Energy Prices Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, is taking part remotely and I invite her to speak. She does not seem to be technically available at present; it is therefore open to any other noble Lord to speak to this amendment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, first, I apologise for being unable to be present at Second Reading. I am speaking to Amendment 12, which my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester has also signed. It sets up the mechanism for the Secretary of State to have a strategic plan for very vulnerable people who would be extremely adversely affected by power outages—for some, probably resulting in death—and for the requirement on energy suppliers to work with the local resilience forums, which are tasked with delivering local emergency plans in communities.

I read the impact assessment with interest. On page 28, paragraph 70, headed “Disability or vulnerability”, states:

“Of those surveyed … by the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey, over 40% of adults in Great Britain have a combined financial and property wealth below £23,249. Of those poorer households 41% have a physical or mental disability ... Furthermore, households with energy-using health equipment will typically be associated with higher energy use and stand to benefit more from the volumetric scheme”.


The Minister may remember that I raised the issue of ensuring electricity supply to the most vulnerable disabled and seriously ill people, who may die if their home electricity supply is not maintained, on 11 October 2022 when the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, asked a Question on energy pricing. I cited our family’s experience when my granddaughter, then aged two, who had to use a ventilator and a heart monitor faced a power outage on her south London estate. I thank the Minister for his response to my question and his being keen to reassure me and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, but I was concerned that BEIS Ministers may not be aware of what is happening in practice and how serious the problem is.

Since 11 October, I have talked to others who rely on ventilators, dialysis machines and other equipment at home. It is clear that the reality of what happened to my granddaughter in a small-scale electrical outage in south London about four years ago is, in practice, not unusual. Let me explain the process. On the advice of the consultants at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, and as a condition of her being allowed to leave hospital for the first time aged 11 months, my son had brought her home and registered with their energy supplier that she required ventilation and a heart monitor for about 17 hours out of every 24. Without it, she would have to be taken back to the specialist hospital as her lung capacity put her at high risk of death as her oxygen levels would plummet quickly.

My son had understood that the supplier would ensure that there was an alternative supply as soon as possible. On the evening of the outage, my son called the emergency line, who were encouraging: they were on the list for an emergency generator to be delivered to their house. After one hour, it had not arrived. They were told that it could take another two hours. At that time, and because my granddaughter was still quite small, he bundled her and all her medical kit—believe me, a carful—and drove to our house, an hour away. Believe me, if you have watched a small child struggling for breath, you do not hang around.

There is absolutely no doubt that the register of vulnerable users is helpful. However, the reality of a power cut means that the small batteries in those items that they have as a back-up will not last for many hours, especially if the outage is not planned and people do not know how long it will last for. That is why the suppliers knew that they had to get a generator to my granddaughter’s house. But they failed.

My concern is that, in the event of mass outages in the cold months of January and February next year, however unlikely, much larger swathes of the country will lose electricity in a number of hours. National Grid was predicting even worse last week—even if that is also deemed to be highly unlikely—and it might mean that the whole country would be without power from late afternoon until late at night for a number of days a week in January and February.

The Disability News Service picked up on the questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and I asked. John Pring at the DNS has been investigating current practice and how large outages would be handled by the energy suppliers, so he rang them. They said, “Talk to the Department of BEIS”, so he rang BEIS, which said, “Talk to the Department of Health and Social Care”—I have no idea why. The DHSC has not even replied, probably because it is not involved in emergency provision planning.

Many disability groups are very concerned about this coming winter too, as they, like my family, have experience of support in an emergency not being quite what was expected. Neither BEIS nor the DHSC seemed aware that the energy suppliers should be talking to their local resilience forums, run by each local authority, which have a statutory duty under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to deliver their local emergency health plan in the event of such an incident. However, directors of public health whom I have talked to, who are jointly employed by their authority and by the NHS, are core to LRFs, and they say that talking to energy suppliers is extremely difficult.

It is important to be clear that not all help for those whose lives depend on electricity will be on the register. Those registered with suppliers will include the elderly and the frail who must be kept warm, but they do not need individual generators at home. The LRFs need to plan with energy suppliers where generators will go in community halls or other planned venues and how vulnerable people will be taken to that venue. The current advice from suppliers to disabled people on their helpline is—wait for it—get a thermos and more battery packs. I have to say that that is causing alarm, and it tells me that proper planning is not going on, and people who are supposed to be giving advice do not know what it should be. That is also confirmed by the directors of public health whom I have talked to.

Under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, local resilience forums are level 1 responders, and energy suppliers are level 2 responders. Energy suppliers keep the register and must liaise with them. The problem is that at the moment the LRFs are entirely reliant on the energy suppliers communicating with them. As with Covid, when the local resilience forums played a fantastic role as we went into lockdown in their communities, the possibility of a serious outage means that there needs to be real planning now because, otherwise, people will die in a power cut. All the elements needed are available through various duties on differing people; the problem is that they are not joined up. Hence my amendment, which is to try to join up the key partners at a national level through the powers of the Secretary of State to create a strategic plan, while ensuring an action plan at a local level which gives a duty to energy suppliers to maintain contact with their local resilience forums.

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In conclusion, I have sought to assure noble Lords who tabled amendments in this group that the Government are committed to energy efficiency and supporting vulnerable consumers. Therefore, I hope they will perhaps not press their amendments—but looking at the gathering of the clans, I suspect not.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I asked the Minister whether he would meet me, the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, and representatives of disabled peoples’ organisations. I think I heard him say that this was more appropriately handled by the Cabinet Office. Would he help me to ensure that this same group, including myself, could meet the relevant Minister in the Cabinet Office on this issue?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I will certainly reply, although of course I cannot speak for Cabinet Office Ministers. I checked and they do have responsibility for ensuring that the Civil Contingencies Act is followed and implemented. I will certainly do my best to facilitate what the noble Baroness wants.