and so on, which are not necessarily compulsory post-18; nevertheless, students are on a relatively low income, so will be dependent on their parents. They are often living at home.

I hope the Committee will consider the amendments in more depth, so that we can work out what the right age is. Certainly, considering compulsory full-time education might be one of the potential solutions.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I shall speak to amendments 18 and 19, which would add the words

“or a person under the age of 25 with a lifelong disability and a recognised dependency.”

The Bill applies to children under the age of 18, for all the reasons raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester. Amendments 18 and 19 would extend the definition of “child” for the purposes of parental bereavement leave and pay to those under the age of 25 with a lifelong disability and recognised dependency.

From my own experience with the children’s hospices that work in my area, they have a cut-off of around the age of 25 for those with disability or illness—they are classified as still entitled to attend the children’s hospice as opposed an adults’ hospice up to that point.

Therefore, there should be an extension to cover disability and dependency. We know that the care offered by parents to those with a disability or a recognised dependency is very often very high, and they will have provided extensive love and support to their child. There are many parents who have children with a disability or a lifelong dependency who, sadly, do not make it to the age of 25. I question whether my amendment should be limited to 25 for such cases—

[Laura Pidcock]

How about the hon. Lady supporting my amendment, which does not cap this at 25?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I saw the hon. Lady’s amendment and given that the Minister is consulting on a number of matters, I hope he might consider extending the consultation to the amendments. Where there is a high level of recognised dependency, the bond between parent and child is very high, largely because parents in the main, although it is often women who do this, have been carers at a level not necessarily offered in other circumstances.

I am not saying that the grief is any less, but that level of contact with the child will extend beyond the age of 18, whereas in other circumstances many children will have left home and be living independent lives. This is a probing amendment, but one the Government would do well to address, because I suspect there will be easily-available figures from Government data for the number of people covered. The Minister should be able to find that information fairly easily, although there might be implications for that extension.

[Andrew Griffiths]

This has been a very thoughtful and interesting debate. I draw the Committee’s attention back to the first speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester. I think he used the phrase “do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.

Members new to the House might not realise that this is the third time that an hon. Member has tried to take through a Bill on parental bereavement leave. The first attempt by Tom Harris was unsuccessful, as was the next by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester. This is the first time not only that such a Bill has got to this stage, but that any Government have given it backing.

Many Members will say it is outrageous that in 2018 we do not have those rights in statute. I would agree, but the reality is that we do not. There are many reasons for that, given by many Governments of many colours and of different make-up, and for why such a Bill has been resisted. We have an opportunity this time to get a Bill across the line. I politely say to the hon. Member for Glasgow East that, although I understand his desire to press his amendment, he will risk the passage of the Bill if it is used as a Christmas tree on which to hang all our aspirations.

The Bill provides the minimum that we would like to see for bereaved parents in this area, but we need to get it on the statute book. We can have as many lofty aspirations as we wish and we can desire to set the bar as high as we like, but we need to make this real. Various Governments of various colours have been unable to commit to do that, and this is the first time that a Government have committed to support the legislation and make it law. I politely and gently encourage hon. Members to think about that before they decide to press amendments that could risk the Bill’s potential.

To speak to the substance of the amendments, where to draw a line on age was always going to be difficult. I recognise why hon. Members suggest the dates they do. A lost life is always terrible, even more so when a child has not had the chance to live to adulthood. The loved ones who survive that child are left rebuilding and coping in a way that is difficult to imagine for those of us who are fortunate enough never to have been in that position.

Amendments 6 and 7 propose to extend this provision to parents of children of any age. The Bill applies to parents of children under the age of 18. Much as I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton, and would like the Bill to cover parents of all children who have passed away irrespective of age, to do so would have financial implications that cannot be ignored. I draw the Committee’s attention to the Exchequer estimate that the annual cost of statutory bereavement pay would be between £1.2 million and £2 million, with a best estimate of £1.77 million. The estimated cost to business––the employer––is £1.45 million and we estimate that, as drafted, the Bill will cover 5,600 parents.

The hon. Member for North West Durham sheepishly proposes the numbers in the Library note that she has received, and I do not disagree with those: she estimates 29,000 parents for children up to the age of 40. Look at the magnitude of the change from 5,600 to 29,000, when the cost is £2 million for the lower figure. We see how the cost of the Bill suddenly begins to increase dramatically. I urge caution, because there are other things to consider when we look at the Bill’s viability and future. The broader the Bill’s coverage, the more it will cost both the state and employers, in terms of absence costs. I therefore believe that the right balance is to ensure that parents of children up to the age of 18 are covered by the Bill.

I do not for one second underestimate the devastation of a parent losing a child at any age. I look to my own experience. My Auntie Ann had a seriously mentally and physically handicapped daughter called Margaret, who died at the age of 56. She had never been out of a wheelchair in her life, and my Auntie Ann was by then a widow in her late 70s. She was absolutely devastated by the loss of Margaret. As a family, we had always assumed that Auntie Ann would go and we would make provision to care for Margaret. The shock when Margaret was diagnosed with cancer and died very quickly hit the whole family. I do not for one minute underestimate the loss of a child at any age, but, for the sake of securing the Bill, I think we have to draw a line.

Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill (First sitting)

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

The Government have made some important progress with the national bereavement care pathway. The lack of support given to parents at the point of loss often means that they turn to legal or illegal medication that may not be good for them. The 11 pilots being rolled out will mean that every parent, whatever loss they suffer, will get some kind of bereavement support. I hope that that support, going hand in hand with the Bill, will make a real difference to parents’ lives and minimise the risk of that path being followed.

[Andrew Griffiths]

There have been and there continue to be many occasions in this House when I listen to a debate and think, “Crikey! There are so many people who know so much more about this thing than I do.” The biggest example of that is the experience of some hon. Members in this Committee room today. I am in awe of and humbled by it. My hon. Friend has been a beacon in trying to change the Government’s approach to this issue. She speaks so powerfully, and with such emotion and passion, and it is understandable why she does so. She has been hugely successful in making the Government sit up and notice these things, and do something about them.

There has not been a lack of desire to tackle these issues on the part of the Government. It is just that within Government, in the daily work, pressures and all the other things come across Ministers’ desks, sometimes these things can get forgotten. What my hon. Friend has been brilliant in doing is making sure that we do not forget; she has been a voice for people affected in this way. She is absolutely right that the Government have done many things that we should be proud of and that will make a massive contribution, and I thank her for the role that she has played.

Fundamentally, new clause 2 deals with those people who are in irregular work—those people who are either on zero-hour contracts or in some way working in what is often called the gig economy. The Government have to be aware of the changes in the way that people are working.

I am sure, Mr Gray, that you are an avid user of Uber.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury moved the amendment in her own inimitable style—the style that we would expect. She is, I think, a force of nature. Whatever she is doing in this place, whether she is campaigning on this issue or harrying us all to support Singing for Syrians, we either get with the programme or get out of the way, it appears to me. I am delighted that she has committed herself so totally to delivering this provision for bereaved parents. I understand exactly her intentions in tabling the amendment.

The hon. Member for Swansea East spoke about her amendment with great dignity and perfect intentions. We talk about bravery, and we see many different types of bravery—in our military, in our public servants, in the police and so on—but it takes great bravery to suffer a personal tragedy, something that is so private and raw as it was with the hon. Lady and her son, Martin, and to lay all that pain bare for everyone to see. That takes real bravery, but because we all understand that, it makes it so much more valuable; it has so much more force behind it. I have the utmost respect for what the hon. Lady has done, and continues to do, for people in such miserable and desperate positions and I congratulate her on it.

The hon. Member for North West Durham gets, I think, the level of sensitivity in this room today. There was laughter when she said what she did, but it was nervous laughter, because everyone wants to make sure that nothing goes wrong. Unintended consequences are something that a Government have to deal with all the time—if only we could plan for all unintended consequences. With the known unknowns, or the unknown unknowns, lots can go wrong. We need to ensure that nothing goes wrong with the Bill.

Bereaved parents, at an already heartbreaking time, should not be put in the difficult position of needing time away to grieve while being required to be at work because their employers will not agree to their taking leave. On Second Reading and at the evidence sessions, we heard about all the brilliant employers that offer fantastic, compassionate support for their employees at the worst of times. That is to be commended, but some employers do not do that—there are some that put profit ahead of people. It is those that we wish to address.

Supporting the Bill was therefore a natural decision to make. More needs to be done on such an important topic, and the Bill provides a minimum standard—this is not the benchmark or the gold standard, but the minimum standard, which will protect employees who do not have the security of the reasonable and compassionate employer we have discussed.

Defining exactly who is eligible as a “parent” is not as easy as I first thought. When I heard that I was dealing with this Bill, I thought that defining a parent would be the easiest thing—a parent is a parent; we all know what a parent is—but then I read the responses and about the different perspectives and points of view, from people who have the right intentions, the best of intentions. The hon. Lady asked why people should be left out, and I understand why she talked about that, but I honestly assure her that we want not to leave people out but to ensure that we do not leave anyone behind. We want to get this right first time.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton stated on Second Reading:

“As a society, we have clearly moved on from mum, dad and 2.4 children.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 1161.]

Family units are now hugely varied, and extending this provision to the biological parents alone would be too simplistic. People’s lives are different and more complicated. Society has changed and we all need to get with that and to support those new family units as they develop.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Approximately 25% of all parents in the country are single parents, but the fact remains that they may have, or have had, a partner while still married to someone else, because they have not sorted out their divorce. Legally, the husband would automatically be assumed to be the parent, without actually being so. That is the kind of complication that the Minister is alluding to, and why there is a need for much greater investigation. We now live in a society of hugely extended families in which it is not uncommon for someone with one or two children to have a partner with another one or two children.

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend is right. Facebook used to be a thing for young people—kids used to do Facebook—but now old people like me use it. Someone’s Facebook status may say “Married”, “Single” or even “It’s complicated”, and life is complicated. People’s personal arrangements are much more complicated than they have ever been before. If I tried to define some of my mates, my friends, and the complicated personal lives they lead, that would be a heck of a consultation. We have to be aware that there are a number of potential groups to extend this provision to beyond the biological parents. That is the point—more time and work is needed to identify which of those are the right groups to include.

Officials from my Department recently met their counterparts from the Department for Education, which has responsibility for adoption policy, for example. During that meeting, they discussed the different situations in which a person can have some form of parental responsibility for a child, and which of those groups of people should be considered parents for the purpose of this policy. It was clear from that meeting that there is a bewildering range of arrangements in which a person can be seen to be acting, to some extent, as a parent to a child. Thankfully, the majority of those arrangements, such as adoption, are legally recognised, and so considering such groups when thinking about eligible parents is straightforward.

However, there are arrangements in which a person is not legally responsible for the child but still has a connection with them and would benefit from time away from work if the unthinkable happened and the child died. It is important that such arrangements are properly considered when we define a bereaved parent. That is why officials from my Department are in the process of preparing a consultation—the hon. Member for Swansea East will be interested in this—to discuss how we will approach that definition. It will form part of a wider consultation on the other parts of the Bill covered by secondary legislation.

Amendments 16 and 17 require examples of groups that should be included within the definition of bereaved parents to be specified. Furthermore, amendments 21 and 22 propose specific examples that should be included, yet the examples proposed in those amendments are different from those proposed in amendments 16 and 17. That contradiction illustrates how complex defining a bereaved parent for the purpose of this Bill is. Although I understand why some of those amendments were tabled, I do not think it is right to specify types of parent at this point. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton set out a sensible and cogent argument for taking time to consider the definition of parenting through a consultation.

Amendments 22 and 24 follow from amendments 21 and 22, and provide a similar definition of a foster parent. I said that officials from my Department recently had discussions with the Department for Education about that subject. One type of parent they discussed was foster parents. Amendments 22 and 24 include private foster parents within the wider definition of foster parents. Concerns were raised in that meeting about private foster parents and about the fact that such arrangements are often not made known to local authorities. They are private arrangements, and it is therefore difficult to identify those foster parents. It is even possible that people acting as private foster parents do not realise that that is what they are. They are just looking after somebody, and they do not realise that they are defined as a foster parent.

As I said, we need to identify qualifying parents in a straightforward way, based on clear facts, and we must provide clarity and certainty to them and to employers. Further thought is required to correctly define bereaved parents. We should make a decision only once we have given this matter the right consideration, based on evidence and representations. I do not want to rush the decision and risk making a mistake. As I think everybody recognises, there are clear time pressures in relation to the passage of this private Member’s Bill, which makes it impossible to produce the right answer at the moment. We must not allow the Bill to be derailed.

With that in mind, I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury and the hon. Member for Swansea East agree that now is not the right time to try to define a bereaved parent, and that it is sensible not to press their amendments. I give them both a guarantee that the consultation will take place during the passage of this Bill, so they will have plenty of opportunity to take part in it and see what it contains. I hope that that satisfies my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury, and that she will withdraw the amendment.

Oral Answers to Questions

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Sir Robert Syms—where is the fellow? I call Antoinette Sandbach.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

The local authority pension fund forum has called for a review of accounting standards, having received opinion that there are substantial legal flaws in international reporting standards. The opinion states that the standards do not enable anyone to make a meaningful assessment of a going concern, which is a highly relevant issue for Carillion. Will the Secretary of State support such a review?

[Greg Clark]

The day that Carillion went into insolvency I wrote to the Financial Reporting Council, and I spoke to its chairman, to ask it to investigate the auditors and those who are regulated as accountants. The FRC has agreed to do that, and it announced yesterday that the investigation is under way. I would expect it to learn the lessons for any changes to the regulations that it applies.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if there were an opportunity for us to seek some sort of associate membership of Euratom once we have left, we should attempt to do that? That would minimise the cost to the UK taxpayer, unlike having to completely replicate the regime over here. I also echo his thanks to the Secretary of State and his ministerial team for the way in which they have approached this matter.

[Mr Vaizey]

I understand what my hon. Friend is seeking, but the point has already been made that there is in effect no real associate membership of Euratom at the moment. Ukraine and Switzerland have what is described as associate membership, but it is certainly nowhere close to the kind of arrangements that we have with Euratom now. The Government intend to have as close a relationship as possible with Euratom, whether we call it associate membership or anything else, and we will have to put in place our agreements with the other nuclear states with which we currently enjoy a relationship under Euratom—notably Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States of America. That work is under way, although the timing of the implementation of those agreements is unfortunately not in our gift. It is in the gift of other legislatures that might not be as efficient as this august legislature, but I know that we want to replicate those agreements.

I am particularly pleased that the Prime Minister did not follow the example of Watford, the football team of my hon. Friend the Minister, and change the manager unnecessarily in the past two weeks. I am extremely pleased that he remains in his place scoring goals for the nuclear industry, and I look forward to co-operating with him for many years to come.

Budget Resolutions

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Green growth is clearly part of our future as we move forward in the economy. Does my right hon. Friend agree that hydrogen batteries are as important as electric vehicles?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that hydrogen offers big advantages. It is a clean fuel, and this country has great expertise in developing and applying it.

Let me say something about business finance, which has already come up in the debate. In a strategy that connects our areas of strength, it is essential that we allow the businesses that are growing across our country to benefit much more than previously from our financial services sector, which is one of the most significant in the world. The deep pool of capital that we have should be available to growing companies up and down the country. The Budget therefore includes a new £2.5 billion investment fund, incubated in the British Business Bank, to drive forward more investment into growing companies across the country. The British Business Bank will establish a network of regional managers by autumn next year, ensuring that it is not just in London and the south-east that these sources of finance and advice are available, as it is essential that they are in place right across the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I am surprised by the Secretary of State’s comments, which are usually quite measured, and he seems to be struggling with reality today. However, let us talk about the Budget. A substantial section of the Chancellor’s speech on Wednesday focused on the productivity crisis, and rightly so. Labour analysis has shown that we have to go back to 1820, when George IV ascended the throne just after the Napoleonic wars, before we can find a time when productivity increased by less than this over a 10-year period. The result has been catastrophic. People are earning less now than they were 10 years ago and, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies states, average earnings look set to be nearly £1,400 lower by 2021 than was forecast last year. The Chancellor and the Secretary of State have tried to paint that as a phenomenon that is quite separate from the Government—like a sort of freak accident that is nothing to do with them—but that could not be further from the truth. To help the Secretary of State with his recollection of history and reality itself, I will take him on a little trip down memory lane.

By late 2008, it was clear that monetary policy alone was not working in the traditional way—people were not spending and the economy was not recovering. To quote economist Paul Krugman,

“the truth is that mainstream, textbook economics not only justified the initial round of post-crisis stimulus, but said that this stimulus should continue until economies had recovered.”

But what did the Conservatives do? The polar opposite: slashing Government spending and investment, and essentially pulling the rug out from under the UK economy.

Not only that, but the financial crash had shown clearly that our economy was becoming dangerously over-reliant, both regionally and sectorally, on financial services in the south-east of Britain.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Does the hon. Lady accept that, in effect, 12 previous years of Labour Government had left the economy in that state?

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

Frankly, I expect better from the hon. Lady; she usually makes very measured contributions. If she lets me continue, I will explain a little about what happened. Perhaps she will make different comments if she asks another question later.

It made perfect sense to use that economic turning point as an opportunity to invest in the development of our industrial base and to address the deep structural problems that had been emerging in our economy since the early 1980s. However, what happened was the scaling back of investment and funding in the tools that business needs to grow and succeed, such as skills, infrastructure, research and development, and access to long-term patient capital.

--- Later in debate ---

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who amply illustrates why we need a responsible and balanced Budget. When she describes her constituents’ debt, she needs to consider the situation in the country. We are spending £42 billion a year on interest payments. If Labour borrowed its £250 billion, those interest payments would be dramatically higher and would ultimately lead to a reduction in public services.

I welcome this balanced and responsible Budget that invests for the future. My constituency of Eddisbury has the Winsford industrial estate, which is the UK’s first green business park and first industrial business improvement district. Some 4,000 people work there in industries from food manufacturing to chemical supplies, packaging and engineering. I welcome the measures in the Budget, particularly those on R and D investment and on investment in artificial intelligence.

Technology is fundamentally changing the way that businesses operate, and it is changing the future landscape of the business world. By investing in this way, we can equip our companies to steal a march on international competitors and to ensure that British and Cheshire-based businesses are at the forefront of new global markets. PwC estimates that global GDP could be up to 14% higher in 2030 as a result of artificial intelligence, and it is therefore welcome to see artificial intelligence being backed in the Budget.

I welcome the Budget’s skills provision, particularly in STEM. Winsford—population, 30,000—currently has no sixth-form provision in the town. That will change in September 2018, with Mid Cheshire College planning to open a new STEM centre there. The measures on maths teaching will benefit my constituents. The fuel duty measures will help those in rural areas who have to drive long distances because they cannot access fuel locally.

This is a responsible and appropriate Budget for straitened circumstances. When Labour talks about austerity, let us remember it is really talking about spending within our means. This Budget is a good Budget, both for investing for our future and for spending within our means.